Mental Kitty Litter

My entire house is a huge kitty litter box

2007-05-29T00:02:00.000+03:00

One of the reasons I haven´t been writing a lot here lately (except for the fact that I forgot my username and password...) is that I have been extremely busy trying to keep the house from converting into a huge kitty litter box... It´s gotten completely out of hand! My cats show their discontent with my frequent travels by constantly finding new places to leave their little marks... Like just under the computer! I hate that!! I don´t notice the smell at first, because it is really faint, but if I sit still long enought, my brain finally has time to process all the external information, and I realize that the damned creatures have actually peed, not only under, but on the computer... What am I suppsed to do?!

On the other hand, I´m getting to be so used to this now, so I don´t even break down in tears any longer when I realize what has happened, I just calmly get my special perfumed wipes, and take care of the mess, because I do love my little cats anyway.

It´s been a long and strange winter - and at times I have been so sad I thought I would never get out of it. But now, suddenly, it feels like I can live again - I don´t need to cry for an hour before I can get started, and (I don´t know if I dare to say this... I might get punished by I don´t know whom or what, but it does feel sort of risky...) I actually feel great most of the time!

Maybe it was really worth going through all the shit that came my way last year? Maybe I don´t need to feel miserable most of the time?

Happiness? Something for me...?

What a concept!

What will happen to my grumpiness if this state continues?

Cat pee update

2007-01-29T21:09:00.000+02:00

Oh no, don´t get your hopes up - I´m not going to deliver a complete cat pee update, because then I´d be writing until this time next year... Let me just put it this way: almost every day has been a cat piss day ... (is anybody still wondering why I had to be on sick leave for several months?) As if my life didn´t such enough anyway!

But that was last year. Actually, my life doesn´t suck that much anymore. I think. (Either that, or I have gotten better in the fine art of "healthy denial"...)

Since my long sick leave for burnout - or depression, or whatever you choose to call my state of complete exhaustion - I´ve been working less, making less money, and generally feeling better about myself. It probably also has something to do with having created some structure in my life - like: sushi on Tuesdays, jazz on Thursdays, movie on Saturdays - and a lot of improvised time with good friends in between...(no, we don´t always dress like in the picture...). I spend more time in the neighboring town now than I did last year, which means I spend more money on gasoline and less money on beer. It all evens out, somehow. But I have a feeling that this arrangement, which might not be recommended from an environmentalist point of view, is doing wonders for my liver and my mind, so... I´m only feeling a little bit guilty. (Or am I really supposed to sacrifice my mental health for the planet? )

And I have finally learned to be alone without feeling completely restless... many evenings I sit by the fire, watching movies (ok, I admit - it´s gotten a bit out of control... The day before yesterday I wathced 3 DVD-films... But they were good, though) with 2-3 cats all over my body. An ideal way to spend a long, cold, dark winter night, if you ask me.

Plenty of time to do nothing

2006-09-19T01:21:00.000+03:00

Ok, so I haven´t been very active lately - I haven´t even reported all the annoying (and stinking) things that my cats have done in the wrong places (which they have done, the bastards!). Instead I´ve been busy doing nothing.
Suppose that was what I needed.
And it´s not even true. I just haven´t done any paid work for quite a while now. But instead I´ve had a lot of time to think, and to feel miserable, and to feel even more miserable - and slowly begin to feel better again...
What happened? Too much at the same time. Shit I had been running away from finally got to me - and it was a lot more than a full load in the kittylitter box...

Anyway, the month of August was one of the worst months I´ve had to endure in a loooong time, but now it´s September, and right now life feels good! (but since I´m officially depressed, I suppose I should just sit down and wait ´till this feeling goes away...)

Actually, I´m writing this just to let R know that my cats are still doing their best to make my life miserable - but let´s not blame them for the mess I´ve been in for the last few weeks... I caused it myself by believing I was Super Woman and working too hard, for too long. Then Life didn´t make things easier by suddenly forcing me to struggle with some very disturbing, but unavoidable, existential questions - and, well... for a while that was a bit more than I could handle. Of course, the same questions are still without answers, but I seem to be getting used to not having any answers. And some days I can even laugh at the absurdity of the entire human existence.

And now, some more Kitty News:
A few weeks ago, I almost got myself a fifth cat... It was a homeless little thing that a friend left in my house, because he felt sorry for the lost and hungry creature (- and he claimed he couldn´t adopt any kitten, although he has only two cats from before - two big ones, that is true, but anyway, four normal size cats are more than two big ones, whichever way you look at it...).
The cat was here for one day, and I just fell in love with the tiny thing! I had almost decided to keep it if no owner showed up. But unfortunately somebody did come and get it! [Maybe I will adopt another little cat later this fall. I do have "doctor´s order" to do things that cheer me up.
Well, that little cat certainly did!]

No time to do anything

2006-07-31T14:40:00.000+03:00

I haven´t written for a month, and the reason is I have been working. And I´m so tired I could lie down and cry... But somehow I have to find the energy to go on for two more weeks. Two weeks! That seems like an enternity when I think of what I have to do. I had no idea it would be this hard to finish all the work this summer - I somehow thought I´d be able to do more, in less time.
But I couldn´t. And I can´t!
I´m awfully tired - and I´ve been tired for a long time... I need time off!! Now! So why can´t I just leave what I´m doing and take care of myself? I mean, that would be the most sane thing to do right now, since it doesn´t seem to matter anyway if I do a good job, or a mediocre job (or none at all) because I still don´t know if I´ll have a chance to keep on doing what I like to do (radio programmes...) next year. It´s all about money. And I just hate this situation.

Still, something keeps me from giving up...
Am I an idiot?
Or just too ambitious?
Or is it just a personal thing, that I want to finish what I started over 6 months ago? And I want to do it well?
But I need a vacation. And not only a week or two, but a real vacation! Last year I didn´t really have one, since having to deal with the fact that your husband is planning to move to another country isn´t exactly having time off, and that is what happened during my 3-4 free weeks last summer.
But I didn´t realize exactly how tired I was until the beginning of this summer - after the documentary, after all the other programmes...
Now I have reached the point where I sleep badly, wake up too early, feel irritated with anyone who expect something from me - and in short, I´m bitchier than ever!
More than one person has suggested that I´m heading for a burnout... I´m afraid they might be right. I have to do something to avoid that, and I have to do it soon...
But I still have to endure two more weeks...
(why? I don´t know. I know that nobody is going to reward me for this... I´m the only one who is going to suffer. But for some reason I can´t explain I want to finish this El Hierro series that I´ve been struggling with for the last month. I want to reach a conclusion... For my own sake. This island has been on my mind for more than 6 months - I can´t quit now! - Or could I? No, I think I´d hate myself even more if I´d just give up...)

Now I just have to stop writing, and start working. I´m too responsible to just call and say "I´m too damned exhausted!! - there will be no more programmes for a while!" I just don´t....

Above you can see a picture of one of my new best friends. We have two small ones that come and ask for cat food almost every day. The cats usually don´t bother them - not after the first try, anyway...

Life is a party

2006-06-29T17:03:00.000+03:00

I don´t seem to find the time to write anything at all this summer - partly because I´m too busy having parties in my garden... (as you can see)

[And of course, another reason is that I don´t have any paid vacation time, so I´m trying to work. Which I don´t. But I should.]

The cats don´t do much in the litter box right now. They do it outside.

And I have finally gotten rid of last winter´s cat pee and cat shit (and 6 months old cat blood...) from inside the house.

And I also seem to have gotten rid of some mental shit that has been bothering me for a while.

Actually, I have a lot of non-kitty litter related things I could tell, but not now. Because I am too lazy...

I just want to enjoy the long and summer nights while I can - soon enough we will have darkness and snow again.

(Not that I want to think about it, but it´s a fact)

The picture where you can see the water tower was taken yesterday evening at about 11.30 p.m - and there was also a very nice rainbow...

It´s over - and I´m still alive

2006-06-05T00:41:00.000+03:00

I did it - and I survived. It was even sort of fun to edit the documentary - once I got started. But it was exhausting! Anyway, it´s over now - and not only the documentary. Maybe I can now finally leave the '70 behind and get on with my life without continuously having to reexamine things that happened 30 years ago. And maybe I can also accept the fact that I am 47, and even though it sucks to realize that life passes so damned fast, it also feels good to know from experience that even if I might feel like shit right now, it will pass... It always does. (And if I wake up in the morning with an undetermined feeling of sadness - which has been the case for most of the month of May - I just cry until it feels a bit better, and go on with my day. Because I know that I won´t cry forever, and the pain will go away - eventually... )

In Helsinki

2006-05-29T22:49:00.000+03:00

These last weeks have been absolutely crazy, and yesterday before I took the train to Helsinki (where I am right now) I told everybody I saw that if I survive until Friday I´m going to celebrate in such a way that the hang-over will last for at least 3 days...

My present state of mind doesn´t have to do only with the radio documentary I´m editing this week (even though the fact that I haven´t been able to get a grip on what I´m actually doing - and why - has been hanging like a black cloud over my head since the beginning of April...), but for some reason all kinds of old shit has come back to haunt me lately, so I´m exhausted. I feel like a tired old woman. And that´s what I am. I just sometimes seem to forget..

No, I must admit, I´ve had a lot of fun also, these last weeks, so I shouldn´t complain. It´s just that too many weird things have been happening a little bit to close to each other. And it takes time to deal with all of it, mentally.
One day I´ll be able to laugh at this crazy spring, I´m sure...
But not yet.

Now I have to go to my hotel room and try to get some sleep... Somehow I must survive until Friday so I can celebrate - if there will be a reason te celebrate...
(of course there will be! I have to stop my negative thinking...)

Stockholm

2006-05-03T12:53:00.000+03:00

So, finally I went to Stockholm, for the first time this year. It´s not that I have been avoiding the capital of Sweden, but since I´ve been busy going to El Hierro during the first months of this year, I just haven´t had the time to go and visit my husband - but he has been visiting me and the cats quite a few times, so... what was it I was planning to write? Anyway, when I arrived in Stockholm, the city was more or less as I left it in December - cold and rainy... As if autumn had never ended. Meanwhile, the weather was nice and warm in Nykarleby. (Why the hell am I going on and on about the weather? Probably because it sucked - and because I don´t really know what to say about the rest... )
Guillaume was with me on this trip, and it was his first visit to Sweden. Initially this visit to Stockholm was planned in February, because of the Calexico consert at Berns on April 30th. But then in the end two of the persons who were most eager to go to the consert couldn´t come - so young Guillaume ended up spending a lot of time with "old people"... (It was a very good consert, though)
When I asked G how he had liked his trip, he politely said it was "nice" - but my feeling is that he was slightly bored, at least part of the time. Should not be my problem, but I felt sort of repsonsible for having taken him there in the first place. But of course, he was the one who wanted to go marching with the Anarcho-Syndicalists on May 1st... And he did. But he didn´t participate in the "riots" in the afternoon...
So, I don´t know.
My husband unfortutantely had to work on Sunday, because of the king´s birthday - but we also got to spend some time together... But maybe not enough, this time.
Have to do something about that.
Now I have to work, for a change...

Why am I doing this to myself?!

2006-04-03T10:29:00.000+03:00

It´s Monday, and I just refuse to get dressed, since outside it is snowing - again!! This winter has been going on for too long - I just can´t have anymore of this shit!! I hate to have to dig out the car from under the snow at the train station in the month of April, it feels so wrong! And it doesn´t feel better being - as I was - completely exhausted, after a crazy weekend in Helsinki...
[Why am I doing these things to myself? I should know better after all my years of all kinds of experiences... ]
Sure, I did the work things I went there to do, and I even did some interviews that I had not actually planned to do, but of course it was not exactly a good idea to be out drinking too much beer for too many hours on both Friday and Saturday... [why?!]

But it was fun to meet (and interview) Jonte, one of the persons from my past. (Jan, the one I talked to last week, the ex-communist - but since 1981 jesus-freak - was a completely different story... sort of scary!) I think I saw Jonte last time when I was living in DC, so it has to be about 10 years ago. I remember we had lunch in Helsinki at some point when I was in Finland visiting, and he congratulated me to my pregnancy - but I had to disappoint him by telling him that I was not pregnant - just fat...
[ this thing I just wrote got my mind back on to something I try to keep myself from thinking about, since I just can´t understand... A terrible thing, which has to do with a pregnant woman and a baby - both dead by now - has happened around here, and it has once again made me wonder if just anybody can do almost anything, given the right - or wrong - circumstances... Can I even trust myself not to snap and start doing things that others consider completely insane? ... ok, I know there might be somebody out there reading this who thinks that "Isn´t she quite crazy already? Does it need to get any worse...?" But I don´t mean that kind of crazy... ]

Anyway, to my surprise Jonte decided to come into town on Saturday with Guillaume and me after the interview, so that´s one of the reason why too much beer was consumed also on Saturday. I mean, if you meet somebody only every 10 years or so, of course you have to go out and have fun - I thought. And it was fun!

Today I am still completely exhausted, and doubting that I will ever be able to make anything worth listening to from the confused interviews that have been recorded so far. Have to listen to them - but not today - and try to think of a way to make this story into something that can be aired... My problem is often that I never know exactly what I am doing until it´s done (I probably shouldn´t write this ...) - and this time I really should know what the hell I´m doing.
But I don´t.

I met some interesting people at the Swedish Speaking Gay-weekend, though, and I did a couple of interviews. But somehow I just tried to squeeze too much into one lousy weekend - I mean, it´s not possible to be in severeal places at one time - and it´s not possible to function with too few hours of sleep. I know all this, since many years - so I just have to repeat: why the fuck am I doing this to myself?

Now I have had 4 cups of coffee, so I think it´s time to get dressed and go down to the shop where my friend W is selling stuff for home improvement, and ask if he could offer me one more coffee. He usually can. And after that, my workday can start - in case I don´t decide to take the day off...
Might need it.

Oh, and last but not least the cat pee update:
Just to make my homecoming memorable, my cats had peed in a chair, as if to say "wellcome home, bitch!" - and I hadn´t been away for more than 3 days! Now, as I write this, two of the cats are busy killing each other downstairs... but I´m so tired of the smell of cat pee that I don´t bother to go down and try to stop them.
(Damn! I must be really tired and annoyed to write such a thing, about my cats! Got to go down to the kitchen right now to see if they are all still alive...)

Back from El Hierro - but not for good...

2006-03-28T10:12:00.000+03:00

I have absolutely no time to write right now, I should start editing the program that is going on air on Sunday, and on Sunday I am going to be in Helsinki, recording stuff for other programs - and I hope I will be able to leave by noon on Friday. I´m going to Helsinki with Guillaume, where we (among other things) are going to meet an old friend of mine, and he (my old friend) is going to tell Guillaume - or us - about how he wanted to change the world in the '70 and '80. And this is not something we do just for fun, but part of a radio documentary that I´m working on. (On the other hand, it´s fun, too... Something wrong with that?)
Tomorrow we´re going to meet another activist from the past - one who said to me on the phone that "I think Jesus would like me to tell you what I believe in nowadays...".
He used to be the most good looking communist in my high school. But that was in 1975. Haven´t seen him in more than 20 years.

Some of the people I have gotten to know in El Hierro are calculating that by October I might be going there for good... considering how fast I came back after my first visit. But I don´t know about that - yet.
I still like the island, even if I was sick half of the time there, I had a terrible flu... [not bird related, though]

There are a lot of things I could tell, but unfortunately now I have to work...

Ok, ok, ok!

2006-03-08T23:34:00.000+02:00

I should be sleeping like this cat by now, but since I found some grumpy comments on my Swedish blog, I just had to write something here as well...

It´s cold!! It´s absolutely too damned cold, and I still have to endure 1 more week of this before I can go back to El Hierro. I´ve been working hard these last weeks, because otherwise I can´t afford to travel (actually, I can´t really afford this upcoming trip, but I go anyway...), but I´ve also had time to drink wine and beer and to smoke a lot of cigarrettes. The tobacco will have to go now, because I can´t have all these bad habits at once, and if I have to choose, well... I do prefer drinking to smoking. I´ve been spending a lot of time with different people - some of whom I didn´t even know 6 months ago, and others that I have known for a decade - or forever. Now that I live alone I have become even more aware of the importance of my friends, because this little piece of shit town can really suck if you don´t fill part of your time with nice people... And friends seem to come and go, but as long as they don´t all go, it´s ok. [I think I have permanently lost one, though, since "The Dysfunctionary" (you R know who that is... ) won´t talk to me anymore, but frankly, I can´t see that as a very huge loss at this point in my life...]

And now today´s cat pee update: two days ago I found a new place where the cats have been pissing for some time, and it was unexpectedly on the bottom part of one of the CD-towers - the last one in the row containing "male artists". I noticed when I opened the glass door to get out a Warren Zevon-CD... Good thing there was a glass door, though.

Now that it has been colder than -10 C for several weeks I usually wake up in a sweat in the morning. And no, it´s not menopause, but four furry cat bodies trying to get really close to me. That part is OK, but what really drives me crazy is when my bed becomes a war zone, int the middle of the night. That happens when Liffi for some reason wakes up and sees Otto in the same bed, and thinks "wait a minute... isn´t that the cat I´ve decided to beat the shit out of whenever I have a chance...? Hmm... and he´s asleep..." And then in a matter of seconds there´s a lot of activity, and a lot of screaming - and then silence, while a lot of loose cat hair slowly settle on my bed...

I hate to wake up that way! And it has happened twice in one week now....

But now I just have to go to sleep, because tomorrow morning I will have to wake up like most people do - to the sound of an alarm clock... I hate to wake up that way too, but I sort of have to.... I´ll wake up at 6 A.M so I can get started by 7 A.M and drive my father to the hospital in Vasa, so...

buenas noches.

Cat frustration

2006-02-27T15:18:00.000+02:00

This is the most evil of my cats - Liffi...

The night between saturday and sunday he was getting ready to attack poor Otto again, but this time he didn´t succeed, since Jonas and Lotte were here, and Jonas took Otto in his lap and held him away from EvilLiffi...

But, Liffi is no fool, even if he is evil, so seeing that Otto was out of reach for the moment, he decided to say the cat version of "Fuck you!" by finding an annoying place to just pee a little... (Couldn´t he just learn how to show the cat-paw version of the middle finger!?)

I didn´t believe my eyes at first, but that little bastard put his furry ass over a green bag, where I normally have a lot of CD:s (since I never know in the morning what I might want to listen to in the evening... that´s why I usually carry around about 25-30 CD:s... yes, I know it sounds weird, but I´m the one doing the carrying...) - the only good thing about all this is that the bag was empty at this time - since after Liffi´s short encounter with the bag it was definitely full of piss...

Otto didn´t get beaten up this time - but I´m afraid it is only a question of time...

I don´t agree with Lotte, though, who said "Just get rid of that cat!" (meaning Liffi...) She just doesn´t understand! Evil or not, he is Liffi, not something you get rid of after having shared your house and your life with him for almost 9 years...

(She just doesn´t understand...)

Frissi

2006-02-24T13:26:00.000+02:00

This morning Frissi was just too cute... But he is still the main suspect when it comes to shitting in the wrong places...

Today I did it - first thing in the morning...

2006-02-21T12:57:00.000+02:00

Yes, I really did it!!
I changed the white stuff in the kitty litterbox... It was about time, since it was getting really soiled.
I heard that there was some litterbox activity downstairs while I was still in bed, but I was too lazy to go down and make the cat go outside to do what he was about to do. So, when I finally managed to get up, I had no other choice but to change the whole thing...
Now I feel I have really gotten something done today, so I can be lazy from now on - if I want to...

It´s a really beatiful day, the sun is shining and it´s about 10 below zero. Of course there are things I should do, but most of them can wait.
(the picture of my house is from around christmas - the sun is a lot brighter now... but still, winter can be quite nice here - at least if you don´t have to spend too much time ouside)

I had lunch at my parents´ house again, and my father was eating, talking and even making some stupid jokes... I know he´s not getting any younger, or even permanently better, but as long as he doesn´t get worse too quickly, I think I can handle it, for the time being...

Been on the road again

2006-02-19T21:43:00.000+02:00

Lately, being on the road seems to have become my best way of handling anxiety and other uncomfortable mental states...
I don´t know why, but that´s just how it is.
On thursday I drove down to Helsinki/Borgå, with Guillaume as a co-driver. It felt a little bit like I had done the same thing before (- probably because I had... We were just one person less in the car this time...) We stopped five times, for different reasons, and managed to make the trip last almost 7 hours. After a short stop in Helsinki I continued to Borgå, where I slept too few hours - but against all odds I did get myself back to Helsinki by 9 a.m. on friday. In the evening I continued to Turku with Brita and Jannik as passengers, and on saturday I drove back to Nykarleby with my brother and nephew in the car. This tour was not as crazy as the one in January - but it was fun. Being in the car I disconnect from many things that normally bother me, and I just drive - or sit and listen to music, or talk, or think or ... I don´t know. Can´t explain why this is so relaxing, but it just is.

Otto

2006-02-19T21:39:00.000+02:00

I can´t understand why it has to be so difficult to get a picture of my 4th cat, Otto, posted here in this blog, but either I have no decent pictures of him, or if I have, they happen to be somewhere else, or whatever... But now I finally think I will be able to do it.

All cats´ day, or whatever day it is...

2006-02-14T10:07:00.000+02:00

Suddenly I felt I had to write something just because today is the 14th of February - but then I decided that I don´t have to do anything... But I do want to post a picture of Frissi where he is really cute - if I can figure out how to do it... And I also noticed I have no pictures of Otto on this blog, which is so unfair, isn´t it? [Not only is he getting hurt by Liffi all the time, but he is also ignored by me... How could I do this to him?] This has to change, right now! That is, if I get this shit computer to co-operate with me... It´s so slow right now, full of spyware and other crap, I suppose.

Going back

2006-02-13T23:36:00.001+02:00

I´m going back to El Hierro - in about one month... Maybe I´m crazy, but I just need to go back there. I was in such a bad mood last week when I could not take the direct flight from KOK to TFS, but instead I found a flight from HEL to TFN, which is even better, because then we can continue to El Hierro from the same airport we arrive in, so we don´t need to spend the night in Tenerife...

I have hard time keepin my cats from killing each other - Otto has been hurt again, but I think he is getting better now, so I don´t need to take him to the vet, not just yet. I´m seriously thinking of finding a new home for him, because the situation is getting worse every month.

There was a wet party in my house on Saturday - and I´m still trying to recover from that one. But it was fun...
Not everything is fun in this piece of shit town, though, because it has come to my knowledge that there´s a person in this town going around telling my friends to tell me that he´ll see me in court... I hope he´s joking, but on the other hand, he might be even crazier than I thought he was. I´m not sure if he wants to see me in court because of some bills he thinks I should pay, or if he plans to sue me for telling him that he´s an idiot - in a crowded lunch restaurant... Whatever. I really wouldn´t like to waste any more energy on him right now.
And who cares, anyway?
I´m going back to El Hierro!

Back in my own little cat-body-fluid-soaked existence

2006-02-06T11:18:00.000+02:00

Last week at this time I was still in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, strolling around aimlessly, enjoying my last day of relative freedom from kitty litter duty etc.
On Tuesday I arrived in KOK (that is, Pietarsaari/Kokkoloa airport, situated in Kruunupyy, which can create some confusion, especially when all the names also come in Swedish Jakobstad/Karleby and Kronoby... "Where the hell am I?!" was the first thing my friend Satu asked when she got off the plane at KOK a few years ago... ).

Coming home was not easy this time - since I really would have liked to stay for some time in El Hierro. Maybe a few weeks, or a couple of months... I don´t know. I can´t explain it, but let´s put it this way: I had less of a hard time being in my own company when I was in El Hierro ... Does it make sense? Never mind.

It took me a few days to crash land in my own existence, but since I had work to do, and a husband on his way home for the weekend, I just had to manage, somehow. Things were not made easier by the cats - though, since I stumbled on traces of fresh and dry cat-body-fluids everywhere...
Liffi and Otto have kept on fighting, and it´s mostly Otto´s blood that is shed - but they had also found the time to shit in the wrong places... It´s enough to get even a balanced person a little bit desperate. And I'm quite desequilibrada (it sounds better in Spanish...) to begin with. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention the little puddle of pee I managed to put my hand right into... Guillaume has been trying to keep the cats from killing each other, locking them into separate rooms for the night and so on, but still he had to take Otto to the vet one more time while I was a way, to have her see to a new wound that Liffi had inflicted on him. I´m really considering sending Liffi to Sweden, because all this started when Kjell moved to Stockholm...

But, I haven´t got the time to write more now. Just wanted to let R know that I´m back in my little house, trying hard to avoid all the puddles and turds.
More later.

El Hierro and other islands

2006-01-25T12:58:00.000+02:00

OK, I have to admit one thing: my mental state right now is really weird... probably because of where I am.
This little island is, in some respects "el culo del mundo" according to some native herreños, but still it has something that makes you want to stay. I´ve already met several people who just came for e weekend, and then went home and packed their stuff, came back - and never left. I´m in danger myself right now, because I´m thinking of changing my plane ticket, staying a bit longer, coming back here, maybe, in March... But the really frightening thing yesterday was that I actually, for a little while, considered applying for a job in a local supermercado (no, i didn´t actually do it...).

My husband is right now on another island in the Atlantic Ocean - he is in Iceland... My best friend from school went there in 1979, for some weeks - she's still there, married to a woman. It seems like some islands trap you and don´t let you leave once you´ve come there... Iceland never had that influence on me - let´s hope it doesn´t have that influence on my husband either...

(R. if you are reading this - write me an e-mail so I get your address, I´m in such a confused state right now that I can´t remember it... There are some non-blog worthy things I´d like to comment with you... ok?)

In Tenerife

2006-01-21T20:22:00.000+02:00

I'm writing this from a disgustingly expensive hotel in Los Cristianos, in Tenerife, and I'm here waiting for my friend Satu to come from a meeting. I hope she her meeting will last 20 minutes more, since I just put my las 2€ coin into the box to be able to use this thing for 20 lousy minutes...
Hotels like this always have ridiculously high prices - coffee: 3€, breakfast 18 € - and so on... But of course, I don't need to stay here - it's just that Satu has a meeting in this hotel, since this is the kind of placel where people from the airlines stay. I have spent quite a few nights in hotels like this mysel f- when I was flight attendant. And because of this meeting today, I have had the opportunity to meet some of the people I used to work with - and I was almost chocked when I started calculating - because I think I had my last flight in August 1992... That's 13, almost 14 years ago! [I'm too much aware of the fact that time flies nowadays - everything reminds me of the fact that I'm getting old ...]

The beginning of this year has been hectic, but more on a mental level than "in real life" - or not...? No, it has been hectic in real life, too. I'm sort of running as fast as I can to get away from myself, but I have already lost...

Anyway, tomorrow I'm taking myself to El Hierro, the smallest of all the Canary Islands, and I'll stay there for 5 days, trying to record things that can become radio programs in summer. My friend Satu will come with me. On Friday I'll continue to La Palma, to meet some other friends, on on Tuesday, January 31 I'll go back to Finland, where it has been freezing cold the last few days, and feel really lucky not to be there...

Shit in the wrong places

2006-01-17T01:16:00.000+02:00

OK, I know I haven´t been writing here for a long time, but I have my reasons... I have been too busy cleaning cat shit from the wrong places, at the same time as I have been feeling really miserable, so the only language I have been able to write in has been Swedish (Sorry, R., in case you are back from this year's possibly life theratening adventure...). But now I´m almost Ok, and tomorrow in the late afternoon I´ll take a plane to Tenerife, and later I´ll continue to El Hierro, because in the summer I´ll have a series of radio programs about that island. I´ve never been there before, so it will be a new experience...
I´ll leave my cats at home, of course, and for the first week they´ll be taken care of by 3 french people, that is Guillaume, his sister and his friend. I hope they will keep Liffi from hurting Otto too much, because he was so badly hurt by Liffi a couple of weeks ago that on Friday, just before we went on this crazy road trip, I had to take him to the vet, since he had this ugly wound that would not heal... The bill was 84 €. I think I´ll make my husband pay, because the cats have been behving badly since he left. [And so have I, in case you consider drinking wine and beer on week days being bad behaviour...]

I would like to write about our crazy, 1595 km long trip to the extreme east of Finland, with a little detour to Borgå - but I just can' t right now. I´m tired, and I´m going to bed. I can´t find Frissi, but if he decides to stay out, he can handle it, he´s so furry...
I can´t stay awake anymore, and it´s half past 1 in the morning.

Ok, it´s christmas, I think...?

2005-12-24T03:08:00.000+02:00

I haven´t been writing in this blog so often lately, since I know that my only reader, R., is away on one of her crazy lifethreatening trips, so instead I have just been drinking wine and beer and having fun.
But, considering the main topic(s) of this blog, I suppose I should report that I have had quite a few unwanted encounters with different body fluids (and solid stuff...) expulsed from differen orifices of my cats recently.
First, one day when I came home I found a lot of cat blood on the upper floor - Liffi and Otto had been fighting again (I´d blog the blood pictuer if it didn´t just look like ketchup... but it was scary, I thought I´d find a dead cat somewhere - but Otto was just really tired for a day and a half, and now he´s back to normal...)
The day after, I finally found what it was that had been entering Majvors´s nostrils while we were emptying a bottle of wine (and falling asleep listening to the Stockholm Gay Choir...)... They (the cats... in case anybody thought something else) had been shitting in the same damned place in the backroom of my living room again! And it has been there for the last two weeks... But since I´ve had a stuffy nose, so I hadn´t found the shit - even if the smell had reached me every now and then, but I really thought it came from the litterbox... (which I hadn´t cleaned out, evidently)
Anyway, they (or he, if it has been only one...) must have been shitting in the wrong place for all of my 13 days away, since there were at least 13 loads of shit (yes, I do have a picture, but it´s just too gros to blog...)
What else could I write about... Loneliness? I´ve been a bit lonely at times this fall, because of my husband´s recent change in living arrangements, but right now I´m definitely not alone, since I have no less than half a dozen cats and two humans to keep me company. [Not all of them live permanently in the house, but they are all very nice... ]

Tonight it´s night of the second "before-christmas" party... We (that is, the usual suspects...) ate ham (or, pig´s ass...), drank beer - and when all the others left, the rest of us (Kjell, Guillaume and I) watched "Babe" on DVD. First we ate the pig, then we watced a cute pig movie... Hm? Are we a bit disturbed or not?)
Right now Kjell is force-feeding Guillaume Bruce Springsteen on DVD... Personally, I have nothing against listening to Bruce, but looking at all those sweaty middleaged men, making stupid faces while doing masturbatory things with their guitars... well, it´s just not my thing.
But what the hell... it´s christmas, and people do weird things.
And now - finally - we get to listen to Kjell´s all time favourite "Born to run" - but I still prefer not too watch close up images of Bruce and his pals...
The music is good, though.
I need a cigarrette.

2005-12-21T00:28:00.000+02:00

Frissi

2005-12-21T00:27:00.001+02:00

Svarti

2005-12-21T00:27:00.000+02:00

Liffi

Back to 1984

2005-12-10T13:27:00.000+02:00

Yesterday we were invited to dinner at Niki´s place. She´s been in my life since 1980 - which is a really long time, when you think of it...
She knew me when I wasn´t yet with the one who was to become my husband. Hell, she even knew me when I had the boyfriend before the boyfriend I had before him... Not many of the people I hang out with nowadays have that kind of perspective - some because they weren´t even born by then, others because I have only known them for the last decade or so.
And very few of my friends can actually remember the last day of April 1984 (or the whole damned weekend of "Vappen 84") and laugh about it and compare notes and try to put together a picture of what actually happened. Niki´s husband had heard about that ill-fated party weekend - but she had not yet met him by then. My future husband was enjoying his last weeks of freedom during that weekend, because it was only a question of 19 days before we would hook up, but he was there anyway, and he even happened to get his expensive bottle of gin (bought in the liquor store - not a tax-free bottle, he pointed out yesterday... ) smashed by two very drunk friends (Niki and me...) as we accidentally dropped his bag to the ground.
I think he has forgiven us by now - but he will probably never forget...

Now you might think we spent the whole evening talking abuot things that happened in the early '80, but it wasn´t like that - we got back to the present quite soon.

Now I´m being driven away from the computer by that same husband... I´ll smash another bottle, dammit!
[I want to have my own laptop!]

One week in Stockholm + litterbox update

2005-12-09T12:07:00.000+02:00

It suddenly struck me that I´ve been i Stockholm for a whole week now, and I´m beginning to see a pattern in my way of handling my time here... The first few days I´m just happy to be here, planning all the fun things I´m going to do, all the beer I´m going to drink with all my nice friends - and even hoping to get some time with my husband, who might or might not be working like crazy. Then on the third or fourth day I get restless, not knowing exactly why, but feeling slightly guilty for not doing anything 'usefull' - like working, that is. Then suddenly it´s just a question of days before I´ll go away again, and at that point I begin to fret about all the things I haven´t done - all the movies I didn´t see, all the people I didn´t call etc. etc. I see the pattern, and at the same time I hate to be so predictable!

Far away from here, in my little house in Finland, there has been a lot of activities in the Kitty Litterbox - at least if I´m to believe my mother. She even feels compelled to tell me what kind of turds she has found there (very long and thin... supposedly one of the cat has eaten something he shouldn´t - or maybe just eaten too much!). And I let her tell me, since I´m not there to do the cleaning myself...
This time around, though, I have to say my cats are being taken care of better than ever.
My mother didn´t want to give up her status as "primary cat caretaker" while I´m away, but G. also spends many evenings in my house, listening to music, feeding the cats and keeping them company and trying to keep them from killing each other. And me, I´m really happy for the cats, now they don´t have to be alone all the time, and that makes me feel less guilty for leaving them.

I should have known better

2005-12-06T22:34:00.000+02:00

After 2 hours in rush-hour traffic, in the drizzling rain, I noticed that being out of the house wasn´t going to make me feel any better - on the contrary, I began to notice in myself all kinds of murderous feelings towards my fellow citizens; I felt like slapping all those stupid idiots talking about silly things on their mobile phones in the crowded bus, and I just didn´t want all those stinking humans so close to me... Because for some reason I just can´t understand, the city-buses, both here and in Helsinki, always smell of wet dogs (and I never liked any kind of dog smell - and I especially hate the smell of wet dogs!) when it´s raining outside.
Of course, I´d never actually go berserk and start hitting those smelling, babbling, irritating-looking commuters, but why on earth did I have to go out in the first place? [Probably because I´m an idiot]
I did buy some wine, though, and I did go to the grocery store. And yes, I even bought a book...
I try to stop buying so many things (- and "things" for me are mainly books and CD:s - I very seldom buy anything else, but that doesn´t help much since I buy an absolutely absurd amount of books and CD:s - every year...), but then I forget - or if I don´t forget, I just have a very short debate within my own head, and there´s always the argument "But what do I need that money for anyway? I might get killed by a bus - or stabbed by a crazy person [there are lots of them in the streets here in Sweden - and I suppose they have grown in numbers since they decided to close almost all the old mental hospitals, the ones where me and my student friends spent our summers working, in the early '80... but since then they have let the lunatics run free - because it´s cheaper... ] today or tomorrow, so why not allow myself to by that book/CD right now?" So I usually end up buying whichever book or CD I happen to be interested in. One good thing about being "child free" is that I can permit myself this little perversion, since I don´t need to think about leaving any inheritance to the next generation...

Around 17.20 I was at T-centralen, smack in the center of Stockholm, trying to get on a metro train, as was every other damned person in the whole city as well, it seemed...
I got off rhw at "Universitetet", with my heavy load of wine and groceries and books, and was happy to see that there was a bus supposed to come within 2 minutes, a bus that would take me almost to my (that is, Kjell´s) front door. But of course, this bus for some reason decided not to come - so instead I ended waiting 13 minutes in the rain - then taking another bus that left me a bit further from from home, and dragging all my stuff - uphill - for the last half kilometer or so.
When I got back I was angry, hungry, wet and tired.
And who can I blame? Who sent me out in that damned weather? Nobody! I thought I wanted to go.
Sometimes I´m just such an idiot.
[I should have known better...]
After dinner, a movie on DVD and half a bottle of wine I´m not angry or hungry or wet anymore - just tired...
Tomorrow just has to be a better day.

Restless

2005-12-06T16:01:00.000+02:00

Four degrees outside and continuous rain - another day without day-light - and a public holiday in Finland (and Spain, too... not that I think anybody reading this blog actually needs that information right now, but I felt like writing it anyway) which means that nobody in this house had any plans to work today. It seemed like the perfect setting for a "do-nothing"-day. And that was what I had sort-of planned. But now, a bit past 3 p.m, still in my night gown, and the rain still falling, I just have to admit that I can´t stand it any longer - I have to get out of the house, no matter what! I should know by now that I always get restless and irritated if I try to spend an entire day inside - even if it´s a day spent watching movies, listening to music, reading books or doing other fun things. Usually the restlessness sets in around 1.30 - 2 p.m., so today I have actually endured this "do-nothing"-state longer than normal. But now I really have to get myself going!
Got to find a bus that takes me into to the rainy city - I need to go and by milk, bread, wine - and maybe some books. And I want to sit down in a café or a bar - just to see people around me.
If I´d wanted to spend the whole day inside I might as well have stayed in Nykarleby.

Martha!

2005-12-06T01:49:00.000+02:00

Tonight I went to listen to the artist that has been following me in my car stereo, at home, in my radio programs - everywhere - for the last month and a half... Martha Wainwright! It was great...
Both Martha and the opening act, Teddy Thompson, seemd like really nice people. I´m glad I went there, but I´m just too tired to write anything more right now. I bought Teddy Thompson´s new record, and that might become a new favourite.

Dreams and other strange things

2005-12-04T08:57:00.000+02:00

I woke up a while ago, certain that I had heard a cat... But there are no cats in this house, so I must have been dreaming. I had a lot of strange dreams, now that I think of it, but they are quickly slipping away. Lately I´ve been thinking of starting a new "Dream Diary", like the one I had during my first year in Washington D.C. But I don´t know. It might get out of hand, because the more I pay attention to my dreams, the more dreams I usually remember, and the more dreams I remember, the more I have to write down, and if I get completely obsessed with my own dream world it will take so much of my time and energy that I won´t have time for a life... I might end up being this absolutely crazy old woman, living alone in her house, with her cats, never going out, since she´s constantly dreaming - or writing down her most recent dreams. In D.C., 1993-94, for a while I had a much more active "night life" than an actual "life". It´s scary reading, though, all those dreams are so filled with angst and fear and unhappiness. But I got over it, so it was probably good to write down all that shit to get it out of my system. Much later I decided to print out my "Dream World" - and it was hundreds of pages. I still have those pages in a box, somewhere.

I use my husband´s computer now, in his little 'home office'... a nice room, with a sea view. Everybody is still asleep, and the only reason I´m awake is that I had to get up to drink something hot, because for a week now I´ve had this stubborn cold that I don´t seem to get rid of. My punishment for smoking since summer, I suppose. It´s easy to stop now, though.

There are so many things to do in a big city so it´s hard to chose. Yesterday I didn´t chose - I just tagged along. We went to a German church in Gamla Stan to listen to 'Stockholms Gaykör'. It wasn´t too bad, but I had to struggle not to cough all the time - and the more I tried not to, the more I felt that tickling sensation in my throuth. My husband now says he wants to join the choir, but he´s afraid they wouldn´t let him, since he´s not gay. I said he should try anyway, I mean, at least he could become a honorary member, since in a way that choir is actually the reason why he is now living in Stockholm. I´m too tired to try to explain all the details, but it´s a case of one thing leading to another and somebody not wanting to go back to Finland just yet, and because of that I suddenly find myself living alone in my house with 4 cats, while my husband has settled down in a nice apartment in Stockholm - all because of the existence of 'Stockholms Gaykör'.
Sometimes life is just too weird.

Today I´m supposed to do some radio work. My 'partner in crime' when it comes to plane crashes is here, and we´ll try to record 3-4 more accident stories. Some people think this is absolutely crazy, to do radio pieces that tell about different accidents, how they happened, why they happened etc, but on the other hand, many people find it interesting too - even if they think it´s bizarre.

Coming out of the bubble

2005-12-03T15:00:00.000+02:00

There have been some (1, in the Swedish section ...) complaints concerning the update-rate of this blog... Well, what can I say? My strong feeling is that the (not-too-) anonymous person who is complaining hasn´t even got her own blog yet, so I´m not going to let her comment - intended to create feelings of guilt - influence me in any way... I´m not even sure I want to write anything in English today, let´s see.
I´m in Stockholm again, after a 5-6 week long absence. It´s been a strange time, and I´m not really sure which 'reality' I´ve been living in - the so called "real world" or my own invented universe. I didn´t get very far in my NaNo-writing project, but in my mind I´ve been inventing possible plots for a possible novel, or a possible life, all this month, so maybe that´s just my way of doing NaNo... I´ve been living in a strange "bubble" containing lots and lots of movies, considerable amonts of wine and beer, music, late late nights and the company of my cats - and other hairy creatures. In a way I´ve felt like shit, but at the same time it´s been a lot of fun... I´ve had a chance to get used to the fact that I actually do live alone - and it´s not the end of the world. Maybe I´ll be able to handle two parallell 'realities' from now on - one in Nykarleby (even without all the wine and all the movies...), and another in Stockholm, with my husband, who by the way asked me to include in this post that Bruce Springsteen´s "Born to run", from 1975, is the best rock album, ever! (Ok, now I´ve said it. But it´s his opinion, though...)
Now I´m off, otherwise I´ll be late for the Stockholm Gay Choir Christmas Concert.
More later.
Maybe.

Surprises

2005-11-18T11:57:00.000+02:00

It´s been almost 3 months since my husband moved out - and of course, I have had plenty of time to clean the house... But have I done it? Of course not! One reason being that I don´t mind if the house isn´t in perfect order (no, in fact, I can live in a chaos that most people wouldn´t be able to handle - this is nothing I´m especially proud of, it´s just how it is...), another reason being that I don´t like house cleaning. And I´m lazy.
Anyway, today I thought I´d make an effort - and it might have something to do with the fact that my husband comes home for his first visit tomorrow morning.
So, I start moving things around, not knowing where to start - gathering all kinds of random dirty summer clothes from the floor (won´t need them for the next 7 months or so...), doing the laundry, while listening to Kate Bush singing "washing mashiiiiiiin...", planning to put all CD:s in their right places, and finally deciding to attack a heap that has been sitting in front of the TV since the day my husband packed his things in the car and drove away... A many colored mix of clean, and possibly once used, bed linen; clean or possibly used towels, clean or possibly much used male clothing (I hate to try to find out the state of suspicious heaps of that kind... you never know what kind of surprise you will get if you just try to make an olfactory examination of the sheets/towels/Tshirts/underwear/socks), all mixed with books in different languages and newspapers from the end of August - this year (to be specific)
I think I should have gotten suspicious when the heap felt a bit damp. But bravely I stuck my nose into one of the probably clean towels - and I almost fainted!
To make a long story short - the whole damned heap was drenched in (you guessed it, didn´t you?) - cat pee.
How come I haven´t noticed before?
(do I need to see a doctor about my nose, since I have such a high tolerance for living among cat pee - for months, probably - without noticing?)
(to be contiuned - have to sort this thing out NOW!)
"Washing mashiiiin.... washing mashiiiiiiiin"

Cat Therapy (not-yet-registered trade mark)

2005-11-12T15:33:00.000+02:00

At 3 a.m this morning I found myself eagerly planning some world-wide project to make this planet a better place... Something including cats...
It started with an idea: "Cats instead of Prozac", or something like that. (Why do all the good ideas come to mind when you are just a little bit too tired/drunk to have a chance to remember it all the next day?! I´ll try to reconstruct these plans anyway...)

It´s not the first time somebody gets the idea to use my cats as a mental health promoting device - or as part of a personalized November Depression Prevention Program (NDPP).
It´s difficullt to feel really shitty if you sit by the fire with a nice purring cat in your lap - and my cats can do that for several hours (purr in your lap - not feel shitty...) I´ve been using them for years, and now the word is out, so I was first thinking of something like "Rent-a-cat"-business, but why not go further? How about an entire "Cat Therapy Center"? It should be located in a huge old house, with lots of cats, where you can stay in a comfortable room, with a fire place, if you like that, or with a widescreen TV/DVD-player if that´s your preferred method of escaping reality. Then of course there would be coffee, tea, good (not-too-healthy) food, wine and beer and other refreshments... Different kinds of music would be offered, some bathtubs, and an old fashioned sauna. But the main "treatment" in this place would to spend time with the cats...

It started as a half drunken joke, but the more I think about it, the more it sounds like something this world really needs. My job in this Therapy Center would be to choose, and take care of, the cats - and to empty the multiple kitty litterboxes, of course.
Then I´d hire other people to do all the administrative work. Understandably, treatment at this place would be expensive... (I mean, if you really want to invest in your mental wellbeing, you have to pay for it, right?) Those people most in need of long term Cat Therapy-treatment, they are the ones that work so hard that money is no problem.
But, there would be other (non-profit) branches of this "Cat Therapy Concept" - children´s groups could stay with the cats for free, and groups of cats could be permanently relocated to homes for the elderly.

I do believe in this concept. I mean, if people are willing to swim with dolphins or whales (or whatever... sharks?) in order to feel better about themselves, why wouldn´t they be willing to pay to spend time with some wonderful, furry cats?

And no, in case somebody wondered, I do not NaN0... Instead I´m busy developing my personal NDPP (November Depression Prevention Program) . It includes watching lots of movies, reading books, listening to just the right music, drinking moderate amounts of red wine or beer, and a lot of time spent in good company, talking about important things in many different languages. And most important of all, the company of cats!
This could actually be a separate branch of the CTC (Cat Therapy Concept), helping people find their own personalized NDPP. For a fee, of course!

Now it´s time for today´s first movie. Got to go! Stay tuned for updates.

[And now I feel bad for making it sound as if I´d have made up this potentially life-changing concept all by myself, when in fact at least half of the inspiration comes from G., who has been receiving Cat Therapy Treatment now and then for the last two months, and who might open the first Cat Therapy Center in France - some time in the future...]

Nanowrimo?

2005-10-31T00:52:00.000+02:00

While I was away my mother didn´t quite manage to stop the feline pus from pouring out of the side of Svarti . It could have something to do with my mother being old and refusing to use glasses - I´ve noticed she doesn´t want to use them, but she can´t see very well close up... She´s probably just put the antiseptic liquid on any kind of rag, and then she has been dabbing the cat on some random point on his side. No wonder he´s not cured yet. He complains when I touch his most tender - pus-filled - areas, but he doesn´t seem to suffer all that much. Must see if I can get a veterinarian to look at his "holes"...
The litterbox was very clean when I got back from Sweden, though. Wonder why? Maybe my mother has emptied it...

Today is the last day for me to not make up my mind about NaNoWriMo. It would be fun. But... on the other hand, I have so much to do! So many things that I´ve left waiting for a more convenient time - for months!
And if I do it - in what language should I write? (And why?)
So many decisions - I just can´t handle them right now...

Today´s good news is that the old pub in town has a new name, and a new owner. It´s now called "Pedros Pub", and it´s a much nicer place than it used to be. Pedro is a guy from Tenerife who is living with a woman from here. She met him on her first charter trip ever, when he was working in the first bar she went into, on her first night in Puerto de la Cruz. And now he has been living here for almost 3 years. Yesterday he opened"Pedros Pub".
Since today was a really grey and boring Sunday, I ended up spending several hours in Pedro´s pub, with M. and my young french friend...
There are worse ways to waste your time. My cats were angry with me when I finally got home, and now they are already sleeping in my bed.
[yes? no? yes? no? -- I´m still doubting about this NaNoWriMo-thing...]

Hole in the black cat

2005-10-18T17:12:00.000+03:00

I´m back in Stockholm - after only5 days at home... It´s colder now, but still sunny, and we still have no internet at home, and if I keep using this particular Seven/Eleven, where I can use the computer for 1 hour for 19 SEK (2 €) I´ll end up crazy, or maybe I´ll start liking this loud hip hop music they play here ALL THE TIME... Maybe that´s why there´s always a free screen here.
While I was at home I had to take care of not only the kitty litterbox, but I had to take care of Svarti who had a nasty looking "hole" in his side. I think he had some minor wound there already a few weeks ago, but when I got home he was really sick, didn´t eat, and when I touched his right side he complained and tried to bite me - and I noticed a big swollen area. He got worse, and on Saturday I tried desperately to get hold of a veterinarian - but I only reached a bunch of answering machines, directing me to yet anoyter veterinarian... While I was working the phone the cat himslef had taken action - he had been licking the swollen part with his little tongue until the skin broke, and all kinds of nastylooking gunk started to pour out of his side - but all this made him feel better immediately, he got up, asked for food, and looked relieved. At that point I managed to reach one of the veterinarians, on her private phone, and she told me to go and buy some stuff and clean the wound, and try to keep the "hole" open during as many days as possible so that it would cure properly. So now I´ve left my mother not only in charge of the feeding, the litterbox cleaning but also the cleaning of the hole in the side of the cat...

Boiling head

2005-10-14T01:18:00.000+03:00

It´s past 1 A.M, and I should be in bed - but I am not.
I´m back in "happy town" - though I never thought this town was that happy... Anyway, the "happy town" title was awarded to this place before I moved back, so I have probably managed to alter that supposed state of bliss by my grumpy existence.

It´s getting colder, so it seems like our climate is back to "normal" (hey?! why change now? I was getting used to this nice weather! Now I feel cheated...). The cats have noticed it too - they no longer try to sneak out when I come home late, they just sit and wait for me to come home so they can jump into my bed... Sure, I like having them near - but in my face? And tonight I woke up at arond 4, certain that I had some serious disease - my head was boiling, I thought I was about to die. But I was wrong. The problem was easily solved - I only had to remove Liffi, who had draped himself around my head - no wonder I had weird dreams...

And now that the cats prefer to spend time inside, the turds are alreadey visible in the litterbox... I somehow think they will go away, by magic - or by themselves - but I suppose I just have to learn to live with this sad fact: I live alone - and if I don´t remove the shit, nobody else will...

Stockholm was nice. Me in Stockholm wasn´t all that nice. I have to find a way to handle this double existence. Why do I have to go through hell every time there is a change in my life? Why can´t I be one of those people who can ajust to any kind of situation, in no time, and then go on with their lives as if nothing ever happened? But me, I´m not like that. Instead I sit here, once again, wondering what the hell I should do with my life. Sort of pathetic, isn´t it?

Saw a documentary about female suicide bombers late tonight. Scary. That´s one career I´d never consider. I mean, at least I know I don´t want to blow myself to pieces...
But now I have to sleep. I´ll soon have to get some pills to keep my excessive grumpiness away - otherwise I might plunge into a seasonal depression, and I don´t have time to be depressed now, with all my planned trips to Stockholm, Åbo, Tallinn, Madrid etc.
Sleep deprivaticon doesn´t exactly make me less grumpy, though.
Good night.

Thanks for screwing up our climate

2005-10-09T18:38:00.000+03:00

I think I should send a "thank you"-note to George W. for screwing up the the climatological system of our planet, because we have just had the most incredibly warm and nice autumn month in Scandinavia. I´m in Stockholm now, and it´s October 9th, and a little while ago I was sitting outside, sipping (overpriced) white wine... in October!!?
Don´t get me wrong, I´m not complaining - I love it!! But it´s not normal... Something strange is going on, and I can´t say I´m all against it...
I saw my friend Ana today, and last time I was here, over a month ago, we were having lunch outside, "enjoying the last days of summer", as we thought... Well, we did the same thing today, had sat outside, still "enjoying the last warm day of the year". It´s so nice - but so weird!

I´m writing this from my husband´s office - because he still has no internet at home... (how can he do this to me?!). And since I happen to be an internet-addict, I just had to drag myself over here... But now he wants to leave, so I´ll have to do the same.

I try to get my husband to adopt a few cats. He is very reluctant.
We´ll see....

The week of the Crash

2005-10-02T21:18:00.000+03:00

This week has been so exhausting I almost feel I´ve crashed. It could be it all started on Tuesday when we saw "Crash" - but it could have started to happen even before "Crash"... Anyway, as I already wrote, Nissan P. got stolen - and found! It had been abandoned on a school yard the morning after it was stolen, and only slightly wrecked... (I know I don´t own that car anymore, but I still care ;-) I mean, I had it for a long time, and now that it´s ventured out into the world on its own, it seems to be getting itself into trouble... isn´t it normal for me to be worried?)

During the week I kept working too many hours every day - mostly because I wasted so much time on weird things - like reading blogs [but there´s some good news here: I´m beginning to get bored by all those blogs now , so maybe it´t time to find some other way to waste my time... ]. I also kept drinking wine until too late in the night with the other "left behind wife" in the neighbourhood - but not too many nights this week, now that I think of it...
On Thursday night, when I finally got my shit, and this week´s program, together and was driving through a deserted town [rather erratically, I fear, since I was putting on my seatbelt and trying to find a CD at the same time as I tried to keep the wheel steady...], I didn´t get more than a few blocks closer to home before I saw flashing blue lights behind me - and having the movie "Crash" in fresh memory, I quickly pulled over so they wouldn´t feel obliged to shoot me or something... Not that I believe that the Finnish Police would do such a thing, but on the other hand, why risk it? Maybe I looked like somebody who could have been on her way to steal another Nissan...
Two men came over and asked me where I was going.
"Home from work", I said - truthfully.
"And what kind of work is that?!" one of them asked.
And of course it was an absolutely valid question at 1.15 A.M in a smalltown, now that I think of it. But for some reason I felt guilty, and started to explain all kinds of things...
"Ok, ok, but would you please blow into this tube..." they said, wanting to find out if I had been drinking.
I had not. And they wished me a nice ride home, or whatever. I don´t really remember. But it´s weird that I actually felt frightened for a few moments there, when I saw the blue lights flashing, and I realized they were chasing me (not too hard to understand, since there was nobody else in the streets at that late hour, a normal lousy Thrusday...)
At some point, during this exhausting, but not at all boring, week the CD/DVD at home decided to crash. Or at least it stopped functioning. Now there´s one more thing on my 3 km long "to do"-list that needs to be taken care of - and quickly, because now that I have the house all to myself, I mostly spend my time upstairs, at the computer - and I could, in theory, chose exactly the music I want to listen to at any given moment, since nobody´s "interfering"... But still I can´t! Or at least my election is extremely limited - I can listen to the radio, or to my old vinyls... (and for how many days am I supposed to endure that?) Shit. I really hate it when these super complicated appliances start behaving strangely, because my experience, so far, is you never get it fixed properly. At lesst that´s what has happened to all the other systems we´ve experienced so far, since we live in this house. I don´t know what to believe... Do we just have an incredible bad luck, and we just happen to buy music systems that are crap? Or is there nothing else on sale out there...? I mean, how would I know?
Anyway - I just hate it! Because I have no clue what to do to fix it, and I hate even the thought of having to disconnect all those cables and things from that box and take it somewhere to be fixed (that is, probably not fixed...) In case you ask why I get so upset by this.... well - because it´s so fucking frustrating not to be able to listen to music, that´s why. And no, I can´t listen downstairs all the time, since the computer is here. And I just don´t need another thing to take care of right now...
On Friday I did something that was really quite a sacrifice for me... But maybe I did it because I´m just too kind? Of course, nobody would think fo me as "kind"- it sort of goes against my image... ;-)
Anyway - this Melodirazzian thing on Friday was actually so weird it was fun - in it´s own perverse way. But the person (J.) who was the reason me and the other "abandoned housewife" went to this strange event in the first place, ended up as the biggest loser of all participants in this song writing competition. [I´d almost consider that a good thing, though...]
On Saturday it was all work until 4 P.M - but after that both the song writer and me went to a party - that lasted longer than a normal work day...
Which is why I´m exhausted right now, after a shorter work day, but still too little sleep, too much to do - and for the second time in a month I woke up to find only sour milk in the fridge. That´s just so frustrating!!
And the cats? Well - no more shitting in the closet, at least. And Liffi has accepted me as his primary caretaker, it seems, which means I often wake up too early, thinking my head is about to reach the boiling point... That cat is incredibly warm when he drapes his little body around the top of my head.
What else have I done?
I´ve applied for a job that I have very few chances of getting.
I´ve spoken for a long time with Nines, who was "al borde de un ataque de nervios". I´ve never heard her that upset and angry and tired, and - maybe "disillusioned" is the right word here?
I´ve also tried to speak French - without much success, I fear, since my old French knowledge is so mixed up with my Spanish...
I´ve actually been enjoying myself a lot. But...
I still have problems handling this "left behind"-existence, that has been my life for the last month. On Wednesday I go to Stockholm for a week - something I´m really looking forward to - but I have to admit that this whole situation is exhausting, somehow. I have to think forward, make plans many weeks in advance, try to be extra efficient in what I do in order to be able to take a week off... I´m not used to it, and it´s getting at me now.
Have to wash some clothes now, so they will be dry by Wednesday. Have to buy cans of cat food that will last for 8 days. Have to get my prescription medicines renewed before I go... etc etc.
[shit. I´m falling asleep as I write...]

Mini-Update

2005-09-28T01:45:00.000+03:00

I should be sleeping by now, but I´ll stay awake 10 minutes more and write a mini-update....

I think the cats really wanted to tell me something important when they decided to shit in the place where I store (among other useless things...) tons of old newspapers and magazines, because that got me started, and during the last week I have gotten rid of almost all the newspapers... (even the non-shitty ones). I can´t believe this! For years I thougt I just had to keep them, just in case... I mean, maybe I would later want to try to find that interesting article I read sometime in the summer of 1998, but forgot to rip out of the paper at the moment. But now they are gone - most of them, and I haven´t had any serious problems with separataion anxiety. At least not yet. So I think I can live without them... It´s actually so much fun getting rid of newspapers, that I can hardly wait for the postman to bring me new papers every day so I can get rid of them right away.

The cat´s have been behaving perfectly since I understood what they were trying to tell me. Today they were a little annoyed, though, since I left them alone for such a long time - but I was busy improving my French and taking my new young friend G. to the movies to see "Crash". A bit confusing to speak Spanish and listen to French before going to watch a movie in American English, with subtitles in Swedish and Finnish.... S. joines us for a beer after the movie (she is the new caretaker of Nissan Pissan), and then we switched to English.
When I got home I had a message form S. on my phone telling me the car (NP) was stolen (!!!) Un-fucking-believable!! I mean, if you really want to commit a crime and steal a car, why not steal a better one, once you´re at it?
[Stay tuned for more updates later]

"Number two" - lots of it!

2005-09-21T01:09:00.000+03:00

[I can´t believe I forgot to write this... ]
I now know the reason why there has been so little action - and no scooping needed - in the litter box. (And I wish I didn´t know...)

I made a promise to myself the other day, I decided to start throwing away old newspapers, not all of them at once, because that would take forever, but minor amounts, like 200 papers a day or something. So, I went to the storage place where all the papers have been piling up since we moved here (8 years ago...), and I noticed a strange smell - not urine this time, but it smelled like shit!!
And it was. (No, you don´t want to hear the details!) I feel so silly for anxioulsy looking for "number 1" the other day - while the cats were busy producing several loads of "number 2" just behind my back. The good news is, some of it was dry by now. The bad news is, all of it wasn´t...
I think Liffi is the guilty one... I´m almost certain this is his way of telling me that he i not happy with Kjell being away - so I can probably look forward to having him shit all over the place for the next three years.
[But, let´s not fall into despair - I must try to have a positive outlook on things - so... let´s see now...]
Except for having to solve the cat shit problem and remove the damned turds, I had quite a nice day... I interviewed a couple of old class mates, and it was actually quite fun - and for once I didn´t spend too much time trying to find cheap flights to Stockholm. But of course it´s only a matter of time before I will hate this town again.

But I managed to get out quite a few old newspapers. All the soiled ones, and then some.

In case you wondered...

2005-09-21T00:22:00.000+03:00

... if I´m absolutely nuts, I can tell you right away, that YES, I probably am...
But at least I don´t feel so lonely in my craziness today, since my one eager reader sent me a couple of interesting links (that I feel compelled to share wiht any lost soul that might have ended up reading this cat pee-reeking blog)
and these links prove that we are not alone, Rebecca and I...
http://www.slate.com/id/2102390/
http://www.slate.com/id/2126249/

Cat pee is no joke, peeing in the wrong place could prove fatal - for the cat...

Really Old Litter

2005-09-19T13:06:00.000+03:00

I know I´m not updating this blog very often, but I have some very good reasons/excuses; some of them are: work, parties, books, friends and - of course - cat feeding... It´s hard work being the single care taker of Liffi, Svarti, Frissi and Otto - I just can´t believe how much they eat! But no, there´s nothing interesting to report about the litterbox. (Sorry!), they all do their things outside still, since it´s not that cold yet. But wait until we get below-zero temperatures...

Yesterday I got paranoid, and thought I smelled cat pee through the half open door of one of my messy closets... I was probably influenced by stories I´ve heard recently about a geriatric cat that pees all over the place, plus, at some point (years ago) the cats had been using that same closet as a kitty litterbox, so I stuck my head in, and tried to determine if there was a faint smell of cat pee or not. I´m still not sure. But, I got other things to think of, since this very closet is the one where I store about half of all my old diaries and writing books... (so I got really upset thinking about what cat pee could have done to all my old documents... which, of course, I can´t even imagine throwing away! Neurotic, I know - but I think I can handle it...). The other half is in a bag that weighs about 1000 kilos - or at least that´s how it feels every time I have to move it around to get to something stored behind it.

Anyway, when I had convinced myself that there was no (fresh) cat pee anywhere near that closet, which also contains clothes that I will probably never use again, since I can´t get into them - but that I have been to lazy to sort through... I mean, among all those too-small items of clothing there might be something I can still use, that´s why I can´t just pack it all into a huge box and carry it to some second hand store, or to the "recycling station" - which seems to be the most recent word for "dump"... So when I stopped looking for cat pee, and was about to put all those messy things back inside, I decided that I might as well try to put order into some part of my life - and since my "now" is quite chaotic, why not start with the past? My plan was to just put my old diaries and other personal writings in chronological order - starting from my first diary from the summer when I was 11 (- which must have been 1970...) The problem was, in order to determine which decade, and which year, a certain book belonged to, I had to open it and read a little - which got me stuck with a bunch of diaries, all from somewhere between 1978 and 1990...
OK, I know that many people think that the smartest thing would be to make a fire and burn all those old things from the past, but on the ohter hand... why would I? Even though it´s painfull to read, It´s fun as well (sort of...)
Im just very gratefull blogging wasn´t invented in, say 1972, because then I would probably have written all that´s now in my diaries in a blog, and how embarrassing would that have been!? I mean, it´s bad enough to notice what an incredible amount of time, energy and paper I have wasted on documenting what certain male persons (that I have had seriuos crushes on, evidently...) have said and done - or not done - over the years. (Why the hell was I wasting my youth in that stupid way?!) And it didn´t get any better once I got over the stage of one-way crushes, oh no! Once I got a boyfriend, I keept on documenting every word, every kiss, every... well you know. (Why?! Why couldn´t I just enjoy it?! I seemed to think that if I didn´t write down as much as I could, it wouldn´t have happened - and I would forget... Which I sure had! But now that I read some of the more revealing diaries from my years as a teenager, I almost wish I hadn´t been writing things down in such detail. Things that I really had forgotten came back to me - and do I really need that?).
So, anyway, I didn´t find any cat pee in my closet - but I got stuck in some other kind of shit. Right now I´m trying to get through the autumn of 1979... ( what a fucked-up year that seems to have been!).

[By the way, what I thought was the smell of cat urine could have been the smell of some half rotten basil that I had forgotten to throw away... at least that smell disappeared when I got rid of the old basil...]

Ok then....

2005-09-14T09:33:00.000+03:00

Since the only reader of this blog craves cat pee - here comes: cat pee, cat pee, cat pee - but (un)fortunately there´s nothing else to tell about that right now. All my 4 cats behave well, they go out in the morning, sit down in front of the door, get that glazed over look in their eyes - and pee! They do it outside, as cats are supposed to do... Not much more I can say about that. Then they run around doing cat things until they come in again - but the litter box looks like virgin snow (I found that white stuff that doesn´t stink...) - not one turd handle, so what am I supposed to do?! Invent kitty litter stories...? [Hey, I happen to know someone who really has stories to tell in that area... maybe I can make her take over this blog during some time...]

[And about deleted comments - ever heard of spam...? That´s where I draw the line! I hate spam, I hate spam, I hate spam! (got it? I hate spam!) People who send out that kind of shit should be condemned to swim in cat pee forever and ever...]

I probably shouldn´t be writing this...

2005-09-14T02:21:00.000+03:00

It´s way past 2 a.m., almost 3, I notice now, and so called "normal" people should be sound asleep at this time of the night... But I´m not normal, and I just came home, after having emptied almost an entier bottle of red wine with the lady down the street. What?! Anybody has a problem with that? Shouldn´t a couple of left behind wives be allowed to celebrate that it is (was) September 13th? Which also happened to be the other left behind wife´s wedding aniversary (among other things worth celebrating). The simple fact that we had no men present wouldn´t keep us from having fun, would it?

My husband called around midnight to tell me how nice it was so to come home after several days of hard work and find somebody waiting there... (Obviously that other person was not me, since I´m here, and not there - so if you happened to read this, and actually know me, now you got something to think about --- "Oh, are they really separating? Is that why he left...?", "Is he living with someone else already...?", "Well, considering her cooking and her housekeeping skills, no wonder..." --- You were thinking that, weren´t you?)
Maybe I should should hope that the Swedish Feminist Party eventually will be successfull in abolishing marriage as we know it (which is one of their main goals...), which would allow multiple persons of one or several genders to register some sort of "living together agreement", and in that case El Trio Infernal could also have an official status - at least in Sweden. But I can think of at least one person who might have some objections to that Trio-arrangement- or, thinking about it, why stop with a Trio? We could add more people as they happen to come in our way... ;-)
No, I´m not completely serious - but I´m not only joking either... I mean, if we live only once (which seems quite likely, if you ask me...) shouldn´t we try to spend as much time as possible with people we really like, instead of having to endure people you can barely stand...or at least are indifferent to? And why not then live close to each ohter, or even share a home? I´ve never been very convinced that the nuclear family-model would be the only possible way to arrange your life , anyway...
But, as I said, I´ve been drinkin red wine on a Tuesday evening (- oh, thinking about it, it was martes y trece when we started... that´s supposedly not a good time to do anything...), and I´m very, very tired, so never mind what I say, I probably won´t remeber I wrote it in the morning. But it seems like my being alone in this piece of shit town for too many days or weeks in a row might (just might!) be a bit hazardous to my liver...

So, what did we talk about while attacking that bottle of red wine?!
Hmmm... Do you really think I´m drunk enough to write that in a blog??! Dream on.

Taking care of myself - my way...

2005-09-13T21:39:00.000+03:00

After being home alone "for real" almost a week I notice I have to make a serious effort not to let this place become what could best be described as a bachelor´s den... I just let the dirty dishes pile up, I mean, what´s the use of putting them inside the dish washer just yet, since what I prepare in the kitchen is basically coffee, it will take ten days before I have full load of cups... This is not to be taken as an indication that I don´t eat - because I do! I just don´t prepare food at home... What´s wrong with sandwiches and beer? Or frozen pizzas, if I happen to need a change. I´ve been thinking of doing something about my uselsessness in the kitchen, but so far I haven´t done much about it. Why can´t human food come in easily served 12-pack envelopes, as the "special treat" cat food I sometimes buy to bribe "Liffi" - who otherwise ignores me completely; he kind of blames me for Kjell´s absence, stupid cat...
Ok, time to grab a beer an watch the sports news (no, just kidding!) - the beer part is true, though, and I´d like to watch some TV - if I just manage to figure out which one of all the damned remote controls that my husband has left behind that will actually have something to do with the television...
Oh, and I haven´t even mentioned my collection of old newspapers that date back to --- before September 11- yes, 2001... I mean, there might be something interesting in one of those old papers that I would like to read, say in the year 2013, if I´m still alive by then...
Got to go and feed my furry friends - otherwise they might apply for jobs in Sweden and abandon me....

Selling it...

2005-09-11T15:44:00.000+03:00

As I might have told before in this kittylitter related blog, I will get rid of Nissan Pissan - and if all goes well, I´m "selling" it today. My goal is to get rid of it, so I won´t have to pay insurance, maintenance, tax etc. Not to mention gas! Of course, I now realize I really should have it airlifted to D.C, so Rebecca could have car matching her house, but I´m afraid I won´t be able to do that... (sorry!)

Tonight I had a "3-cats-experience", that is, I had three different furry creatures trying to grab as much space as they could in the now quite big bed. The most faithful one is Svarti, he is always sleeping with his little head on my pillow, and only now and then does he get the urge to jump on my chest so I wake up in the middle of the night thinking I´m having a heart attack. It´s a small nuisance, considering...

But now I have to go and clean out Nissan P., since it´s so full of ... stuff! Old newspapers, CD:s, books, broken umbrellas, empty boxes, bottles with unidentified liquids (no, it´s not cat pee!), blankets, from last winter, maps from 1996 (when we bought it...), not to mention the bottle I´m going to throw in for free, if this potenial byer actually drives away with the car - the "anti-odour" spray that halfheartedly disguises the smell of cat pee...

Stockholm, here we come!

2005-08-31T00:13:00.000+03:00

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

2005-08-24T09:22:00.000+03:00

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!

2005-08-12T12:11:00.000+03:00

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...]

Time off from this blog

2005-07-29T10:09:00.000+03:00

Uh-oh, I haven´t been dedicating much time to this blog lately... Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Rebecca, my one and only regular reader, is off on some wild two-months long adventure in South America - and I just assume she wont´t be rushing to the nearest internet café every few hours just to know if I have finally cleaned out my kitty litterbox or not... And since she wont´t be cheking in on this blog every hour (nor sending me guilt provoking e-mails asking for updates...) I have now been taking some guilt free time off from this blog...

But on the other hand, I feel I have the obligation to report that at this moment I have two extra cats in my house - but on the other hand, one husband is missing. No, in case you thought I had traded him in for a couple of cats, you´re WRONG... (but knowing me, maybe that´s exactly what your first thoughts would be?). These two cats belong to Jonas, and they have been spending time in my house every now and then since they were little, so even Liffi, the grumpiest of my own cats, just tells the visitors in plain cat language that he does not like more cat company in the house, then he mainly ignores them - he doesn´t even pick a fight...

The big one of the visiting cats, also named Otto, but I call him "Ludensvans", so I won´t make our Otto confused - has a very annoying habit... When the door is open, and he´s running around outside, chasing birds, trying to get on the nerves of the resident cats, or just doing other random cat things, he allways goes inside to use the litter box! Why can´t he take a crap in the neigbour´s garden, as my cats do?! I have a feeling he saves himself all day, so when I come home he rushes in and goes straight to the box. And this cat is a real shit producer... He eats like a pony - and shits like a horse. So, sooner than I thought, I might reluctantly have to clean out the litterbox...

Tonight I´m going to a highschool reunion... None of my few friends from that time will be there, so I might be in for a looooong and boooooring evening. But in case it gets unbearable I can always claim I have some cat feeding to do at home, and then leave the place with some kind of dignity. [To claim illness or invent some other bad excuse would be too obvious, but nobody is going to doubt it if I leave because of the cats... ]

Home alone with the cats - and Pissan

2005-07-16T10:15:00.000+03:00

Now I´m stuck at home with my four cats, and our Nissan-Pissan - not that I think it smells anymore, but who knows...
Kjell just took the other car and left for a wedding, 500 kilometers away from here - I could not go, too much valuable work time (not to mention blog time...) would have been lost. And I´m too exhausted right now to even think of a long car ride - and besides, for some strange reason we often manage to start a fight just before we go on a road trip - don´t ask me why, but it´s a minor family tradition by now...
I think I have to go to the supermarket to get some expensive cat food - Frissi, the furry one took a bird again yesterday, I take that as a way of complaining abuot what I´m giving him... The funny thing about Frissi is that normally he´s the clumsiest of all our cats - I´ve seen him fall down from chairs, tables and other pieces of furniture when he has made unsuccessful attempt to get his furry ass on top of them. Frissi really likes to put furry parts of his body on the table while we are having breakfast... he knows that if he keeps insisting long enough, one human or other will throw him some nice human food... he starts with a paw - then he puts his pretty little head, on the table, lookin in the eyes of the nearest human, trying to get a non-verbal message through... "I´m staaaaaarving!" he says with his eyes - and mouth...
Got to go! Don´t know what they will do if I don´t feed them properly.

My week (an update...)

2005-07-14T23:59:00.000+03:00

OK, so I haven´t been writing much lately. But considering the week I have had to endure - for being stupid enough to promise to do something I should have known from the start would fuck up my summer - I should consider myself lucky to be alive. Since I fear I might go crazy if I don´t slow down a bit, I now sit down to write my weekly kitty update, or whatever-update, with a glass of white wine by my side, and a snoring husband a few steps away... HE is enjoying his (paid!) 27 weeks vacation (or 9, or whatever...) to the fullest, goes from one garden party to the next, sitting up until 3 or 4 in the morning - because HE doesn´t have to think about work... And all this is just FINE - I wouldn´t mind one bit - if I could just do the same! Imagine how much I hated all those happy, free paid-vacationers partying down the street at my friend Majvor´s house, when I had to drag myself away from the party, with the intention to go to bed early to be able to put in my 12 hour workday?
And I should mention that I have been to a few parties myself - oh yes! But at this age it isn´t too easy to try to combine heavy working with parties 6 days a week... Nowadays, to do that, some things have to wait until later. Like - my blogs. [Now one of my Spanish readers is getting restless too... Mierda! I´ve gotten myself into el infierno de los blogs... As if I needed another thing to feel guilty about at this point in my life! It has gotten completely out of control -- I think I´ll start a Portugues-language blog, and I wont tell ANYBODY, I´ll write once every few months, and nobody will be angry with me... ] But don´t think I have been completely off line for not updating my blogs - oh no! I´ve been wasting nauseating amounts of valuable work time reading other people´s blogs - and I have even managed to identify one of the bloggers as a guy I once had in a radio piece 5 years ago... But I won´t tell him I´m checking his blog every day - and getting irritated because he hasn´t written since last week. I´d feel embarrassed if he´d know that I know a lot about his romantic adventure abroad....
But let´s see now, how many parties have I actually attended since last week?
On Friday we had guests coming to our new "Kulturstugan" - I stayed up with them until 4 a.m.
Saturday - guests arrived at our house around noon, and then it was fiesta continua until 1 a.m.
Sunday was the hottest day of the year - and I spent the hottest hours of that hot day watching childrens´ theater, in the sun, with my guests, my nephew and my mohter... In the evening, there was a garden party down the street... planned to go home early - got home by 1 a.m
Monday I was probably more dead than alive - can´t even remember what I did that day - except that I worked, of course!
Tuesday - birthday party on an island off Jakobstad. One of my old friends turned 50. I didn´t actually have the time to go there, but I went anyway. It was fun - but I didn´t manage to put in my required 12 hours of work, since the boat for Masskär left at 4.30 p.m (and I have never, or at least not since I was a flight attendant, managed to get to work at 4.30 a.m....)
Wednesday - got to work around 11, I think, with just a slight hang over. The computer crashed just when I was about to save what I had been working on for the last 4 hours... Fucking great!! I allowed myself a minor (10 minutes...) nervous breakdown, kicking, screaming, crying, chain-smoking 2 cigarrettes in a row - and then I started over. Got home around midnight to find a party going on in our garden. Kjell had dinner guests. Joined the party until 2 a.m
Thursday - since the radio program that was going on air tonight, was NOT ready, I had to get in "early" - that is 10.30 a.m. By then my dear husband was barely awake - since he is on vacation, dammit! (I want a loooong paid vacation too!!!). I was done around 3 p.m - with plenty of time to spare... but usually I try to get my stuff ready the night before, so I won´t get dead-line angst. I didn´t have time for any angst today, though...
Punished myself by riding my bicyle home. Bad idea! I had terrible sidewinds and headwinds the whole 21 kilometers. [As if I wasn´t exhausted enough before that...]
Tomorrow is probably a new day. I should go to a wedding on Saturday, 500 km from here. Kjell will have to go alone. I´ll close my door, unplug my computer, and just stay in bed for the whole weekend. Or if not, I´ll work. One more La Palma-program to go...
No, I´m not even going to mention the litter box - I´ll empty it when the first snow falls, or by christmas, whichever comes first.
I´m going to go downstairs to give the cats 1 chance to spend the night inside, and then I´m off to bed.

Paying the price

2005-07-07T01:36:00.000+03:00

One good thing about having a Nissan-Pissan is that I am much more inclined to take my bicycle to work, instead of driving that supposedly still smelly car... This is probably good for me, I mean, I´m not the person who usually gets a lot of exercise - but it also means that I get to see more roadkill than I would care for - but so far I haven´t produced any major roadkill myself... One tiny bird with short legs and underdeveloped wings almost got in my way today, but that´s all - unless you count all kinds of flying insects trying to enter my mouth, my nose, my eyes etc. Halfway to Jakobstad my face usually feels the way Nissan-Pissan´s windshield looks... I had a close encounter with a huge bee (i think) but it didn´t get into my eye thanks to my sunglasses.

Just now it´s a bad week for blogging... I have had to endure 11-12 hour workdays as a "punishment" for having spent way too many hours on the blogs during the last month or so... Partly this is Rebecca´s fault (and she knows it... having been the star in my radio piece on blogging and all...;-) - and also, she was the one who insisted that I start my own blog... Which I did. And now I have to pay the price... And yes, I do like to blame others for my own laziness and unability to get started in time...) - but I´m still waiting for her blog to appear...

Of course, as a freelance I have only one person to blame for my current situation, and that´s me - a fact that doesn´t exactly cheer me up :-/

Two or three more weeks of heavy work, then I´ll finally be able to take som time off - and at that point I might even consider cleaning out the kitty litterbox... (for now, it´s very far down on my "to do"-list)

But at least tonight I got 3 out of 4 cats to come in for the night... (I try to practice some positive thinking here...)

Stupid macho birds

2005-07-04T11:38:00.000+03:00

There hasn´t been much going on in the cats´ lives lately - they just hang around, sleep, eat, sleep in my lap when I want to read the morning paper - eat some more, and every once in a while one of them try to cheer me up with a dead bird ;-/
Otto was on his way to the kitchen with a little yellow bird in his mouth yesterday... I hate it when they bring dead pieces of "nature" into my home!!! I have said it before, but it´s worth repeating... I don´t like to have dead mice, birds, small rats or other rodents inside my house!! hy can´t they stick to spiders, mosquitoes and flies?

And talking about dead birds...
Yesterday I was once again so stressed out that I had to take my bicycle to Jakobstad to - this time it took me only 1 hour and 5 minutes...
But what´s wrong with the big birds that lie dead by the road? I mean, they do have wings, right? Why the hell do they sit there waiting for the car to come so close that when they finally, lazily, try to get their fat bird-asses moving, they just don´t manage to get high enough - so they smash into car ... Usuallay they are crows, or something similar - black-grey in colour, big as an average size cat, and they take off like an old tired B52, or something... I saw two smashed black birds, and 3 other big birds, that looked like they had once been seagulls... The seagulls are a little bit faster when they take off, they look like they´d have a better chance of surviving, but still they seem to wait too long... Idiot birds!!

Mostly when I drive I can see a group of birds, from far away, they sit on the road, probably eating some other dead animal. So if I see them, they should see me, I think... But they just sit there. But could it be that they have some crazy macho thing going on -- The biggest and meanest bird says something like "Ok, the first bird to fly away is a sissy..." And then they just sit there - waiting for the car to come closer and closer, and as a consequence I have to endure the sight of more roadkill than I´d care for on this realatively short trip...

Suppose this thing will eventually turn all surviving birds into sissies, since the "brave, macho, big bad birds" will all be roadkill because of their stupid competitive mentality and their unwillingness to use their common (bird) sense. Somebody should go and slap them, and tell them "If you have wings, use them!" Dammit...

Nightly adventures of the cats

2005-07-01T18:14:00.000+03:00

Last night - after dedicating way too much time to blogging - I couldn´t get more than 2 of the 4 cats to come inside, which is by no means unusual, considering that it is summer, and they like to be outside doing "cat things"... But when one of the cats, Otto, didn´t show up even in the morning I got a little worried. Who knows what he´s been up to? As far as I know, he could have been busy running around town, asking other cats for help to get into the "Nissan-Pissan" - or, if I let my more sinister side have a say, he could be dead, killed by a huge truck that usually drive through town, near our house, without even trying to stay within the speed limits - their attitude seems to be something like "You think I drive too fast? Well... then stop me!" Otto wouldn´t have been the first cat to die under one of those trucks.

Anyway, late this afternoon, when I sent my mother to my house (even knowing what kind of risk-taking that is...) she could happily report back that Otto had returned - and that he was starving! (Which reminds me I have to buy more cat food...) I really would like to know what exactly the cat has been doing all night, all morning and part of the day... But since he is a cat he won´t tell.

Svarti is my most faithful cat - most nights he decides to sleep on my pillow, after going around in the house, trying to fall asleep in different places - and I am happy when his little face is the first thing I see in the morning - because sometimes he´s been turned the other way...

Things you can find in the cat´s bushy tail

2005-06-30T22:19:00.000+03:00

Today I haven´t even thought of using my poisonous bottle to remove the smell of cat urine in the car, so I assume it doesn´t smell any longer. I know I could be wrong. But, be that as it might, I have other things to report...

This morning (that is, at around 10 A.M.), when I stumbled down the stairs to let some cat out, probably to do something he also could have done in the litter box, I almost stepped on something I first thought was a very round little brown stone - but which turned out to be a cat turd... And I have a suspect for this turd: it must have been Frissi, with his very furry tail, becuase it wouldn´t be the first time he unwillingly brings inside things that should stay outside. Once, a few years ago, I saw something moving in his tail (when the tail was still...) and that time it was a live worm... It must have creapt into his tail when he was doing other things in a hole in the ground, and then it probably got lost among all that hair, and ended up inside instead. When the cats come to sleep in my bed I usually prefer not to look too close at Frissi´s tail... who knows what I could find...

We´re watchnig Spanish TV right now, and I´m quite surprised to hear that Spain has passed a law that gives homosexuals the right to marry, to adopt children etc. That´s great! You´d think that the Scandinavian countries would pass that kind of laws, but in Finland homosexuals can only "register" their relationship, but they can´t marry. Personally I don´t understand why anybody would want to marry (I blame my marriage on the US... Had to get married so I wouldn´t have to live in DC on a tourist visa...), but then again, there are many things in this world that I don´t understand, and I still have to accept them... And the reasons why homosexuals would not have the right to do what they like when it comes to marrying each other or adopting children are all so absurd, like "it´s against Nature...". So...? Nature usually sucks! So if it´s agains Nature, good!!

(Here comes something completely unrelated to kitty litter - or or gay marriage- but I found it interesting anyway--) Today I found a website where I could check out which of the jobs I´ve had since 1974 that will have an impact on the money I will eventually be able to cash in when I retire - that is, if I ever have a chance to get any money if I retire. I fear that when - or if - I reach the age of 63 the rules will have changed, and there will be no retirement age, I´ll have to work untill I´m 95 if I'm healthy, and if I´m not, the next generation - or the one after that (the kids who have grown up killing people on the screen since before they could talk...) will swiftly put me out of my misery as soon as I´m no longer a working, tax-paying citizen... Anyway, about the website, it was interesting to get access to information that showed (among other things...) that I have had quite a few different jobs in my life, so far...

But if I could choose, I think I´d prefer to be a cat (at least if I chould live in my house...). Some days, like, today, when I have too much unfinished work, and at least one more month of heavy work loads until I can maybe take a few weeks off, I would so much like to be a cat... I wouldn´t need to do anything but pee in an old car now and then, eat, sleep, chase anohter cat up a tree, eat something, sleep, go for a walk, sleep, do cat-things, eat.... sleep... And since my cats are all castrated, they don´t even need to try to get laid.
Oh! I do wish I were one of my own cats...

The Pissan Study

2005-06-30T00:42:00.000+03:00

I have now firm proof that my senses have been damaged by this massive exposure to kitty urine... Today when I was driving to work in my Nissan Pissan I thought to myself "Oh, the smell seems to be gone..." and I felt no need to spray the interior of the car with the probably extremely poisonous liquid I bought last week. But then why does Kjell say he can´t even sit in that car, that it stinks? Either he is manipulating me to keep using the old car, so he can glide around in our "non-pissan" Toyota, or he´s telling the truth, and or Pissan does smell, even though I really don´t notice... (wonder when the next stage will kick in and Iwill start craving it?)

To get an answer, I decided to perform a controlled test.... I brought 2 human noses, and 3 kitty noses close to the open back door of Nissan-Pissan, making sure I was standing close enough myself to have the time to catch any creature, human or cat, if they´d start behaving in a suspicious way (that is... opening the pants and exposing certain body parts, in case of the humans, and placing your behind in a pissing position, in case of the cats...).

One of the humans swore he couldn´t smell anything any longer. The other human just put her head inside the car for a moment, and came out with a disgusted look on her face and said "This car stinks!!!"

One cat was busy being chased up a tree by anohter cat, whom I later managed to lure close to the car by saying the magic word "gräääässss" (grassss - and if somebody thinks this needs explaining it just proves they don´t know me or my cats...). He clearly smelled something and was about to jump in, but I got him before he had time to actually start doing anything ... The third cat showed similar behaviour. So according to this non-scientific little study, a majority of the creatures participating reacted to the supposed smell of urine, which probably proves what I don´t want to believe: My Nissan-Pissan can still be considered a litterbox on wheels...
Sad, isn´t it?
But now I shall try to get a few more cats to come in... It´s chilly, so they´ll probably be eager to come in and use the inside toilet - and to sleep in my bed. One cat, Svarti, is already sleeping with his little black head on my pillow, and with all his 4 paws stretched out, trying to prevent me from sleeping in my own bed. But tonight I show no mercy - I need my bed!! and i need it now. [Sometimes I wonder if inhaling cat urine vapours in a hot car for more than a week will cause lasting damage to my brain? When I try to read what I´ve just written I think I might have a reason to fear the worst...]

Stepping in It

2005-06-29T23:33:00.000+03:00

Since Rebecca not only has NOT yet started her own blog, but she even has the nerve to complain about my slow updates, I see no other possibility to fill this blog but to include her own very interesting kitty litter related observations...

[these items have now been removed, since 100 % of this blog´s readers begged me to do so...]

Human waste

2005-06-26T19:46:00.000+03:00

I haven´t written in this blog for a few days, because I´ve been exhausted by the continuous exposure to the smell of cat urine - and also by my halfassed intent at cleaning up the mess I´m living in.
My car is now unofficially called "Pissan Sunny", instead of "Nissan Sunny" - because even though I personally didn´t notice the smell that much after a few days of driving around in it - others have convinced me that it does smell.... And I know for a fact that cats do notice it...

On Thursday, when it was still hot, and the sun was shining, and I was desperately trying to get at least some cleaning done, I had my "Pissan" parked outside, and I decided to leave part of the driver´s seat window open, because I didn´t want to make things worse and have the car turn into a piss-smelling sauna/litterbox on wheels (the only thing missing in that crazy set-up would be me driving around naked in this hot, smelly vehicle, while furiously beating myself - not with birch branches, but with a cat, held by the tail, so that I´d get the maximum of odour into the car, since so much exposure would have made me addicted - and insane... Note! No living animal was harmed by my little revenge fantasy...), and I went inside to drop off some things - cat food, what else? - and when I came out, Otto (by far our smartest cat...) was clinging to the car door, with one of his front paws inside the window, trying to squeeze his little head into what he thought was a nice and warm - and huge - kitty litterbox! I mean, it was evident that he smelled somehting, and he wanted desperately to get inside... That seems to be the reaction of any normal cat when they smell the piss of other cats - they´ve got to go there! And they´ve got to leave a sign that they´ve been there too... Suppose it´s in their nature. But we all know that I have a complicated realtationship with "Nature" - and when what trigges this "natural" reaction in cats is something inside my car, I really wish there was a way to neutralize this instinct to pee where others have done it before. But since I can´t, I just have to let tha car stand there, with just a tiny little opening of the window - unless I want to have all the cats in town standing in line by the car, waiting for their turn to pee in my back seat...
For obvious reasons I have been using my bicyle a lot recently.
But I did get some cleaning done on Thursday, before Kjell got back... Not enough, though, because every time I start an ambitious "cleaning up the house"-project, I almost immediately realize that this is impossible! No human being could have a chance to sort this mess out in one day (to be honest, probably not even in less than 10 years... )- and I had thought I´d do it in about 7 hours.

I have about 50 differente problem aereas - or different size "heaps". Heaps of clothes (or similar items), heaps of books, writing material, note books, articles I´ve printed out from Internet that I "will read one day" etc. I also have heaps of CD:s that I have used for my programs, and which should be put back where they belong. There are also mixed heaps, where you could expect to find anything except things from the fridge, since they ususally start smelling, so I´d get rid of them if they got into some kind of heap outside of their normal area in the refrigerator. Oh, and I forgot heaps of magazines (that I might sort through one day, since I´m sure there was one really intersting artilce in a magazine from July 1997...), and the ever growing heaps of old newspapers... I already have a year´s worth of Old News, that I´d throw out, if it wasn´t for that one article in one of the papers, the second week of October last year (or around that time...) that I just have to find - that is, once I get around to sorting through my paper heaps... So I really need a lot of free time, and an incredible amount of spare energy to start sorting through my heaps. And strange as it may sound to people who were born with "a sense of order" (or to people who for some reason have acquired a lifestyle where order is a high priority...), as long as I don´t touch my heaps I can usually find what I need if I look for something - but once I´ve tried to put things into some kind of order - forget it!! After that I have no clue where to start looking... Not to mention the confusion I´m plunged into when My Mother on some rare ocasion goes way beyond lawn mowing and starts messing with my heaps... We have had a few fights about this one. She doesn´t seem to get it, so if I leave her cat sitting for a lenghty period of time, say a couple of weeks, she sometimes seems to think that the work description includes a permission to mess with anything she might find offensive... like the heaps that can be found all over the floor. The "innocent reason" for doing it is that 'she just wanted to clean the floor and take out the rugs', and then of course she had to get to the floor first... Of course, nobody asked her to do anything about my floor either.

Anyway, I got around to cleaning my bathroom (the human equivalent of the kitty litterbox...) - which according to my dear husband looked like something olny a single, dirty male person would use. Maybe he was right, but I hadn´t gotten aroud to doing anything about it - until on Thursday. To show how brave I am, I went straight for the worst part (which by no means is cleaning the toilet bowl - that´s a piece of cake, and can be done by strong detergent and a longhandled brush...) - the hole in the floor under the shower!! You know which one I meen? this hole that lets the water through, but stops your bigger size jewellery, soaps, small shampoo bottles, shaving material and other things you might drop while in the shower from going down the drain... Well, that is by far the grossest part in the house! It had been smelling for some time, but I had managed to ignore it. But it was getting worse... And I know what´s in there - I´ve cleaned it out before (must have been long ago, but I have done it...) and it didn´t make me wanna stick my hands down there again (if houses would have asses - this would be the asshole of the house!).
Ok, to make a long, and gross, story short, I got out the gunk (- a disgustingly smelly mess consisting of hairs, mostly very long hairs - I must be shedding more than my cats - mixed with tons of dried detergent, and another ton of dead cells from human skin... it was so GROSS!!), and my neighbour was here when I did my dirty deed, and she totally agreed with me that I should throw away that whole thing that covered the drain hole, the plastic round thing - otherwise I´d have to get into close encounter with my own dead cells mixed with who-knows-what... So I threw the whole damned thing out, went to our friend Wallendahl to bye a new one (he said I was a wimp for not wanting to clean my own hairs and dirt from that thing, but reluctantly he sold one to me anyway...) and I got home - to find it didn´t fit!! Shit, shit, shit!!! Now my pride (and the fact that the store had closed...) gave me a burst of super human energy, and I managed to overcome my resistance, so I got the plastic bag with the gunk/drainhole cover out of the garbage bin, opened it, cleaned it, and got it back where it belonged before I even had the time to think about how disgusting it all was.
End of story.
The heaps are still all over my house, but I got the worst part of my bathroom taken care of. Cleaning the kitty litterbox is nothing compared to this, though...

One more smelly day

2005-06-23T11:46:00.000+03:00

Yesterday I felt like I was surrounded by a faint, but clearly smellable, odour of cat piss, since I was driving around in my mobile kitty litterbox. I had a feeling people looked at me in a strange way, and didn´t I have an unusual amount of space around me in crowds.?.. It might of course be my paranoid imagination, but on the ohter hand, I might also be a walking stink bomb, because even if I can´t smell it, others will... I´m probably getting used to the smell of cat piss by now - and who knows if tomorrow I start craving it? [...as they say around here: You shouldn´t put a pine cone up your ass, because before you know it, your body starts craving it... ] I can just imagine myself trying to lure a reluctant cat into my car to get my daily fix of.... Oh no, stop it!! I´ve been sleeping too little too many nights in a row, so my brain is not fully connected to my fingers right now.
Anyway... today the whole country is winding down for our Midsummer Celebration- "Midsommar"... I thought the party started tomorrow, but it seems like everybody is already getting into vacation mode. And me, I have to stop writing, NOW! at this very moment and get this dump into some kind of shape before Kjell gets home... [left to my own devices I manage to turn an average home into an absolutely incredible mess in just a few days... and this house has been a mess for a while already ...] he was already on his way, speeding north, in our fast and non-smelly car, last time he called - he might be arriving before I know it... I have to call in the "grey panther brigade" (aka "My Mother)
More updates later - if I survive this cleaning binge [ha, ha, ha...]

Still pissing in the back seat...

2005-06-22T13:39:00.000+03:00

This is just too absurd to be true!! My my car seems to have turned into a public toilet for every damned cat in the neighbourhood...
Yesterday I bought some anti-smell-stuff in bottle, somtehing that promised to get rid of all kinds of bad odours... (Wallendahl, who sold it to me, even uses it on himself, when he smells bad) . This thing even seemed to work - but not completely, so today I let the the car doors open while I had my morning coffee whit my neighbour - I thought it was OK, since she´s no cat owner... But the rumors of my "cat toilet on wheels" by then must have spread to all the cats in Nykarleby, and probably also to some neigbouring towns, becuase when I was closing the doors and was preparing for "take off", a nice looking cat, that I have never seen before in my life, jumped out of my back seat - and you guess the rest, I suppose...
I didn´t have to throw the cat out- he was leaving anyhow, since his smelling mission was clearly already accomplished... Damn!

Litter box on 4 wheels (or "pissing in the back seat...")

2005-06-21T21:50:00.000+03:00

Well, I have a lot to do at work right now, but I just have to add this little update:
Yesterday I was very disgusted to find that my car had become a kitty litter box on wheels... I have no idea which cat to blame, but at least one cat has been pissing in the back seat of my old Nissan Sunny from 1986. It could have been Lill-Liffan, who was scared when Jonas, her owner (who borrowed my car over the weekend, while I was away...) took her to the veterinarian, out of town,to patch her up after some rough encounter with "nature". But it could also have been my own sweet Liffi, who was protesting when he smelled that another cat had been in the car - or maybe he was just showing his anger when a man who was not Kjell, was driving the car... (Liffi and Kjell have a very special relationship...) . I even came to think of the possibility that the cats might secretly have been reading my blog, and this was their way of saying "If you´re going to expose us, and our toilet habits, to the world, we migh as well give you something to write about... Smell this, bitch!!"
And it sure does smell...

Maybe I should be more careful what I write about the cats... just in case.

So I´ll write about something else...
Today is the longest day of the year, after this we´re heading back into the gloomy darkness of winter again - little by little...

Damn, I have so much work to do right now that it almost keeps me from blogging!

One more thing... Yesterday I got in touch with a friend I hadn´t talked to in two years -Michele, whom I met in a class about Jungian Psychology at Georgetown University ten years ago. She´s been living in Germany during the last 5 years, and now she´s moving to London. She told me she´s had a photo exhibition in a gallery in Paris... She never wants to move back to the US - meanwhile, I´m planning to go visit DC again... Soon. If I can get my shit together and see to it that I get some time off next fall, or spring...

Kitty update

2005-06-20T09:45:00.000+03:00

I had to go away for a few days, so my mother was left in charge of the "turd producers", and when I returned, after 50 hours of exhausting activities out of town, my nose told me immediately that there had also been some activity in the litter box.
And I even know why this has happened...
My mother, except for being the self proclaimed "lawn police"[ - she´s very much into "Lawn and order"... ;-) ] around my place, also has the strange habit of going to bed really early, around 8.30 P.M, so she can wake up at 5 to and wait for the morning paper to arrive. Unfortunately she can´t see different sleeping habits as just another way people happen to be different - no, no, no!! - She is absolutely convinced that people who start their day early are somehow better, more sane, more industrious - and of course more virtuous human beings - which of course makes me a really, really bad person . And when she´s taking care of the cats, he's trying to pervert them and make them go to bed early as well - but they don´t! And they are no early risers, either - at least not all of them (we have some problems with Otto, who sometimes wants to get up before we do...) My cats are used to my habits, so when the kitties are locked up early, they usually haven´t been doing nr 1 nor nr 2, so they´ll have to make use of the litter box, even if it is summer, and they´d prefer to spread their turds outside...

So that´s why the kitty litter box was smelly when I arrieved home - and now you think I´ll tell you the good news that I have actually emptied it? But no such luck!! I was getting the plastic bag ready, and I was mentally getting prepared to "just do it" - when I suddenly realized I had no clean kitty litter to replace the contents of the now soiled litter box... But now it´s only a question of time before some changes will be made.

Even though I wasn´t away for more than 50 hours, there had been things going on with one of my "god cats" - or the cats that I´m the "god mother" of - in case there is something like being a "god mother" for cats... but, anyway, two cats that I saved from early death some time ago. Jonas, their present owner called me on Saturday morning, and needed to get the private number of Maria, the already once mentioned veterinarian, because Emma the female cat, whom I call "Lill-Liffan", because she looks a lot like my Liffi, had come home with a nasty wound, and he didn´t know what to do. Anyway, to make a long story short, the cat got a few stitches, and she now has some kind of tube coming out of her side and she´s on antibiotics. But she´ll be fine! It´s a pity these animals can't tell what the hell they´ve been up to... If she´d tell me who´s done that to her...
But now I have used up the time I´ve allowed myself to waste on blogs for this morning.

The peeing habits of the castrated male cat

2005-06-17T12:10:00.000+03:00

I´m off to the grocery store to by catfood, because I just opened the last can, and I really don´t want to starv my little friends, since how would they ever have a chance to do anything worht telling about in the litterbox if I don´t feed them, hm? Of course, left to their own devices, they can find edible small animals around here, but I don´t really like it when they bring dead, or semi-dead, pieces of "nature" into the kitchen, those murderous little bastards!

Yesterday I made an interesting observation concerning the pissing habits of my cats... I had always thought that only "un-damaged" male cats do this thing when they turn their little furry asses toward a target, then wiggles the upright tail vigourosly for a few seconds, while they spray the target with cat piss... I´ve seen enough foreing cats do that to my car, my front door, my garden furniture etc, and in case I haven´t seen it, my nose can tell me they´ve been there. Now I have this disturbing feeling that it might have been my own little darlings who´ve be been pissing around all along - since I saw both Liffi and Frissi do this spraying thing yesterday, while I was sitting outside with some friends enjoying the first mild evening this year.

But how can I have been living with this false notion so long? Or maybe it is that castrated male cats do it, but in their case it doesn´t smell as bad as when normal cats do the same thing? This supposed ignorance of mine really bothers me now... Must remember to ask Maria, the vereinarian, when I see her... But since she opened her own practice I almost never see her. Before, when she was employed by our little town, she had time to have lunch breaks, and she often told us things about her work, with all the gory details, while we were eating our salad at "Café Kyrktuppen" [- the place that closed "for good" about 3 years ago, then was "born again" a few months later, just to be closed down for good (and this time it´s for real - they are already remodelling the place) a few weeks ago...] . I was always impressed by how much she seemed to like what she was doing, and I used to think that the main differens between medical doctors and veterinarians is that the veterinarians, in general, do like animals...

But, now I´m off to the store. More later. Maybe.

Close encounter with Nature

2005-06-16T14:30:00.000+03:00

Woke up too early, that is, at around 8, which is way too early since I had been reading until 3:30 AM... These white nights really manage to confuse me - and my cats. It just doesn´t get dark... I have to trick the kitty population into the house when I go to sleep, and some of them have to be brought in by hand (usually Liffi). Last night I didn´t even manage to get Frissi inside - but he´s so furry anyway so he could sleep outside even in winter. Not that he wants to. But at least Svarti slept on my left side, as usual - I like to have him there, he doesn´t shed as much as Liffi, and his purring is nice and loud. But he has aquired the annoying habit of pushing me out of my own bed. He starts little by little, by changing his position, giving me slight pushes with the claws of his back paws, and as every normal (sleeping) human being, I instinctivel move away from those claws... He´s smart, though, since he doesn´t actually scratch me enough to wake me up, he just slowly but surely pushes me in the other direction, and positions himself in a 90 degree angle from me - and when I wake up this black cat has managed to take over my whole bed, while I am wondering why I´m suddenly so close to the edge (those last 3 words remind me of one of the more weird YES-albums...)
Ok, this will be the closest we get to a kittylitter update, as for today. There will be a lot more in the box when winter comes - I promise!

To get at least some of the frustration and anger from yesterday (and from the last few weeks, months --- years?) out of my system I decided to ride my bicycle to work today - it´s "just" 22 km (whetever that is in miles...). Everyone who knows me is fully aware of me not being a "nature" kind of woman - (who was it that said "Nature - it´s disgusting!"?) so my decision to go by bike meant I´d have to expose myself to a lot more contact with nature than I´d actually need - but I just had to do something to get my head back to "normal", and sometimes extreme measures are needed.

I´m now happy to report that I survived this overdose of fresh air and "nature"(big birds, smaller birds, yellow birds, long-legged birds, butterflies, trees, trees, and more trees - but no squirrels, no foxes and no moose.... this time) - and in just 1 hour and 15 minutes I made it to Jakobstad. Later Kjell is going to take my bike back home, because two rides like this in a row would leave my ass unable to perform its main function (that is, to be the fat thing I usually sit on all day... what did you think?)

Early meltdown

2005-06-15T12:52:00.000+03:00

This morning I woke up too early, considering I had been updating some blogs until around 1.30 A.M last night - but at least the sun was shining, so I dragged my tired body downstairs to let the two black cats in ( Svarti, the black-black cat, and Otto, the one who has white socks) after their night ouside, supposedly doing -- well, cat things. And as the two black cats came in, the other two went out (the night shift cats came in to sleep so the day shift cats could take over doing their ... cat things), which meant there was no immediate need to deal with the kittylitter box, so from that front there´s nothing to report, but I can share some mental litter instead...

I went back upstairs to continue reading my the airdisaster related book (which has a titel I can´t even remember at this point... they´re all the same! But I love them) and found a funny expression that I wasn´t familiar with: "brain fart" ... I liked that! Supposedly because I´ve let quite a few "brain farts" out through my lips over the years. Some days I´m easily amused, so still chuckling I went downstairs to make some coffee and tell my dear husband about the funny expression. Halfway thorugh my coffee I see my mother coming in her car... and she is on a mission! Grass... She´s out to get my grass. It´s supposedly way too long, and even if it´s been raining for four days in a row, and it might be a good idea to let it dry first, there´s no stopping this woman when she can see an uncut lawn.

Anyway, to make a long story short - she mowed the lawn, and then went home in a huff because I wasn´t as happy as I should have been for her "sacrifice" - nor was I happy a month ago when I got this damned lawn mower as a birthday present. And now I´m seriously inclined to take that loud monster mashine down to the river and DROWN it!!

The problem is not my lawn... It isn´t for me, and it isn´t really for my mother either. The problem is that my mother and I have very different views on how important other people´s opinions on my grass should be. To my mohter, it´s a minor catastrophy if somebody (anybody! people she doesn´t even know...)might think that her daughter has not been mowing her lawn and otherwise kept her garden in a good shape, according to unofficial smalltown standards... While I couldn´t care less! So while we live in the same town, there´s always going to be trouble brewing.

And of course, what makes me boil inside is not so much this unimportant incident, it´s what this incident reminds me of - and that is something a lot more painful... To my mohter my opinions, and my feelings, have always been considered less important than what "people say". It´s always been like that, and somehow I´m used to it. But if this small town mentality catches me off guard - as it did this morning - it can still cause a furious mental meltdown.

I´ll allways have an ambivalent feeling about this small town. Most days I can handle my own ambivalence - some days it´s a bit more difficult.

Her last words, throug the car window, as she left (mission accomplished...) was "you should go live somewhere where no grass grows!"
Well, today it really is an option worth considering...

Copy of first entry (when I still thought I could manage a bilingual blog...)

2005-06-14T16:55:00.000+03:00

So, Rebecca, now you can check in on my kittylitter habits - but don´t get your hopes up, I haven´t emptied that stinking old box in ages. And it´s not only because I´m a lazy old middleaged bitch - it´s because my cats are trained to do both nr 1 and nr 2 outside. The fact that there might be some poop left over from February doesn´t bother me that much - it´s dry by now anyway.Happy now? I´ll keep you informed on the kittylitter issues as they emerge. Consider this my birthday present to you! While you wait around for the next kitty update you can try to find out other unimportant stuff about my daily life - like... it´s now almost 1 PM, and I´m not yet fully dressed (and no, you naughty old woman, I´m not sitting here naked - but I´m not dressed either...) I was thinking of getting dressed a while ago, but then I decided to take a shower instead, so here I sit while I wait for my hair to dry. It´s not that I´ve been sleeping all morning, oh no, forget that! I woke up because it was raining so hard... This is beginning to look like a really shitty summer! That´s why I finally made up my mind and created this blog... Not that I am sure I remember my password anymore, but --- never mind.Outside it´s about 10 degrees C (whatever that is in F - it´s not enough, that much I can assure you), and Liffi, the cat we almost lost when he was so sick in winter, is sleeping in his favourite chair, but he´s sneezing... wonder if he´s getting worse again? I´m waiting for someone from work to call me and help me install "Java" - not that it can be that difficult, but I don´t feel like putting my energy into figuring it out. Now my stomach is screaming for food (it often does...), so I´ll stop writing for no, but please, Rebecca, now YOU get yourself a blog, so I can check in on your dead-line frenzies and your happy procrastinations ...And one more thing, Rebecca - Happy Birthday! And thank you for making me waste so much time reading other people´s blogs that I finally had to get my own....