THE THIRD WEEKEND OF NOVEMBER; THE FIRST SNOW

Autumn is chancing into winter and it's dark in the afternoon here already. Just like it should at this time of year - the time to take out all extra light and light candles! And drink lots and lots of glögg.
(The cats get to demonstrate the cosing-and-candeling-it-up.)

Today the first snow of the year fell.

And so did it on this weekend seven years ago too. I was out with our music-quiz team glöggging about on Satruday evening wearing a big beige checked skirt and my red shiny heels. It started to snow and I had to walk on my toes. And then later that night I met a man who I would come to marry two and a half years later.

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FEET x 2

Last weekeknd when everyone else was posting photos of their Halloween outfits I was spending my mine in a not-so-ghoulish way at pilates training, doin (and passing!) my advanced matwork assessments. But because of the time of year here’s a shot some posing skeleton feet next to mine in pilates stance.

I still have work to do before my I will finish what is needed to get the actual Advanced Mat Certificate,  (I already have a Basic and Intermediate certificate). It has been a lot of work during the year that was and in January, a year since I started, I should have the full certificate ready. But when it comes to pilates one is never really "ready", there is always more to learn, things to develop and work on,  new things to discover within yourself.  A pilates exercise is so multi levelled that you can keep on finding new challenges to it over and over again as you learn to work more deep within your body towards the ideal. Saying so may for those that don’t practice pilates (or some other kind of excercise where one actually “deepens into oneself”) that may sound rather abstract or even annoying, but at some point(s) of practicing one really will experience this as an “Ah! This is what it can/should feel like!”.

Pilates is very interesting and rewarding and it will take time to master  - I still know there is so much more development in my own training that I can do! A certification requires frequent updates (attending workshops etc) and I am looking to deepen my pilates education as well, working also with apparatus, as soon as I have the time (and funding) for it. There are different approaches to pilates and the classical one is definitely the one I prefer (thus I have studied it), and I would recommend anyone to try classical pilates at least for a while to notice the benefits (and then it will be hard to let go).

It is strange how things go in life, looking back. A year and a half ago I would not have known that I would be doing this right now. As I probably have said before, becoming a pilates teacher had been on my mind for years, a constant point on the five-years-or-more-list. It's status changed into a now-or-never after having had the miscarriages last year. I suppose it's something of a lemons and lemonade thing, or, rather; if life hands you lemons fuck that and get some ice cream instead. Give me limes and let's make mojitos!

On another note, funny remembering a thing I read many years ago, in my mid twenties. I think I’ve mentioned it here before, but it was a young blogger, 19-20-ish or so, posting about and commenting on red carpet pics of some celebrity that “it is amazing that she looks that good at 34!”, (there were probably a few omg's!! thrown in there after that as well)  which of course sparked a bunch of amused comments from "older" readers. I too laughed at that, because, although I know that for someone barely twenty 34 years can seem rather old, (maybe it even seemed a bit older ten -eight years ago than it does today when 40 is nothing. It's sort of not even the "new thirty" anymore. Well, in my post-30 world at least ;) I at a 20-something age still always saw my future self as more fit when past thirty - when I would not be going out partying every night of the week anymore and hopefully would get more sleep as well. I was in good shape back then too, frequenting the gym as well as doing savate, but I pictured myself as someone doing a bunch of yoga and healthier stuff and just being over all super fit at.  And that was perhaps one of the things that past me got rather accurate. Because now I am there, 34. Because of time being at least a bit unmerciful to each and every one of us, in one way or another, and as pregnancy and childbirth (read: breastfeeding) do leave their marks, my body may not look that much “better” now that it did then at twenty-something. But I iknow t is stronger in a more balanced way now than before! Seriously folks, pilates.

The sleep part though. That I could work on. When I have the time. And you know what would be truly awesome? An eight day per week. Plus some extra hours for the day. Those could be added nighttime. Mmmyes.

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CLOUDS, TIME, LIFE AND ALL THAT

I'm going to start this one a bit tacky here now, because I thought of this back when I was fifteen (when, you know, you easily tend to be rather dramatic and corny about things). So here we go: life is  like the clouds. Constantly moving, changing shape, without really noticing when or how it happens. You look up at a cloud, it has a certian shape and you follow it with your eyes. It is changing form in front of you but you can't see that. It is not until you look away for a while and then back that you may notice the cloud has taken on a totally different shape than before. It is like a whole different cloud. (It was a rather long time ago that I was fifteen though. Phew.)

Well, yes, in any case. Everything indeed changes and evolves (that is perhaps what time is all about, changes in- and layers on eternity) and sometimes things go so fast you that years just pass by and if you get a second to think about it, it will very likely become a 'whoah, how did we get here'-moment. And then it's WOOOM on again to the next one.

Changes are what life is made of. Something is always changing even when you think it's not, time goes on, trees grow bigger and people grow old. No matter how well thought out or planned something may be you never know how it will turn out as anything can come up along the way. Or it may go just like planned, but the outcome may still be something different than you though.  And so on, yada yada. I don't really believe in finding reasons why random things happen or in meant to be's, it's just something we have come up with to make the chaos that forms everything more understandable, and bearable. Stuff just happen. Some by itself and some you make happen.

I've been making some things happening lately. I quit the harbour late this spring. Which wasn't a big thing per se, as I had not been working there for three years, but I had remained employed there anyway. Now my time for parental time-off was up -in short, you getup to 9months off paid, and can then get an unpaid leave until the child turns three, when you are to return (unless you get another child before the 3 years date when it all starts over again. I always knew I wouldn't go back, but sometimes some parts of me miss that. By now I have forgotten how it felt to be out there no matter what weather (or time of the day. And year).

(Here's me in the harbour a long time ago, a shot from that German tv show with fine shots of the Baltic Sea that airs every now and then and always brings me lots of strange Facebook messages from strangers in various European languages. "hello, I saw you on tv. Bye")

Dag did indeed turn three this summer which is both totally strange and totally natural at the same time. (We're on a feelings-level here, as I do know that turning three when you have lived three years is what most would describe as "natural"). He just started attending play school (or play club, whatever you may call it, a few times a week) and he's talking and making jokes and all and soon he'll be going to school and wanting to use the car and then moving out. The way it goes.

See, here he's already flippin' me the bird:

(To his defence -or mine, it's my kid after all- he is actually showing us thumbs up from a very unfortunate angle.)

It feels very odd to think I at this point of the year could have had a baby of a few months already. As it didn't turn out that way, I fast forwarded some other plans instead. Now the baby-thought feels very distant, and, I'm perhaps a little relieved (that's the brain working I guess, creating reason and meant-to-be's again). You do get kind of comfortable with time, and it's like I've almost forgotten the baby time with Dag, how it felt and how 24/7 it was. Not that I remember it being that rough then, comfort wise, but thinking of it now feels like it would be an awful lot of work to go trough again. I mean I have a child that can go to the toilet by himself already. So easy nowadays! I of course know that if or when such a time will come again the brain will settle into that mode and it will be fine and great all over (and tiring and messy too of course).

You may have noticed I have been rather busy the last year and my blogging has been less frequent.
As I just said I'd quit my old job and that my son is starting to mind his own business a lot you may wonder what the hell I actually have been doing away from the internet.

A whole lot. One of my fasts forwards was starting to study to become a pilates instructor (classical, mat. Apparatus are not very common over here. Yet.). It's something I had thought of for many years, to perhaps do at some point, and then decided to really go for in 2016. But it then came to happen this year already. I started in January and hold one certificate now, but will still be continuing to study for a long time. More on that later.

But what I also have been working on is a thing I had dreamt of for years, but never really felt was realistic. (And soon we will see it if is or not, dum-de-dum) : My colleague and performance partner Ruska and I are opening up our own studio, the very first one dedicated to burlesque in Finland!

There has been classes here and there for years already, and we have thought many of those and kept a small studio ourselves for quite some time already, but now we are opening up and actual burlesque school, a studio that has burlesque as it's main thing and that is the first one over here. We will combine that with other classes under the same roof; yoga and pilates (Ruska is a yoga teacher) and stretching as well as other dance exercise. The name Studio Shangri-La comes from our duo performane The Ravishing Shangri-La Rubies and we have coached our own performing student troupes for two years under the name The Shangri-La School of Showgirls. (I linked our Facebook pages there. Do go and like them. All in Finnish, but don't let that stop you.)

I really had intended to blog about the process of fixing up our new space. "I will have so much to post about". And alas - I would have had, and did. But what I did not have was the actual time to do so. (Well you have seen some on instagram along the way, for those of you who hang around there.) In between waiting for contrucion guys who never came (and then came late and charged too much and so on) and painting and ordering things (and spending up a lot of hard earned cash) and planning and plotting summer just went by and here we are at the opening already. On Wednesday!
Eli sinne kaikki, dit allihopa eller hur!

Apart from that we are working on the Pin-Up competition and putting together a custom performance for the book launch of Sofi Oksanens new book. And then I'd really like to fix up some rooms in the farmhouse plus grow back all the kale that the lambs ate.

Well, this started with clouds and ended up in Shangri-La in something of a mish mash of a post.
So for now: studio studio studio. And buy classes!

Oh and also bangs or no bangs?
Oh the choices in life.

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KEEP YOUR MIND CLEAR AND YOUR SHIRT CLEAN

I have neither as I have some of Dag's dinner on my sleeve and red wine in my glass.



But what I do have is a terrible nostalgia for the harbour, summer nights in the city, beer and jukebox playlists, running along the shore in Merihaka (my old jogging route) to some Marko Haavisto, driving my old Taunus to the same playlist. (Which I  can't do because Eddi has lost he keys to the Taunus and it has now been parked for xx years under an apple tree at the farm. This summer it will happen though. Locksmith. Clean up. Roadtrip, if only just a small one around the corner.)

We have this this Finnish music- challenge going on on Facebook and listening trough my favourite Finnish songs (which all tend to lean to the rautalanka sound) I got an itch for all of the above and some more. I was sure I had posted this song by Marko Haavisto & Poutahaukat here before (as seen in The Man Without a Memory by Kaurismäki) but apparently I hadn't. Well, here you go - it does not get more Finnish than this.

Now I'll have another glass of wine and play some rautalanka and then watch some more Kaurismäki clips.

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TREATS

My PT sessions are back! To illustrate this I have a highly informative picture of my super shaky hand that feels like it’s stuck in grip-mode after a hard workout (and yes you can also check out my nails with their icy winter manicure).

I worked out with my personal trainer for ten weeks last winter, and it was the best money investment I had made in a long time. You really get to push yourself in a new way. Plus get a bunch of new moves to work on. And, it really is something of an investment, not only from the money point of view, but also (cheesy sentence alert:) an investment in yourself because you know, your body is the one thing you have to live with your whole life. So at the end of last year I gave myself a present when the tax return money came and got myself a set of 10 new sessions. A great decision, once again.

I have always worked out, sometimes more, sometimes less, even though it seldom makes it here more than in a mention or two. What I really loved doing was Savate; French (kick) boxing. I’ve always liked martial arts. I used to do Tae Kwon Do when I was in my late teens. But then my knee got fucked up (a friend sat on my leg so it turned the wrong way, kind of, and things broke) and I had to take a break and then other things came up and I never returned. The reasons I then quit savate about seven years ago were that my working hours in the harbour were so hard I seldom managed to work out on a schedule. That, and that my other knee got fucked up (things broke during a jumping practice) and I had to have an operation and take a 6 month break. Afterwards I returned but when I started performing the bruises all over did not really fit in. Now I live too far from the boxing gym for it to be convenient and my nails are too long to fit in the boxing gloves. But one day I will return! (Add to list of things to take up again). Because, there is no such thing as too old.

Speaking of which; being older today than yesterday, as we all are, I remember reading a blog post from some 19-20-21 year old fashion blogger quite many years ago (I must have been about 26 or 27) where the young author was posting some red carpet celebrity pictures. She was being surprised and impressed that this one celeb woman (can’t remember who and don’t care) could be in such good shape at the age of thirty four! Well, this of course was met with some  amusement from many older (or, “older”) readers that stumbled by, and also by me, not because I didn't think thirty-something was that old back then, but mostly because I had always though I would be in a helluvalot of better shape at 34 than I was at, say, 22 or 26. See, even though I was working out regularly at that time I also went out and partied very regularly. I always thought (and was perhaps hoping) that at 30-something I’d be working out more smart and more dedicated, going out less and having less drinks. And so on. And, ta-da, so indeed I am! After childbirth few will have the same measurements back as one had when 21, but I am in better shape now, in a smarter way, than I’ve ever been before. Moving around for a living also helps, and now of course also because of the pilates training. Being healthy feels good, but I consider myself to be the kind of person that will never get super duper I-will-start-an-instagram-account-about-it fit, neither do I have the need to, because, well, chocolate and red wine are also totally awesome things in this world. But when I’m 34, which is this yearI’m going to be ripped! (or then not, you know, because chocolate. But I like saying it just for fun.)

I also gave myself another treat - a set of vouchers for Liangtse Wellness (a Chinese medicine wellness center). (To illustrate that is the tiny little tea pot you are served tea in when you wait, and later a content me in those small gold pyjamas you get to wear during your treatment.)


I got a gift card there from Eddi for Christmas - I had been planning to of there for years but I am the kind of person who is really bad at getting such things done for myself. Now as I was at it I went all pay-now-think-later and got myself that voucher set.  But it was a good pey first think later moment, because nothing beats someone kneading you aching head for half an hour. Well that would then be one whole hour (and perhaps some other things as well. But it definitely makes top ten of certain lists at least!) My relaxation for the ongoing year is guaranteed.


Now if I could only learn to treat myself to do my book keeping on a regular basis and to fall earlier to sleep at night things'd be even better.

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