Category: Personal

Answers to today’s questions @ f.riday5.com

1. What is your favorite thing to learn about?

History. So many interesting periods and places to learn about!

2. What is your favorite thing to do with your friends?

Just hang together and talk, enjoy good food.

3. What is your favorite place you’ve ever been?

London.

4. What is your favorite way to relax?

It’s a tie between the answer to #2 and just being alone, reading a great book!

5. What is your favorite thing to cook?

I don’t like cooking (it’s just a necessary evil) but I love baking. Really love baking and it’s hard to choose favorite one, but I think it’s either a whipped cream layer cake with filling of whipped cream, fresh or frozen strawberries and banana slices, *or* a suklaatryffelikakku (chocolate truffle cake?) which is made of whipped cream and melted chocolate and not much else and freezed.

Answers to last Fridays thefridayfive questions from https://thefridayfive.dreamwidth.org/119060.html

1. When did you recently have the feeling, “Life is good.”

It’s been more than a decade. I don’t remember ever feeling/thinking that since I got ill.

2. Which do you need more, routine or spontaneity?

I’d say both. I need more routine when it comes to house hold stuff such as vacuuming. But I should also try to be more spontaneous. It’s just that most of the unplanned things in my adult life have been negative, not positive, so I don’t trust unplanned things.

3. Do you have a difficult or annoying neighbor?

Not right now. There used to be a sometimes-annoying neighbor who’d blast music and talk by shouting literally until 4am (sometimes until 7am) occasionally; no one slept those nights in my building. But that hasn’t happened in a year or so now *knock on wood* Maybe they’ve moved away?

4. What do you want to change about yourself?

The things I actually want to change about myself I can’t because they’re the effects of my illnesses… such as being exhausted all the time, and doing things being difficult because of it. I want doing things to be less energy sucking and easier.

5. What do you like best about where you live?

That it’s safe (both as in I don’t need to fear other people for the most part, and we don’t have natural disasters such as hurricanes or earthquakes), and my town has a good public transport system.

This week’s questions over at thefridayfive@DW is about dreams.

1. What was the last dream that you had about?

I’ve been seeing a lot of dreams again the last week or two. Usually 6-7 different dreas per night, but the only one from last night I remember is one about quicksand. The setting was a farm or a small community or a village in, like, the middle ages, and one day we suddenly realized that the quicksand nearby by the had dried up. While we were circling the quicksand area, trying to figure out why it had happened, people and animals drowned in the quicksand started to emerge from the sand, right as rain. One of the first was a pig which run away. At that point I woke up.

2. Does it hold any significant meaning to you?

I don’t think so. I’ve never seen it before (I have several repeating dreams). It’s also not a sequel or a prequel to any other dream.

3. Do you dream in color or black and white?

Color.

4. What is the most frightening dream you ever had?

I’ve never been scared by my dreams. They’re like the action/adventure/scifi tv shows and movies I love to watch and I never get scared by them. Some dreams are weird and don’t even have that dream logic, but none have frightened me.

5. Is there one dream that stays clear in your mind despite the fact it was more than a few years ago?

I have 4 or 5 such dreams, but the oldest of them is the elevator dream. I dreamed it many times in my teens… so 30+ years ago. In it, I enter the apartment building I lived the majority of my child/teenhood until early adulthood, step into the elevator and press the button for our level which is 3. But the elevator doesn’t stop at 3 and I think, oh okay, somebody’s called it to the top floor (5) – I’ll just get off there and walk two stairsways down to get to our level. But the elevator doesn’t stop at level 5 either – instead it goes through the roof of the building and shoots into the sky and keeps rising and rising and I can’t do anything. I wake up at this point.

I’ve always figured that dream meant I felt out of control in some way of my life. Later it occurred to me that it might have been to do with that my father was ill (brain cancer), and for about a year before he died, we knew it wouldn’t get better and he would die, that it was just a matter of time. It’s just that I can’t remember exactly when I started having this dream – was it before or after my Dad’s death? Because I can’t think of anything else in my life at that age that would make me feel out of control of my life.

The other dream that sticks particularly clearly with me I dreamed repeatedly in my early 20s and is a sort-of-but-not-really superhero dream. In it, I’m in my grades 3-6 school with other the other kids, when suddenly the teachers hurry everyone inside from the rocky play area, and lock all the doors and windows of the school. Teachers don’t know why, just that a general threat alert has been given and that everyone should go inside. A long time is spent waiting for what happens next, and guessing what is going on. Then a red poisonous mist descends outside, and the teachers tell us that the X-Men are fighting an enemy – it’s never clear whether it’s aliens or other mutants or what – and that only mutants can survive in the red mist. I wake up around this point of the dream. I kept seeing this dream maybe a dozen times throughout my 20s. The X-Men are obviously inspired by my reading the X-Men comics a lot in the 1980s/90s, and the red mist by the original tv series V and V: The Final Battle.

Jo over at Dreamwidth put together a list of daily questions for 2023 again  😀 Here’s my answers to the rest of the July questions.

17 – Tattoo Day: Do you have any tattoos? If yes, how many, what and where are they? If you don’t, would you ever consider getting one? Is yes, where on your body would it be, and what would you likely get tattooed? If no, why not?

Nope. Sometimes I entertain the idea of getting a small, delicate flower tattoo on my wrist. But whenever I think about it being forever for all purposes and practises, I think I won’t want to watch the same thing the rest of my life.

18 – World Listening Day: Rather than simply listening to other people talk, World Listening Day was created to draw attention to the way humans need to be listening to the world around us, including environmental awareness, soundscapes and acoustic ecology. What does the world around you sound like right now?

The fan is on. My backdoor is open because to get some fresh air in, and there’s some playing children sounds coming in from the yard. And also some metal work sounds from whatever is being done in the next apartment block or the childcare facility. They’ve been working there for about two weeks now, starting around 6.30am. There’s metal works sounds, and truck sounds, and other bizarre sounds but no people sounds and it’s all so weird. I think it’s the childcare facility, I’ve been trying to look while waiting for the bus but the trucks etc. move around so much that I’m ot sure whether it’s the apartment building or the childcare facility that’s having something done. Or it could also be the City doing municipal maintenance, upgrading or something.

19 – Daiquiri Day: Do you drink daiquiris, or any other cocktails? Do you make your own at home or are they something you reserve for an evening out at a restaurant or other social event?

I don’t drink alcohol. All of them cocktails, with alcohol or not, cost more money than I want to spend on what is basically juice or soda. Honestly though – I would like to try a fancy mocktail some time! It’d have to be a special special occasion though! Like getting permanent disability, retiring or winning millions in the lotto. Something good that happens only once in a life time! Continue reading Jo’s Daily Questions – July 17-31, 2023

This week’s questions over at thefridayfive 

It’s summer here, so I’m answering for summer!

1. How’s your summer (winter) going so far?

The con side – my sleep disappeared somewhere in mid-March when it got bright and sunny out. Have been sleeping poorly, or not at all, ever since despite having blackout curtains both in my bedroom and living room. Can’t wait for the dark fall so I can sleep again!

Otherwise summer’s been okay so far. We’ve only had one heat wave so far which lasted about 1,5 weeks. That time was hard but otherwise the weather’s been how I like it – not too hot in shade, a fresh breeze even if there’s no clouds and sun is shining but also often half-cloudy. Fingers crossed it’ll continue like this!

2. Have you made any special summer (winter) plans?

Nope. Other than enjoy as many and as much summer foods as I can.

Other thing I’d like to do is visit Mom a little more. I don’t do it as often as I used to because I don’t have a car anymore, and the bus trip and the time visiting easily amounts to so much that I often end up with a migraine attack once I’m back home. And I’m also tired a lot because of being in pain a lot. The summer before last was too hot to go anywhere (three months of unrelenting heatwave which is not normal for Finland). And Mom and her SO have been getting tired easier too the last few years (age and illnesses that required doctor’s appointments a lot last year) so that too. But now both of them are through their operations, have recupareted and feeling better. So maybe I could visit a few times over the summer this year. I WhatsApp and talk on the phone a lot with Mom, but it’d be great to see her in person too!

3. What are your traditional activities in summer (winter)?

Hiding from the sun and the heat.

4. Are there special summer (winter) foods or drinks you’re enjoying?

I eat obscene amounts of ice cream and ice lollies. Also lots of strawberries as-is with cream, or with ice cream, or with whipped cream and mud cake (the last one is a special treat). Also make some rhubarb pies and rhubarb soup to be had cold.

5. What is one thing you need to do this summer (winter)?

There’s nothing I “need” to do that I know of as I write this… but your never know with the bureacracy of being chronic illness patient on unemployment. KELA or TE-toimisto might want to decide to want something at any time!

Otherwise, I’d like to buy garden scissors with those long handles where you can cut crass and other growths with them while standing up. But they’re pretty expensive for my budget so I’m not sure if I can talk myself into using some of my tax return for that purpose. Either way, I should cut the growth. It’s not crass, other bigger stuff that I don’t know the name of, the sort of things you’d find in a meadow more like because it used to meadow where these houses were built. I just hate cutting with my current scissors, because I hate kneeling/crawling in the ground because I can’t get back up on my feet easily and so I don’t do it and so my tiny little backyard (about 1 meter + 2 meters) is overgrown. It’s just that this overgrowing has started to bother me the last couple of years, and now I think when the backyard is cut, it looks so neat and tidy. Before I didn’t care. Now I sort of do. But you have to cut it so often that I don’t do it because I have to get on my knees every time.