Stockholm, here we come!

I write this sitting in a hotel lobby in Helsinki - I went downstairs to get a beer, and found this "business center", and I couldn´t resist the temptation...

Tomorrow evening Kjell and will drive to Turku and then take the boat to Stockholm. I go with him to see where he´s going to live for 3 years, but I haven´t applied for any full time job as "Mrs Correspondent" this time. Of course I´ll spend as much time as I can in the capital of Sweden, but I won´t abandon my cats, my house, my friends or my kitty litterbox. Not to mention my job and my computer...

But, I´ve had my beer, and I´ll go back to the room to get some sleep...

[...and Rebecca, nice to know you are back! - but when are you going to tell me all the gory details?]

Getting rid of Nissan Pissan

Since it is now decided that Kjell is going to spend the following 3 years working from Stockholm, I suddenly realized I had a chance to get rid of the smellier part of the family´s car collection... Or, to put it bluntly, Nissan Pissan will have to go!

This new situation also means that I´ll be alone with the cats most of the time, and that it will be me who will have to clean out the kitty litterbox every time... Suppose I´ll get used to it.

I finally found 3 bags of that white stuff where it says "One bag, one cat, one month", so since I put that thing into the litterbox I haven´t had to suffer any disgusting smells... Except for omce when Otto must have had some digestive problems, about a week ago, and delivered a huge load in the box. since nobody was willing to get up and let him out at 6 AM - but as soon as I woke up and saw (that is, smelled...) what he had done, I removed the turds... Otto, by the way, is the only cat in our family who is capable of getting into the house by using the outside stairs to get to the window on the roof. He did it once when he was still wasn´t living with us - and every now and then he does it again. I suppose that proves that he is a bit smarter than the rest - or at least that his urge to get inside is greater...

I´m enjoying som sort of semi-vacation right now. That´s why I on Monday aftern00n decided to take the non-smelling car and drive to Mikkeli. That was 383 kms. The reason why I needed to go to Mikkeli was quite simple: my friend Satu, who normally lives in Tenerife, was visiting her home town, and since she wouldn´t make it to Nykarleby, and I would not be able to see her in Helsinki or Turku, the only chance for us to meet was for me to go to Mikkeli - which I did. I usually don´t like to drive alone for many hours, but this trip was quite nice. I played my favourite music real loud while I drove through the forests and lakes to Mikkeli - just hoping that I wouldn´t suddelny find a huge moose in front of me... During part of the trip I could drive for many kilometers without seeing one other person. This country is really empty! Just nature, nature, and more nature... (And we all know that I don´t need that much Nature!) When I passed Jyväskylä there was some more traffic, but even there it was quite smooth... The last hour I had to drive in the dark, and once again I noticed that I just have to get myself new glasses... I saw almost nothing! Or, I did see the letters on the signs, but usually a bit too late, so I had to brake hard, and the cars behind me got angry... I hate that feeling of not knowing exactly where I´m going, coming to a new place and trying to find my way. Near home I never noticed that my eyesight had gotten worse, since both me and the car know where to go anyway, and I never need to rely on reading the street signs...

But if was fun to meet Satu (and her boyfriend Julio). I got an update on the people I still know in Canarias... I heard who was pregnant, and who not, who had split up and who had found new love etc etc. Nothing that I absolutely have to know, but still it´s fun to hear what people from that time in my life are up to nowadays... But even if it was a very intense period of my life, my 5 years as a flight attendant, and a time filled with lots of fun moments, good laughs with good friends, I can´t even imagine how much I would hate it if I´d be there still, having worked there for --- what will it be? 18 years. It was a my good luck that they got rid of me about when they did - since one more year might have made me so used to that relatively comfortable and lazy life style that I´d have been very resistant to giving it up of my own free will... (it´s like having that famous pine cone up your ass... Sooner or later your body starts craving it). Anyway, Satu is one of a handfull of people from my flying days whom I stay in touch with, and I don´t want to lose her. That´s probably why I suddenly decided to drive for more than 4 hours in order to meet her. Who knows if I´ll be able to go to Tenerife next winter or not? Probably not, as things have turned out...

Right now I´m in Borgå, at Andelin´s house. They also have a cat - Sahra - who is of a special breed, that has a name I just don´t remember right now, but that looks like the fruit of a forbidden union between a red fox and a red squirrel... Really cute, though. She is in heat right now, but the problem is there´s no possible mating partner available... The one who is supposed to be the father of her future kittens was born last week... She is just a cat, but I´m sure she wouldn´t mind having an affair with a normal cat stud, of no special breed, but of course, then her kittens would be bastards, and we don´t want that to happen, do we? (and nobody is going to ask the poor cat...) What a pity all of my cats are neutered - otherwise I could offer her plenty of help, if she would just agree go go with me to Nykarleby.

We´re going there today, Erkki and I, but he has to do some work first... I had planned to spend some time in town, in Borgå, that is, but it looks like it´s going to rain, so I´ll just sit inside and read a good book instead until it´s time to go. I had my "city vacation" in Mikkeli yesterday, there´s no need to overdo it...

I did it!

I´ve been away, but before I left, that is, 10 days ago, I finally did what I´ve been planning to do the whole summer: I cleaned out the litterbox! And no, you don´t want to know exactly how bad it smelled by then. But the funny thing is, it wasn´t until I tried to get all of that once white substance into a normal size plastic bag (I have no idea if it should go in a "white bag" or a "black bag" - I hate these situations when I try to be a good citizen, handling my garbage according to the rules, but then suddenly I sit there with something quite unclassifiable - I mean it WAS wet, once, but the turds were defintely dry by now... Before our neighbours moved in, I just evaded the problem emptying the contens of the litterbox behind our sauna -but I don´t think that would be considered appropriate behaviour anymore...) that I noticed the SMELL.

Anyway, I cleaned it out, put some new sand in it, and left for my trip to Borgå-Helsinki-Tallinn-Borgå-Sibbo-Borgå-Ekenäs-Orivesi and back home again. My Mohter was left in charge of the cats for that time (and yes, of course she had been mowing the lawn... I can´t stop her - she´s only 78 years old - how could I possibly be so cruel as to keep her from working ?! ). But My Mother, being of the generation that considers sleeping late in the morning a sin, and staying up late an even worse sin, had lured the cats inside at about 9 P.M. every night that I was away, so of course, they had used the litterbox - a lot! So when we finally came home (- yes, both of us - for almost 36 hours both my husband and I were in the house; it hasn´t happened too often lately. Then this morning, at 4.45 A.M. he took Nissan Pissan and went to the airport) the litterbox smelled like shit - again! The cat sand I had used was definitely of inferior quality, so I got to go and find the white stuff that lasts for months - but they don´t have it in the stores in this piece of shit town! Anyway, before my husband took off on one more trip (it´s all pleasure - he has 7 weeks of vacation!! Isn´t it just too unfair?! Me, I have this "half-vacation" going on, but since that highschool reunion went slightly out of hand (fiesta continua for 12 hours...) I didn´t manage to get all my radio programs done before we went on our 3-day "family vacation" to Hotel Viru in Tallinn, so I still have to go in today and edit some interviews... ) I made him empty the litterbox - I mean, the they are his cats too... Today, while he is happily hanging out in Stockholm with his friend, I have to go and search for high quality cat sand... As I already said, life just isn´t fair!
But at least I got my little "trip abroad"... I know, it´s not too exciting to go to Tallinn, but I just needed to go somewhere, to get away from Österbotten, and Sweden is just too boring, Spain is too hot at this time of the year, and besides it had to be an unexpensive trip, since I would like to go to Madrid or Sevilla or Berlin or Washington D.C. in the fall (or whenever) , so we decided to spend some time in Tallinn. It became a "family vacation" since my brother and his family came along, as well as my "chosen family" from Borgå. So, in the end we were 6 grown-ups (at least physically...) and 3 children - but one of the so-called grown-ups indulged in quite immature behavior during our last night in Tallinn...
Now I´m planning my next trip - should I go to Öllöla, close to the Russian border? Or maybe go once more to Estonia, but this time I´d try to avoid central Tallinn, which J., who lives in the city, calls "Disneyland" - and it´s a bit agobiante, whatever that is in English, with all those young Estonians dressed in medieval dresses, trying to make tourists of different nationalities go to expensive restaurants and eat medieval food... (Why? I mean, weren´t they eating that kind of shit only because it was the only thing their was in those days?).
But we noticed that you don´t need to go very far from "Disneyland" to see that not too much has changed in Estonia since it was part of the Soviet Union.
Anyway, now I´m off to buy cat sand.
[My husband just called from Stockholm, telling me what a nice apartment his friend has, and how nice the weather is etc etc. Do I really need to know that? As if my life didn´t suck enough allready... with the rain pouring down, and a lot of guilt-provoking heaps of paper, clothes and other stuff that I just don´t feel like doing anything about right now...]