You remind me of darts!

So last night I got home from a good old long walk with my friend that gave me cold ears and a new, bright spring in my step (as it always does). She also gave me the longest ever straws, 70 cm. As a Christmas present. Which was great!
Reiko was home with his friend and as I opened the door to his room to show them the straws they pulled me in and I we tried to use the straws for drinking Jägermeister. I mean it was great and all, but staying up then till half 6 in the morning, talking total bullcrap and laughing our asses off over funny pictures on the internet and with one eye watching the stupidest lovefilm isn't probably anyones idea of good nights sleep that'll keep your sleeping schedual in order.
I had been sleeping for a good 2-3 hours when the phone rang for the first time. It was me ma telling me that she'd seen me and Anna Maria on the telly the other night. We were at this Christmas party for orphanage children as volunteers, we organised the darts-playing corner. So apparently some channel had a camera crew over.
I fell back to sleep and it wasn't long before my friend called to ask me to come over and see her baby. She was born a month ago and I still haven't had the chance.
Got to sleep for two more hours when my sister called to ask me if I was going home to our parents place with them. I was not ready for that at all so I just said "NO", hung up quickly and fell asleep again.
It was 1:15 p.m. when I got up. Since then I've only been reading books and doing origami. So nothing worth mentioning, really. I had been planning on going to my parents in the morning, but that would have required going to bed at least 6 hours before I did.
Thanks, friends.
Oh and Shane was sending me funny texts all night saying that when I go back to Clon he'll take me in to his place and give me his room because I'm so nice and he misses me a lot.
Thanks, Shane.

Christine, this is for you :P Come and visit the upper states instead of the Down Under some Christmas!

Hot child in the city

Lately I have been finding myself half-awake at different times of the night, wondering over whether I'm living my life the right way. I know it's no-ones to tell how I should be doing it, so I usually don't let anyone get me down when I catch something that should be critical towards my life in what they're saying, but sometimes I can't help myself.
I know my babysister isn't reading this blog so I feel almost fearless when saying I once upon a time read her diary and the following is very close to what she wrote in one part: looking at my sister I feel kind of sad, because I'm hoping that at her age I will be an attractive young woman going somewhere with my life. She is good, though.
Now that last part, the one that sounded exactly like pity, that's what hurt. Not the part saying I'm not attractive nor going anywhere with my life.

My flatmate has her friends over, they're drinking rum&coke and getting ready to go out. A very frequent thing. I used to go out and drink till I got sick and have a blast, enjoying myself (till I got sick) and generally having an awesome time, I don't do that any more.
There's more than one reason - 1) I don't want to be spending money on alcohol, 2) I was recently discovered a health condition that alcohol could make much worse, 3) I don't want to get hangovers, they're getting worse these days & 4) I used to go out often in a childish hope to meet someone, but I've buried that, too.
So now, after actually having written those reasons down, I feel like a miserable muppet who has lost the last of her abilities to have fun or be fun.
Now I'm not saying it's all down to going out and drinking (the "having fun" part), but I suppose it all came down to that in my past.
I do have other things I consider fun for myself, for example I'm very much into extreme sports, but that's only looking at others having fun doing them, because I'm too insecure to actually go out there and learn to windsurf, skydive or even do a bungee jump. If there was someone there really into it all who woul be delighted to take me along, I would be delighted to go along. Haven't met anyone yet. I'm moving in wrong circles of people, I suppose, because everyone I know, is into heavy drinking and passing out in the toilets kind of extremities.
Even expressing myself with painting or (jeez) even doing a fucking collage ( I do create my own jewellery - earrings, that is..)is kind of too much of an effort for me. Maybe because there's no one around e to go on and appreciate it. Besides me of course.

So why did I go and let it all aut for the first time in a public blog? I dunno.. Maybe because I could and no one barely ever comes here besides me, so that's OK, too.

You have a pleasant night now, I will. Wallowing in my self-pity.
I will correct the grammar and spelling mistakes tomorrow. Or maybe not this time. The hell with it, I just won't do it at all this time!

ILUS!

And there's more to come! Bright, white, pure snow covering the frosty ground, a tortoiseshell cat walking across the playground and it's so silent.. if it wasn't for the cat and the wind, throwing the snow around, you'd think everything and everyone was asleep.
The dim lights from the 3am windows tell you there's others. They are sitting there too, waiting, holding their breath.. something will happen. Soon.

Pollyanna and the seventy-second wonder of the world.

Did you ever read the book? It's coming back to me now. Reading it as a young girl, I remember being amused by her ability to see the good in everything, even when there really is nothing to be seen.
I'm like Pollyanna.
Skating home from my friends place, the ground under a thin layer of snow, ice beneath it, listening to music, thinking of just how perfect it all is.
I pity you. You, who you are not able to see it all - the beauty in details. Taking everything as it comes. You're complaining how all that bright snow is going to turn into uncomfortably slippy pavements and brown muck tomorrow. That's tomorrow, I tell ye, tonight it is the seventy-second wonder of the world.

Cherry tomatid ? FTW?!?

The jar that says it holds my pens and pencils I hardly ever use for anything else than marking down someones b'day in the calendar.
I woke up at 4:40 this morning. Sure I did go to bed slightly after 10 because I was drunk of 2l of beer, but .. (Well ok, I practically passed out. Yeah, I'm weak. Lightweight. Call it what you want.) Recently I've been trying to figure out what the perfect time for me to go to bed is and how many hours of sleep my organism needs. I can easily make do with just 6 hours, but if that 6 hours is from 12am to 6am then I'm awake too early and have nothing whatsoever to do. As I've realised, too, if I go to bed before 12 at night, I get better quality sleep. But then I get up even earlier and have even less to do. So if I want to sleep for 6 hours and not get up before 8, I need to go to bed after 12 and I don't want to do that. I have nothing to do until then apart from nolife. I don't want to nolife.

I need to get a hobby. Or two.

Oh.. cherry tomatid = cherry tomatoes + kirsstomatid. Made in Hungary.

Crack The Shutters Open Wide

It's been far too long since I last posted anything.
This was said more to myself than anyone else, although I'm not really sure if there is anone else at all who actually comes here every now and again to read this.
I do tend to sometimes think that I have this blog, like tons of other people, for sharing my "excellent" writing skills with the world. Other times I just bring myself back to the ground because why on earth would anyone come here and read this? To find out how I did nothing last weekend at my parents? Didn't think so.
I've had blogs before on different sites and I've always kind of had them as semi-public diaries so that I could come back some two years later and realise how much I've grown since then.
Actually, two years ago I had a month or so when I had no internet, but I still kept a diary on the desktop of my PC as a Notebook file. I was going through a period of having lots of bills to pay and practically no hours at work. So no money and lots of free time, then. Every night I would write. About my day, about life in general, just pouring everything out of me onto the screen. After I had done my entry I spent at least 15 minutes making up a playlist to listen to while I fall asleep playing Solitaire.
Then I was going out with this guy who read my "diary" and even after I finished things with him, every time we met, he asked me if I keep on writing because he thought I should do it for living. Suppose it was part of the reason I sometimes think I'm good at it although I know I'm clearly not. I simply have my own way with words which is OK. He gave me a lot of material for writing later on, though, that bastard!
I'm reading "Seize The Day" by Saul Bellow at the moment, in estonian, and I feel like retyping it. Someone's done a really bad job at editing this thing, the mistakes in punctuation are enough to make a 9-year-old laugh out loud. I know my grammar and punctuation might not be perfect here, but I try to check on it after I finish my post and it's a BOOK for crying out loud! Not a blog entry. It's embarrassing to read!

The reason I got out of bed at all after having retired there two hours ago to read and then sleep is Clon. As I've understood, I'm not the only one with that problem in my circle of friends - not being able to sleep at night because I want to go back - there's others. I was leading the most ordinary life there for two years, working, partying, making friends, having relationships, breaking them, trying to be independent, trying to settle. Then I came back home and now I feel like I need to go back there again, because for some reason all I did there seems so much more special now. The grass is greener (I had to say it!) and it just seems that the people there actually miss me more than they did here. Yes, I know how unfair this is to a few of my very good friends and family here, but most of them wanted me to come back here for selfish reasons, see - I was fun. Now that I don't drink and party much any more and am boring, I'm not necessary any more. I could just as well go back. So I lay in my bed at nights, thinking of how life is gonna be when (see, it's not even "if") I go back to Clon and it's going to be brilliant, I'm going to have a family there, settle down, have a job I like, dogs and a countryhouse and who knows - maybe I'll even learn how to drive a car.
It's the place where all my dreams will come tue, just like Estonia was when I was in Clon.

What I've learnt from this tonight?
I obviously don't know how to live my life.
But that's OK, too. No-one does. Really.


Oh, by the way, Snow Patrol's new album is surprisingly good.

Apples

All the apples. The leaves are gone, but the ground is covered in apples. Apples. Apples. Lots and lots of apples. Endless amount of apples. The apples no one of us will eat. The apples that will end up being eaten by earthworms and the apples, through the remains of which pumpkins will grow next year.

Just so that the fingers on your right hand wouldn't freeze.

He was walking down Aleksandri street when he caught a glimpse of something that looked like a small animal lying there on the roadside. A kitten, perhaps? Hit by a car? No, that couldn't have been - it wasn't the season for kittens. He took a closer look, because it felt important, almost urgent that he did.

It was a mitten. A single mitten fallen off someones right hand, fallen right down onto the street. No - it couldn't have fallen off, such a warm-looking thing must have been missed if it had fallen off someones hand. It must have been lost from a pocket or a bag.

Taking the poor thing home must be the right thing to do, he thought, and so he did, too.
That day something changed inside that young man. He felt almost as if he.. no, this cannot be! It's impossible! But it had happened. He loved. He was in love with someone he hadn't even met, but he guessed the person must be as warm inside as that mitten off her right hand.
He started walking down that street at least once a day, looking at peoples hands, hoping he'd see someone walking walking past with just one mitten on. It was a thin chance, I'm sure you'd agree. That didn't stop him, though. He felt as if half of him was missing and he was carrying the reason for it around with him in his bag.

Simply the mitten would never complete him. 

She was walking home down Aleksandri street. It was late, but she was in no particular hurry. Besides the weather had gone warmer over those few hours she had spent at her friends place, so she decided to take the most of the walk. It was dark outside, too, and she should have been scared, but nothing was ever going to happen to her, nothing bad, that's what she'd always believed. "It all comes down to your thinking," she used to say. She shoved her hand inside her bag hnging behind her back to pull out a cigarette and matches, she lit one, inhaled deeply, blew the smoke out, threw the cigarette away and said to herself: "so how many times have you proved to yourself, little girl, that you don't like smoking? Never should have started." 

"Oh no, it's gone!" Her bag dropped on the floor. That night she didn't sleep too well.

From now on she took that street every day, the lonely mitten in her bag. She knew,there was something coming. Although her hands were cold, she refused to get another warm pair.

One day she knew, what had to be done and as she was walking down that street, wearing just one mitten, someone slid a woolly hand into hers and slowed down to her pace, breathing heavily. She now felt butterflies and knew she won't have to feel the cold any more.

"Half Light" or "The Lack Of Ideas For A Suitable Title For This Blog"

Pt. 1

Remember, I've once (or maybe twice, perhaps even more times, but you know me..) told you about that look. Half-hidden behind the hair, accompanied by a mischievous half-smile - the face of a mean person if you weren't to know better. Or so you think.
It follows you, you can feel it creeping up your back while you're not looking. Or so you hope, but you'll never know.
This I dedicate to you, the person I'll once know better of. Or so I think.

Pt. 2

I thought it would be an extraordinary day. Before I fell asleep at around 6 this morning, watching some strange, arty French comedy, I was absolutely sure of it.
I imagined I would wake up and have some fabulous superpowers that would allow me to start on all of those things I want to and have to do, allow me to finish the ones I have yet to finish. I also imagined I was back in my happy place, it was a sunny Sunday and we were getting ready for a swim in the cold waters of Simon's Cove. Not a worry in the world.
Now you can imagine my surprise after waking up at 3 in the afternoon and finding out it will be yet another windy, rainy, absolutely miserable October evening. See - I can't even say day, because I had already slept through most of it.
I haven't done anything worth mentioning besides having 6 mugs of coffee and I probably won't either.
The leaves on the trees outside my window are all turning first yellow, then red and then dirty brown, after which they'll slowly float down, down, down.. all that while I do absolutely nothing!
I'll be leaving you now and hoping for tomorrow to be nicer to me, to you and everyone else in the whole, entire, lovely, fascinating, absolutely brilliant world I never got to know better. Not today anyways.

Oktoobrilaste karskuskuu!

Here I am, after just having recieved a call from Anna, inviting me for a non-alcoholic beer, a cigarette and a few games of table football (which we are very lousy at) in Rokiklubi. Unfortunately I'm at my parents place again.
October is the sober month. We made a deal that we won't have any alcohol and are only allowed to smoke one cigarette every day. For 31 days. I'm quite positive I'll succeed, we'll see about Anna. If she goes wrong, I'll probably follow her, though. Since we're the only 2 people agreed to the pact. Well it was our idea from a night out, just the two of us, so no surprise there really was no-one else to claim to it. Kaisa wanted to have a day a week for drinks and wondered if she could keep her cigarettes from weekdays for the weekend, but I think that would lead anyone astray after the first weekend, so at least I didn't agree to it. I don't think she's prepared to join us just yet.
They were laughing. "You - you'll be drinking in no time, you'll never succeed!" I'll show them. My "friends" with no faith in me whatsoever. I suppose I have given them reason for doubt, especially when I went out on the 30th of September to celebrate the end of the alcohol era for a month and got back home at around 5 in the morning, reeking of cigarettes and beer, not feeling so well 5 hours later, getting up for work.
I'll show them!
Alex is back! He's actually changed, more active than ever and there's something about him I can't put my finger on. I was very insecure around him before, but something else has changed - we have some sort of a routine. I see him every day from Monday to Friday, I put him in the bed for his afternoon nap and I take him to most of his therapies and swimmings and whatnot.
I think it was the first time he fell asleep with me putting him to bed that changed it all for me. It's also lots easier now that we've trained him out of the nappies. I'm really sad now that it did start raining the day I started minding Alex again - we probably won't be able to go and jump in the leaves since they're all wet. We'll wait and see.
He'll be 2 years old tomorrow! Party!
I still love and miss Gavin so much it sometimes hurts! He won't hear that from me, though, because being rejected by him for the second time would hurt a thousand times more than the first time did! Let me be happy thinking about all the great times we had before I left, let me have that.
It's funny - I've always thought I've felt like that, but this is the first time I know it's for real!
Autumn - the time for being apart.

The Fall

It's finally here! We picked the winter apples today and put them in the cellar. The windows get shut before bed-time, a rather sensible thing to do considering the ground was frosted for the first time this morning. The cat is fat and the dog is growing his winter coat on, I got new pairs of woollen mittens and socks from my granny. A neighbour said she saw two squirrels yesterday, running up and down the two big oaks just outside our garden gate. I'll keep my eyes open for them! The preparations are on!
Haven't seen the rain for quite a while now, which is quite a pleasant surprise. Bet you it'll be back, though, by the time I'm starting my job as the babysitter again. Which will be on Monday, after two weeks of "holidays". Alex and Katre will be back from the rehabilitation centre. I'm really praying for a big change from those two weeks, but inside I know, it doesn't work like that. It's just too hard to see how Alex wants to do all those things by himself he should be able to, but isn't.
Can't wait for the day the leaves are all down from the trees and piled together and I can take Alex and some friends and go to Kassitoome and jump in them!
I'll go now and have an idyllic moment on the balcony with a cup of hot tea and a travel magazine, trying to figure out how can I get someone to just take off and travel the world with me.

God, make up your mind

God, make up your mind
Do you wanna play fair?
Or should I take what's mine?
Like everyone else..


Last night was the perfect time for clean sheets.
These will sound like the most impossibly meaningless acts, but they meant the world to me!

First I cut my hair. After the shock of having very short hair for most of my time growing up, I promised myself to never let it happen again. Here I am, looking like Marie Fredriksson, with chocolate-brown hedgehog on top of my head.

Before that, actually, I cleared my laptop of music. To be exact I lifted it over to Reikos PC for a while so that I could perform a format C on mine. I'm glad me and him have very similar tastes in music, otherwise I'd still be here, lifting everything around with a 3 GB memory stick. I had been collecting music for 2 years and believe me, I deleted a BIG part of it! It was kind of like cutting off my hair, so the actual cutting them off that occurred wasn't half as painful.

Maybe I should take out the bin with the hair, it really hurts to look.

Here I am - hairless, musicless and clueless.
Feeling like a boy today. I think I'll go out, buy myself a skirt and a CD to cheer me up.

Do you want to talk about it..?

I'm rediscovering my old love, Porcupine Tree. Had already forgotten that they released an album last year. I knew about it, but never got the chance to listen. Fixing that mistake now.

Back at my parents place after two weeks, a bit of fresh air and walking around with bare feet. Have to go back to Tartu on Thursday and I don't want to! It's too nice here. Morning coffee on the balcony accompanied by birdsong, my cat and dog. The dog behind the gate, though, because him and the kitty don't get along.

I've started the course and I'm absolutely loving it! The people doing the classes know what they're talking about and the overall atmosphere in the group is good, mostly, because most of the people there know a fair bit about the whole topic already. Although I must say that 30 women in one room is never good, because someone always has something to say, even when there's really nothing to say. Basically they cannot shut the fuck up : )

Today at home it's just me, my two sisters and Alex. Da's working and ma's at a health spa somewhere for the week. It's kind of nice, we have the lunch at our grandparents place, go about our own business all day long, simply relax. No pressure. There always seems to be more to do when the parents are around, but we don't think about it when they're not.

They're building another house next to our one at the moment. Our parents are. So when that's ready, mum and dad are moving in there and leaving this one for us, the kids. It will be cool, living with your parents as your neighbours. I can already picture myself waving at them, working in the garden, from our balcony while having a glass of wine, asking if they'd water our flowers and mow our lawn as well while they're at it. : D Still, it will probably be the other way around.

Cigarette time now.

Good old times.

I really enjoy these little moments that stick with you, however meaningless. Nice people. Emotions connected with strangers. Observing.

This young man. I used to be on the same bus with him quite often. Eyes meet. Every time he got out one stop before me. Jalaka. One day I smiled at him after he left the bus and looked at me from the wet asphalt.

I'm walking fast, as if in a hurry, avoiding the puddles. To get home faster, I need to cross one that is almost the size of a small pond. I find a good edge, jump on an unmelted block of ice and from there.. splash! I'm in the mud, laughing mad! Never happier!

I love not being able to find two socks from the same pair.

Don't you think that you should meet all the people in your life while playing the game of turning the blanket around and all of a sudden you're being told: "You have sexy toes!"

Why do I always look the best when I'm planning to spend the night in, listening to music and reading a book?

I love it when I'm on the window, it's in the middle of the night and it's dead quiet on the right and you can hear the snow melting due to the rain coming down on the left.

I love waking up and seeing someone has thought of me while I was asleep.

I love (and this one's for you, Jev!) having a cigarette and a cup of coffee on the window while it's lashing down outside!

.......

Feel that, see that..

The smell of freshly cut grass.
The colour of sunset in a pine forest.
The taste of fresh strawberries from grandmothers garden.
The sound of grasshoppers in a warm night.
The feeling of dewy morning grass against my feet.
My favourite summer.

Take me to the sea!

Anyone? I miss the ocean! Never understood how it´s possible before it happened to me. Surely, brought up in the middle of nowhere, completely landlocked, what do you expect. Listening to Anto´ and it´s making me melancholic, reminds me of the last night I went partying in Clonakilty. Or to be exact, the morning after, walking home from a strange houseparty, having the best fifteen minutes alone with the town. Just me and Clonakilty. You know that when it´s time to leave, you see everything in a new, usually even a better light.

There´s new moods in the room! I´m getting dancy with Elder.

Sipping coffee from a big red cup, having a ciggy on the window. It´s very.. how can I put it.. I suppose it´s as cliché as you can get? Okay, maybe not that extreme, but close enough.

Had my first day working in the pub yesterday. Serious shake in the hands, I kept doing the same mistakes, but all in all, I suppose it wasn´t half bad. I still seriously suck at pulling a pint of lager. It´s not even a pint, actually, it´s 0.5 l and we only have 3 beertaps. I never got a hang of it, even after working in a pub in Ireland. Although it was only for a month, should have been enough time for practicing the fine art of it. Wish we had Guinness here, I´m good at pulling a nice pint of stout.
It´s well cool working there, though, because before leaving Estonia, I practically lived in that pub for three years. I´m really thinking of organising live music nights there. The place is tiny, but they used to have musicians there every now and again, it´s possible. Should ask Gavin if he´d come and do a sitting room session for us. :)

It´s well nice to be back in the "big city". Not even half a city, really, with it´s 102,414 citizens. 102,415 now that I´m back. Tartu is the second biggest place in Estonia and it is the place i´m proud to call my home, although I spent most of my life 100 km southwards before coming here 5 years ago.
The first thing after I got back here on Saturday was to take a walk around Toome Hill. Tarbatu, the ancient fort built on it at around the 6. – 8. century, is where Tartu began. Now it´s a huge, pleasant park that seems to get you anywhere in the city you happen to be going. As soon as the grass is dry, it´s also full of people emerging in all sorts of social activities, mostly drinking.

Well, I´m off to ’doing stuff’ or ’running errands’ now, whichever tickles your fancy. They´d better not call me in for work today, I need a day to recover and lose the shaking in my hands.
Huh!

PS: going to the market and talking to the old ladies really pays off, one of them sent me a bottle of homemade wine last Saturday.

Such a perfect day

You are so full of positivity that you already feel happy for the people who get to share this day with you. If only for a minute. You feel like you've found the meaning of your life and it is to make people spot all the pretty little nonsense-seeming details that eventually paint the big beautiful picture that is their life. You feel like you can not hold this feeling inside you for another minute or you're simply going to run outside and tell the first soul you see, shout out that it's perfect!
You wake up at half six in the morning with a bit of a shock that you actually want to jump out of bed straight away so you do it. The grass is still dewy, but you know that the sun has been shining strong for a while. It will be another hot day.
Your friends who have stayed the night come back to life about an hour later, you have already cleaned up the empty bottles and slightly embarrassing display of general boozy night debris. You feel better although your parents have already seen it and they only laugh at you, you're still young and this time there was no baby sleeping in the house. besides they were happy that I woke up at home and didn't stay somewhere else again.
You have a coffee with your friends, then a second one, a chat, a cigarette, maybe a bite to eat. You don't feel like eating this early, really.
Your friends leave and you have some me-time, old newspapers, juice, Jeff Buckley, Milosh, Gavin Moore.
You give a hand to your dad, lifting heavy wooden scaffolding, feeling loved when he gives you his working gloves so you wouldn't get splinters. His palms are too hardened for that already or so he says.
Your mum arrives home from the market and gives you a mission. Take the lilies and the watering can and visit the graveyard. You grab them and set off in your light summerdress floating around you but you don't get far before your neighbour from the house across the road, a nice lady in her seventies, calls you over for a chat. You haven't met her in a few years and she barely recognizes you, you couldn't remember her more clearly, though. She's got so old. Deep lines in her face, showing her real age, but in her heart she hasn’t aged a day. You talk about flowers and she tells you stories of your grandmother, whose grave you're going to visit. How she used to tell your neighbour what a good girl you are. And how much you read. She was proud of you. Sometimes you think whether she would still be proud of you now, nine years after her passing away.
One way to get to the graveyard is to take the walk through the woods. The birdsong and the mosquitoes and the grasshoppers and the rays of sun shining in through the trees, the wild strawberries and the blueberries. You remember how you used to pick them and put them on a straw, just like beads. Then you went to your grandmother and you put the berries in a bowl and your grandmother would take out the small 3-litre container, which she’s had for as long as you can remember, it’s always been full of milk, too, as it is this time, and generously, with a scoop, lifts milk on your biggest treasures. Every now and again, you might feel like adding sugar to your berries, too, but I think not this time. Not in this memory.
You find the burial plot and arrange the lilies into the vases. Then you take the watering can and head to one of the hydrants on the side of the so-called main road of the cemetery. It’s a beautiful place, really, in the middle of a smallish forest. Big trees guarding the sleep of our ancestors. The sounds in there make you want to sit down and have a moment with your thoughts, or to just listen to the wind in the treetops and if you’re quiet enough, a woodpecker arrives and maybe a squirrel. You know why you didn’t take the dog today.
On your way back the rusty iron crosses, scattered around, unaligned, surrounded by high grass, forest flowers and some trees. No one ever steps there, this is real sacred ground. Who is buried there - even that no one knows any more. Rays of sun from between the trees are giving that piece of land a magical glow. You don’t even want to leave through the gates that are now right in front of you.
You almost run to your grandparents place, sit them down and ask them to tell you stories. You have heard them all a hundred times before, but today they all sound brand new to your ears.

Where the wild mushrooms grow

I feel kind of guilty announcing that I managed to wake up with a hangover both Saturday and Sunday mornings. You see I made myself a promise that I'd be taking everything I do more seriously after returning to Estonia, but I took the piss out of the calm, relaxed weekend with the family by going on the piss with my good friends instead. So much for gaining responsibility.
Must admit it was tons of fun, though!
Friday saw us (me, Reiko, Liisa, Raigo & Kristjan) gather around the fire outside with meat, sausages, red wine and rum and the hangover that followed wasn't funny. Although the night before was with it's scandals and relationship troubles and this and that.
I had to get up at 6 in the morning on Saturday to go to the market again. With throbbing temples and dry mouth and rumbling stomach. It was fun again though.
At around 2 in the afternoon I got my mum to drive me to where the Southern Estonian Rally was taking place. Our last nights gang was there already, all rallied up. Raigo, Reiko and Kristjan are the biggest rallyfans ever, filming everything. So the the Three Wise men neglected us and it was me and the girls. I was expecting a boring afternoon and it probably would have been, but the DragonLady appeared. She's apparently former Miss Võrumaa, a middle-aged, single and very bitterly lady with nothing else to do in life than give out to the others. It came out that we had been sitting on her land, watching the rally and she had a few things to say to me. Only me she picked out, though, the others blasting loud music and having a BBQ right next to us she left alone. All I did was trample down her uncut grass (as did absolutely everyone else) and picked a wild flower while she was sitting on a pile of earth next to where I did it. Now if I had known she wasn't just watching the rally but weeding her garden as she put it, I would have said "hello", but i didn't and lots of fun for the rest of the rally was guaranteed. It's a long story, but everyone witnessing also said I had been in the right, so I'm not gonna go into it any longer. But I'm still very passionate about it because firstly, it was fun to have those arguments and secondly I cannot believe how someone her age already can still be so stupid and childish.
Anywho..
After the rally we all went for a swim, then I went to the sauna. At around nine it was time for me and Kristjan to start with the alcohol again. A bottle of not-so-good-tasting vodka called "Katjusha" later we were quite wasted (at least I was), ther Reiko and Liisa arrived. I remember bits of it, but the next thing then is waking up in the morning with a very bad taste in my mouth, but generally not feeling that bad at all. It's been proved many times before anyways that vodka leaves you feeling quite human-like in the morning after.
So as not to waste the day on laying in bed, we decided to head to the woods again for mushrooms. This time we weren't as lucky as the last, but the sauce I made (yet again the worst cook in the company gets to practice and I must say that mushrooms are far too rare for us to let me practice with them) was fairly edible.
I finished my day with cleaning up Kristjan's apartment after reikoLiisa had gone home and Kris to bed on a very full stomach.
Bring on next weekend, I'm already feeling too sober!

TOO MUCH GOOD MUSIC....

....my head is going to explode!

Oh and I couldn't get Alex to sleep. It was me, Alex (my nearly 2-year-old nephew) and Liisa, my friend. My sis had gone to the forest to pick another batch of berries (we're like squirrels collecting winter supplies) and I had the mighty job of putting Alex in bed for his afternoon nap.
So I fed him, changed the nappy and took him to bed with me. Liisa stayed outside, sunbathing. He was almost asleep when Liisa came in to say she's heading home for her afternoon nap. And it did the trick. He started crying. And there was no stopping, because he all of a sudden realised, that mammy was not around!
So I danced around with him and sang and played and got him happy again and went for another try. As soon as we hit the bed, crying started again. I pulled out The Sheep and my best impressions of animal voices and we played with the remote controls in the livingroom. That was an hour and a half after we first tried sleeping and he was hungry again. Mostly because the first time he was too busy fooling around and the eating didn't work out too well.
We had another round of lunch and tried sleeping again.
Nothing.
Remote control seemed to calm him down the most.
Sister, where are you!?
Two and a half hours after we started the sleeping saga, his mammy arrived home, we were still on the sofa playing with the remote control, she took him to bed and three minutes later he was asleep.
We'll do it again tomorrow.

By the by, tomorrow is Market Day again ;)

Market cred

My family has been growing cucumbers for the past 15 or so summers. Those short ones, you know. As soon as I was tall enough and able to count, I was put behind the counter at the farmers market as the talkative and friendly kid out of the three of us to sell them. That makes it so that I've been earning market cred for about the past ten years.
I got up at six this morning, we packed the cucumbers and scales at the back of my dads car at 6.45 and was on the market by seven.
What you do is put up the scales, arrange the best looking cucumbers neatly to the front of the case and then you go browsing around. You see the first half an hour before customers arrive everyone is very sly about the price they put on their products. Whether the cucumbers are gonna be 20 kr. per kg or 18. That was the case today. They might tell you that they'll sell them for 20 and that's what you're gonna price them but when you leave (and their stand is in front of you) they put up a sign saying 18. And you wonder why you get no customers.
If your product is good, and I'm proud to say ours is, you get your loyals. They know they'll always get fresh cucumbers for a good price. In a small place like Võru and Võru County, the word gets around and people come to the market and buy your stuff because their neighbours granddaughters mother-in-laws postman said it was good and that the girl selling them gave him or her 3 cucumbers extra.
At about half seven, the market is officially open. Then you sell. If there's anyone to sell to.
You find out that you're not selling because the creepy looking man in front of you has lowered the price so you do that too and sell again.
There's some characters on the market.
You get your regular old women with the flowers and the dill from their garden. They've been to the market for at least 40 years already and they have the most market cred. They could tell you by heart how much a kg of cucumbers cost on the 11th of June in 1978. They also know your grandmother and what you do on your free time. and how many boys you've kissed behind the community centre corner. They have lots of market cred, community cred and they actually have all sorts of cred, the old women.
Then you get your typical farmer with wellingtons, selling potatoes and fresh peas in pods and he usually smells of pigs or any other farm animal, too. They're not that bothered over selling anything themselves, wives and children are there for that. They usually wander around and chat to the old ladies looking for information about last Saturdays market. They couldn't make it because a pig went into labour (or maybe the wife, again) and they now have 16 piglets (and six children, big families in Estonia are still generally quite small). They have normal credit.
Serious market fish come every day, even on the days there's no market and it's raining frogs. Then they sell frogs. They appear to have cred, but mostly in the eyes of the lady who collects money for the desk you sell from because they give the lady money and lots of free goods. Most people don't like them, they always bring the prices down unnecessarily early.
Young eurofarmer couples usually selling tomatoes. They're totally harmless, come in, do their thing and leave. They have no cred because no one knows anything about them other than what they sell, not even the old ladies.
There's always the graveyard plant salesmen and second hand clothes and someone at the gates offering free kittens. They're random, no cred either.
My mum creates a completely different group altogether, she has lots of cred and it simply expands to me as well.
When you go to the market, wrap yourself in as if you were going to a skiing trip, even though it's July. Seriously cold! And there's a roof over us. And if you're going buying, not selling, take a wicker basket, it adds you market buyer cred.
I'm going again Thursday!

SouthSide2008

The Foo Fighters, Bellx1, The Chemical Brothers, Radiohead and our brave SouthSide crew!

Dear You!

It was so nice! First the festival and then the trip.
I flew to Germany on the 18th of June, met Selina and stayed at hers a few days, then drove down to the SouthSide festival with her, Ella and Jevgeni. Brilliant sunshine and almost untolerable heat for three long days filled with beautiful music and definitely not enough water providing facilities.

I'm sitting on the porch at the back of my parents house, Sufjan Stevens is playing a song called "Come on: feel the Illinoise! Part I: The world's Columbian exposition, Part II: Carl Sandburg visits me in a dream" How's that for a title! There's longer ones and all the songs on the album are equally fantastic! Everything is good and the general atmosphere is something close to idyllic.

The festival, then. The highlight of the first day was, as expected, Radiohead. I bought the last album (In Rainbows) and only gave it one chance back then, didn't take it in really, but they turned me back into Radiohead religion by playing bigger part of the album and it is good, you know!
The second day treated me to Beatsteaks, a german band whose live, although I didn't understand most of what their lead singer was saying, left me in the best spirits, near exhaustion and ready to dance on. Just the right combination for The Chemical Brothers! I'm in loss for words..
Third day started off with Bellx1, who were playing on the smallest stage inside a small tent for a small crowd. Great!
By that time, my camera battery was near death and I hadn't brought the charger, so more time to actually concentrate on listening and looking and dancing. I'm too hooked up on taking pictures and making videos most of the time, which is really annoying, I'd rather have the memories in my head. But then again, with a memory of a goldfish, I'm probably still better off taking the occasional photograph.
The third night ended with Foo Fighters, who were a big disappointment, to be honest. I was actually waiting for the gig to be over so I could leave, because they really weren't giving it their best.
Then there were Flogging Molly, who left me seriously bruised and with my dress ripped and Sigur Rós, simply beautiful, but too atmospheric for daylight and the heat, perhaps. All and all, it was great fun and the spontaneous "trash jam" that took place on the last night was so spot on. Everyone having a blast banging the hell out of empty 5-litre beer kegs and those big green plastic trash containers with whatever happened to be in hand and parading around, singing, chanting, generally having the greatest time!

After we got back to Selinas place, i fell asleep for 16 hours and would have slept more, if she hadn't woke me up.

Two days later, early in the morning, we headed South. Hitching. It only took us one day to get to the South-West corner of Germany and then, through France, to a gorgeous town called Berck Sur Mer in the North-West corner. Spent the day on the beach. My face got sunburnt. Unfortunately the mixture of occasional clouds and wind and cold water took the wish to go swimming away even from me, who usually (as histry has shown) doesn't back away from any kind of chance of a dip in the water.
That night we slept on a field. It was warm.

We already made it to Rotterdam on our third day. Which, as you might have already realized, didn't really give us a chance to look around and discover the places we drove through. A pity, but with the limited budget we were on and the heavy rucksacks we were carrying we kind of didn't feel like it anyways.
We stayed in The Netherlands for a week, though, so got a chance to see a bit of this and that. Rotterdam, Zandvoort, Haarlem and Den Haag, to be percise.
Spent two days in Zandvoort, visiting our friend Severine who we had first met in Clonakilty. She and her boyfriend also showed us Haarlem, where I would go shopping any day of the week, but preferably with money. Since I didn't have any, I wasn't enjoying the whole in and out of shops experience that much. But I'll go back. After I win the lottery, of course.
A day in Den Haag left me with the funniest tan lines ever. I'm really like a proper zebra or something like that. And so ridiculously brown, be jealous! Oh, and we went swimming and the waves were super and the water so warm and I didn't wanna come out at all!

It's getting dark here, it's 23:23, better put on the lights and go make coffee.
Right.
Aah, this is ridiculous! I now have no internet because i moved the laptop to the side a bit. For example I can only sit in a certain position in a certain place here outside so it'd pick up the wireless from who knows where.
Anywho.. lights are on, I have a BIG cup of coffee, woolly socks from the grannyfactory and a warm jumper (Nick, it's proven very handy, big cheers!). My coffee comes with honey from dads bees. Yum!

Where was I.. in case anyone's still interested in finding out what happened later.
It was a pity to leave Holland, but Berlin was to be reached and we did it in about 12 hours I think.
We were staying with a friend of Selinas there. He showed us around, took us to one of the markets they have around the city on Sundays that I'm so fond of. Then to the little beach clubs and underground places alongside the river that are gonna be torn down soon to make room for big corporate buildings. They're having last parties there at this period to protest and show their opinion, but it's not likely to change much.
Although I would have loved to stay, I left Berlin after two days, mainly because I was getting seriously homesick.
It was the week at my parents place that did it, playing with Alex, my nephew and getting the hang of family life again. And country life. With all the weeding and lawn mowing and the cherries are ready for picking now, we'll be making jam tomorrow. And in September, we're gonna start with homemade apple cider. Supplies for the hot days next summer.

Okay, so I left Berlin.. took a train to Frankfurt so that I could start hitching from there, but I never took into account that I could end up on the side of the motorway with nowhere to walk, trapped, basically. So there I was, ready to throw myself in front of a car to get out of my misery, when the motorway police pulled up next to me. After I had explained my sad story and big wish to get home, they took me to the border, which was only 2 km from where I was standing as it came out, and told me to never get lost next to a motorway in Germany again and basically to get the hell out of Germany and to the hands of polish lorry-driving perverts, but they said it in a nice voice.
There I was.. decided to sit down and have a ciggy, when a truck pulled up next to me and asked me where I'm headed. So I got a lift for about 80 km. By then it was getting fairly dark, but I was in high spirits and dancing and singing on the roadside with my thumb up and got a lift in about 2 minutes. Couldn't even finish a song, dammit!
The guy promised to take me to Warsaw where he lived. We arrived there 4 in the morning, so he decided to drive outside the city, about 50 km, where his country house was. I got to have a shower there, 9 hours of sleep and breakfast and then he took me a further 50 km towards Lithuania. And the whole time we weren't able to fully communicate because of the language barrier, which makes the whole thing even more beautiful. You get to see how your whole being and not just words can bring out the nicest side in a complete stranger.

Joni Mitchell is halfway through her "Blue" album, which will forever remind me of Zandvoort! My coffee's gone cold.. It's dead quiet outside, a couple of grasshoppers in the distance. You'd love it here!

Then I met The Pervert. A smallish lorry pulled aside and I got in, closed the door and he reached, grabbed my boob and smiled. I got off and showed him The Finger. And it was kind of funny then, because I've never been happier over someone grabbing my boob 3 minutes into our aquaintance. If he had had the chance to start driving first, I might have been in a spot of trouble.

From there on it went ridiculously smoothly, I was home in no time. Exactly 3 weeks after leaving. Short and cheerful!

It's just so upbeat, my whole life at the moment. Hope you can say the same about yours!

All the best,
Me.