The Friday Five for 27 January 2023
Posted on
Jan 27, 2023

The Friday Five for 27 January 2023

Answers to today’s questions at thefridayfive @ Dreamwidth.

1. Mysteries. Do you sleuth alongside Nancy Drew or Miss Marple? Fan of Nero Wolfe?

Oh yes! Mysteries/detective stories/crime thrillers are one of my favorite genre both to read and watch on TV. I always try to guess who’s the guilty one or what is going on and I’m pretty good at it after having read and watched for so long.

2. Plan on making a batch of chili? Have a top secret recipe to share?

Does this mean like chili con carne..? I don’t really like chili even the mild one is too hot and spicy for me so nope, no plans. I googled and apparently chili con carne is made with beans – I don’t eat beans but I do make a similar food except I use rice or macaroni or other pasta instead of beans. And no chili. But I’m not planning on making that one either in near future.

The next time actually I’ll cook something it’ll probably be pannulasagne which is an easy & quick version of lasagne. It’s made in the frying pan and takes about 30 minutes according to the recipes I’ve seen. I only discovered pannulasagne last week, haven’t had a chance to make it yet but can’t wait to try it out!

3. Does your car or did a family car have a name?

Nope!

4. Did you walk to school with your friends? Take a school bus?

Grades 1-6 I walked to school, often with my best friend but not always because we were on different classes (on the same grade) so our schedules didn’t always match. Grades 7-9 same thing, but school bus. If my best friend had a different schedule, I preferred to go it alone because the pupils on my same class whom I considered school friends lived in a different direction and the ones who went my way, I didn’t care about. I rather was alone after being in a class with 20-40 noisy acquaintances the whole day and I’d had my fill of it. I’m more of an introvert so the alone time was usually welcome after school days.

5. Ever have someone carry your books home from school?

Not the way this ask means, I think? As a romantic thing?

Not school books (because those I carried on my back in a backpack), but shopping bags sometimes. I did the shopping in the city center in the good shop which had the good bread, meats and cheeses because my best friend and I always went to a second hand bookshop on Fridays after school to buy comics – the bookshop also got newly released ones from the US) and the then I’d do the bread/meat/cheese shopping on the way home from the bookshop because it was on the way. My best friend a few times carried my shopping a lot of the way but only when I needed help – like that time when I had hurt the fingers of my left hand and it hurt to carry or even just hold things with it, or when I needed my good hand free to do something with it. I returned the favor whenever she needed help obviously. But mostly we carried our own stuff.

The Friday Five for Jan 20, 2023
Posted on
Jan 22, 2023

The Friday Five for Jan 20, 2023

Answers to this week’s questions over at thefridayfive @ LJ.

1. Who would you like to be able to get into contact with?

There’s no-one in particular I can think of that I’d like to get into contact with and can’t.

2. How do you make yourself go to sleep when you can’t seem to get to sleep?

If it’s a real bad insomnia night nothing can help except time and being awake long enough. Melatonin doesn’t work if it’s serious, and I can’t use sleeping pills.

3. What language(s) do you wish you could speak?

I’d really love to be fluent in French! Both speaking and reading, but especially fluent enough in reading to comfortably be able to read novels in French.

4. What is it about people that confused you the most?

How is it that we are so good at deceiving ourselves so well and ignoring things we don’t like to hear? That confuses me.

5. What major company do you despise the most?

I don’t despise any company, major or minor. Some I don’t like much or think are making stupid decisions but despise is too strong a word. I don’t have strong enough feelings about companies one way or another.

Friday 5 for January 20: Now I lay me down
Posted on
Jan 22, 2023

Friday 5 for January 20: Now I lay me down

Answers to this week’s questions over at f.riday.com

1. What keeps you up at night?

Sometimes it’s pain, sometimes restless legs and sometimes it’s Crohn’s Disease symptoms but mostly I have no idea! I just can’t fall into sleep, or can’t stay asleep and keep waking up every hour or two from light, poor sleep. Insomnia sucks.

2. How well do you operate on insufficient sleep?

Not very well. It feels like everything is difficult because I’m exhausted already when I wake up. Even every little thing takes a lot out of me. Luckily (I guess – I don’t know how I could work even part-time) I don’t work so I can do things at my own space and I make do.

3. Under what conditions do you get your best sleep?

These days it’s either when I’ve over worked myself during the day, or when I’ve been awake for 32+ hours in one run. Then I get the kind of normal, good sleep I used to have before all these illnesses.

4. What unusual places have you slept in?

Hospital, a tent while camping in a camping area, and in a train sleeping car when I was a little kid and we went to a holiday in Moscow back in early 1980s. Sleeping in the sleep car was exciting! So not unusual places at all.

5. What’s a good song about dreams or dreaming?

Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This by Eurythmics and Enter Sandman by Metallica are the ones that come to mind…. donno how good they are about specifically dreaming, but I do like both songs a lot!

Jo’s Daily Questions – January 17-31, 2023
Posted on
Jan 19, 2023

Jo’s Daily Questions – January 17-31, 2023

Jo over at Dreamwidth put together a list of daily questions for 2023 again  🙂 Here’s my answers to January 17-31 questions.

17 – Ditch New Year’s Resolutions Day: Do you make New Year’s resolutions? If so, how successful are you at keeping them?

I never have, not really. When I was younger, I sort of half-heartedly did but I wasn’t serious about it and didn’t even try to keep them. I don’t remember what the resolutions were.

18 – Thesaurus Day: Do you own a thesaurus? How often do you consult a thesaurus to find just the right word?

I do own ones both in Finnish and English, but I use the Internet for that now and have for more than a decade. About weekly.

19 – Popcorn Day: Do you like popcorn? What is your favourite topping for popcorn? Or do you prefer it plain?

Sure, I like it salty and nothing else. Traditionally popcorn is always salty here in Finland and that’s it. When my best friend and I were in London back in 1998, we went to the theatre and bought a big popcorn thingy to share. To my horror, the popcorn was sugared! It was absolutely horrible – it’s supposed to be salty! I couldn’t eat any after that first one, so my friend who isn’t as picky as I am, ate them all by herself but she didn’t love them either. It didn’t even occur to us popcorn could be something else than salty! Cultural differences, I guess. Continue reading Jo’s Daily Questions – January 17-31, 2023

Proud Of Myself!
Posted on
Jan 12, 2023

Proud Of Myself!

I’ve accomplished three extra things this week and I’m so proud of myself! As a spoonie it’s hard.

– On Monday I sent a message to my doctor through a health portal because just before Christmas I had learned that my Type 2 Diabetes medication will be discontinued this year (there are already difficulties getting it becaus of that). I waited this long to contact my doctor because the country wide national Reform of healthcare, social welfare and rescue services came into effect on January 1, 2023. Which slowed down non-emergency public health services after Christmas and official expressed wishes that things that could wait, would wait until after the New Year. I have enough of the old meds to last me about half-way through February so it wasn’t that an urgent matter and I’d figured I’d wait until they got the messaging feature to work on the new health portal. My doctor messaged me back today with details of a new medication to try so this thing is under control and I have a plan how to proceed!

– On Tuesday I defrosted my freezer 😀 I’d been pushing it off months but that morning at 7am, soon after I got up, I abruptly all of a sudden got the feeling saying “This is the day!! Today I will defrost my freezer.” Took about about 6 hours until it was all clean and dry and could be set to refreeze. It nearly killed me (well, it felt like it!) and I was dead on my feet the rest of the day. I was so exhausted that I went to bed at 7.30PM to read a bit and then turned off the lights at 8.00PM sharp and fell asleep literally at once. And I slept so well! I slept deeply for 6 hours straight without waking up once (99% of time I wake every two hours or so and the sleep quality isn’t great). A good night of sleep makes such a difference! I felt so much better yesterday than I normally do, just because of that abnormally good sleep.

Also, I remembered again why I hate defrosting my freezer: the drain which extends and is supposed to guide the water from the melted ice away into a wash basin or another container is 2cm too short to reach over the freezer’s bottom edge to accomplish its purpose and a lot of the water ends up on the floor instead of any containers no matter how I try to position them there *head-desk* Nice try engineers/designers but zero points! So defrosting involves a lot of towels and wring them them dry in addition to switching out the hot water containers and emptying out the melted water containers. Defrosting is a simple process but a lot of stupid work only because the damn drain is 2cm too short.

– Today (Thursday) I picked up a package from the post office, did some grocery shopping and then when I got home I got a feeling again: “Today is the day I’m baking herkkupulla – I guess a type of sweet rolls which I got the recipe from my Mom in December. It’s a tiny dough, 2dl milk and only about 5 dl flour; makes about 14 rolls so it’s perfect for me – I can’t do those 5dl doughs anymore. She had made them for her birthday and they’re so delicous! I’ve been meaning to make them for 3 weeks and today was the day finally. Just got them off the oven – hope they’re as tasty as Mom’s!

All this is abnormally much for one week – I’m usually too exhausted to do this much extra stuff on top of my normal stuff. But it’s nice to feel up to doing more – it’s so rare! Now I completely expect to have to rest for several days at least until after the weekend. I don’t have any extra stuff to do for the next week – if I did, I wouldn’t have done so much to avoid paying for it the days after.

I’m SO majorly happy and relieved about the defrosted freezer though! It’s been on my conscious for months! Now I don’t have to worry about it for a long while 😀