Knocked off my feet

I really had no idea of how hard the death of my dear friend would affect me until it one day did hit me and almost knocked me off my feet.

Just keeping going with my ordinary daily routines for normality’s sake was maybe the thing I needed to do right then, but now I seem to be surfacing from my deep grief and become normal again. Somehow it seems that a really bad flu did the trick and gave me the time and needed slowing down to realize what had happened and gave the necessary time to get through my feelings.

Anyway, while my Blog has been inactive, I still have had ideas of what I have wanted to write about, so even if I might not have put them down in letters in rows forming readable words, I have been thinking. So now I hope I will be able to maintain my normal blogging routine unless this spring hits me with massive doses of pollen and knock me down a second time.

Offspring has been quite worried and even went down to the market to get me some smoked herring to cheer me up, but unfortunately my throat was too sore at the time being I did not enjoy them as much as I ordinarily would have. But they say it is the thought that counts, and the thought was beautiful.

Smell of spring

Nice warm, sunny spring weather brings the outdoors person out in me and eventually even I tend to go for a long walk in the sun. The nature is waking up after the winter sleep and snow is melting away fast and all that once was covered unfortunately comes out in the sun too usually smelling bad.

One thing that has been bugging me badly here in Finland is the lack of dustbins, somewhere to dispose of your garbage when in streets of the city, bus stops or in parks. And if there are such garbage bins they tend to be full of crap as they are apparently not emptied often enough. And many of them get kicked down with the garbage rolling around on the ground together with the garbage that did not fit into the full bin. So the garbage just tends to be thrown anywhere as there is nowhere else to put it, not to mention the problem of dogs droppings which always also becomes apparently bad smelling in the spring and as the Finns are a tribe of dog owners, there are quite a few dogs in this country and they seem to be tenderly looked after but not their droppings.

People walk their dogs in mornings and evenings but there is one problem with this idyllic picture, which is almost as bad as was Paris about twenty years ago. The situation in Paris has during the years improved immensely, as they have had campaigns on dogs not doing their number two on the pavement. Nowadays you can almost walk anywhere in Paris without having to step into dogs*t, just one or two not done into the gutter to accidentally tread on.

The dog droppings are almost as big a problem here in Finland, well the dogs normally don’t do it on the pavement, but in all parks you are supposed to pick it up afterwards and there are special containers in which to dispose of the sh*t but in wintertime this tends to be forgotten, or not cared about and as they say; “what is hidden in the snow you can not see”, but forgetting about the part that “it comes out in snow melt the spring”.

Springs smell badly, like a massive lost and found, big heap of of dogsh*t. And that’s exactly what it is and t is all over the place, in ditches on road edges, along pathways and parking lots in residential areas and in parks as well. Fortunately in not too long a time it disintegrates into fertilizer and make the flowers and grass grow. Maybe this is the thought behind the action, if there is any, but the smell of wet lawn combined with dog droppings is just so awful!

Change of ministers

The Finnish text messaging Foreign minister will be replaced with a new candidate.

The new Foreign minister from this Friday on will be a former euro-parlamentarian so he should have got the routine and has so far not been involved in any scandals to my knowledge.

The old Foreign minister now to step down did not do it on his own behalf but had to be sacked by his fellow party members as well as from the cabinet of ministers, but he is to pursue his work as a member of the parliament.

It seems apparent that the post as Foreign Minister does not seem to be that sought after here in Finland and it required two weeks to find a replacement and behind the façade things were carried out in secret of public knowledge.

I wonder now what the neighbourhood’s ladies think of this. They always have made up their minds about anything that happens, and as it seems plausible they might now disapprove of the change of ministers as much as they yesterday wanted him to resign.

The all of a sudden warm spring weather always seems to surprise me. Still subzero temperatures in the mornings for you to have to dress heavily in order to not freeze intermittent with heavy casts of warm sunshine, too warm in anyway to wear the same clothes you left home in the same morning. This is the time when basking in the sun begins, that people get their wake up calls. Strange considering that the same people you were looking at in the gloomy winter light all of a sudden now tend to look much happier and more pleased with life in general.

The sap is rising, is the Finnish expression that comes in mind, if you know what I mean. This expression might have been right considering the former to be Finnish Foreign minister but at the time of the text messaging it was not yet spring, so he might have been an early riser.

No April fool

Two issues seem to currently be the main news, the merger of the two online systems that still is not up and running smoothly as has been several times promised by the bank.

There still seems to be a major glitch somewhere in the dungeon labyrinths of the digital money world.
And the foreign minister still is hitting the headlines with his text messaging to the blonde model, or erotic dancer.

According to a non official Gallup done among the neighbourhoods old ladies most of them think the whole affair is a disgrace and would like to see him resign as his credibility as trustworthy politician has been lost. Well, I would like to know one politician that if not dishonest but at least does not make the truth up seeming mush better than it in reality and daylight is, or does not use any white lies at all. Politics it seems is like playing poker, do not show what you think of it, and keep your face plain. Say nothing and deny everything you might have said.

Well, at least some of us know, we're not all April fools you know.

Anyway, I must confess that I have not been as good as I should have with the exercise I should have been attending to advised by our dear family doctor, whom I know drops in occasionally to read up on my Blog. I have been quite good at making up various excuses for not pursuing my daily walks. Good reason have lately been the slippery surface I would have to be wary of walking upon, another has been the clod weather and winds blowing which is not good for my complexion. Not a s good excuse mostly are I have forgotten cone again the whole thing, I do not want to enter on long walks on my own, or I prefer to do them daytime when I do not have to have anyone tagging along, (read dear spouse of mine who likes to keep me company, nothing wrong with that, just sometimes love can be too much and you need to get some air, on your own as he is a caring, and loving husband)

Quite the opposite to what you would suspect I am very lazy, I prefer not to make more than I have to and I was quite energetic and outgoing in my younger days and probably did more than my fair share of exercise, but with age the metabolism gets sluggish, we put on some extra pounds, sometimes several stones and I had lost most of that, but…

Lately it has been creeping back on, slowly and almost without me noticing it at all, until our dear doctor told me I could use with loosing 10 kgs. Well, fortunately for me it was not the same 30kgs I had once already lost four years ago, but new additional weight I am carrying around that really has no use, unless there soon will be a great famine with lack of food for us here up in the Nordic countries, which I doubt will happen in the very near future. With the global warming heating up even more and climates changing you never know, so maybe I should stick to my extra weight, just in case if the worst would occur?