Another Christmas

And once again another family Christmas is spent. My family is very dysfunctional but I still love them all in my own way. I didn't get to choose them and they definitely did not choose me. Sometimes I wish I could simply swap my my family, apart from my younger big sister maybe. She has always been my favorite. Probably because she is the underdog of our family, kinda like me. She is the underdog and I am the black sheep.

I find family dynamics pretty fascinating though, I guess that is one of the reasons why I don't hate my family. They are dysfunctional indeed, all of them, but they are also pretty interesting personalities. I moved away from my family when I was fifteen and since then I have been more like an outsider than an active member of my family. It is sad but it also gives me certain perspective. They always have some kind of drama going on with each other, but I don't have to be part of it. I just hear the gossip though my mother or my underdog sister and sit back and enjoy it.

In a way I don't consider them to be my real family. It is hard to explain. They are my parents and my sisters are my sisters but because I am away so much and only speak to my mom regularly, they feel more like some distant relatives than my immediate family. I consider my boyfriend, my roommates and our dogs as my real family. Sometimes I even feel more close to my coworkers than to my family. I see them more often, I speak to them more freely and they know me better than my family. I guess that is also why I love my commune lifestyle, it just gives me the sense of real family its own way.

I think I am more happy now than ever before. I feel like I have finally achieved something I have been longing for so long. I have always felt like I am missing a family, but now I finally have something I can call as a family. Our commune certainly has that vibe going on. I feel like I am the mother and my boyfriend is the daddy, and I do all the motherly chores and take care of others. T.R.is our lovely long-haired teenage daughter that is still a little dependent or us, and M.R. is more like our adult child who longer needs us, being completely independent and all, but who still chooses to live her family for financial reasons. Yes, it's more of a family than anything I have ever had before.

The reluctance

Over a year ago I met my old school friend by accident. I had not seen her for years, I think it had been like seven years since I had seen her the last time. But there she was, suddenly, in the same train with me. We quickly chatted, shared quick updates about our lives, ans agreed to stay in touch and meet up again.

Well. I am not exactly good at organizing things. All I ever want to do is to stay home with my boyfriend. I don't want to go outside my own little home. And she was bad at organizing things as well. Whether she was too busy or I was too busy or it was simply too cold to meet up. So eventually it just slipped away and I let it slip. It was me who stopped responding to her messages.

And I've always been that way. I like the idea of having friends but I never want to actually see those so called friends. It's too much trouble. I am seriously happy that my best friends works in the same team with me so I get to see him all the time during my office hours. I can't even imagine how rarely we would actually meet if we didn't work together.

And as much as I like the idea of having friends I also miss my old friends. Old colleagues, old school mates, old best friends, ex everything. I often feel like reaching out to them, trying to catch up, trying to meet up. But the reason why I don't do that is that I actually don't want to do it. Not really. I like the idea inside my head but the reality of sitting in front of something you lost contact long time ago is kinda dreadful. I simply hate small talk and I feel relieved whenever I eventually lost connection with someone. One person less to keep in touch with, yay.

Sometimes I wonder where this all ends up. I am indeed a human and I need to have connection with others. I am too social to be an actual  hermit. But I want to keep my social circle as small as possible. I am perfectly happy sharing my life with my boyfriend. I am perfectly happy that the two people I see outside my romantic relationship are my two roommates sneaking in or out their own rooms. What I am trying to say is that I move on, constantly. I move on and leave people behind and move on and on. I think it is normal, I am sure it is. But I feel like nobody in my life really stays forever. They come and then they go. And I let them go, I happily let them go. I am happy when they are gone because it's a lot less work.

And I wonder if it is some form of laziness. The reluctance to make effort to keep in touch with people. Should I make more effort? I just don't know how. I am way too busy doing absolutely nothing. These are just some things I ponder inside my head. Having friends and being too busy for them. Maybe I should join Facebook? Is that how normal people do it?

Professionally stuck

I have finally grown up, at least to a certain point. My own career finally interests me. It's not about having a job now, it's about professional growth. I am tired of being stuck in an entry-level job, tired of repeting the same tasks over and over again every day. I feel like I need to move somewhere, to get somewhere eventually.

I love my current job and the company I work in. The problem is that there is nowhere to go, and therefore no future. There is no real career path there. Where I am now is where I will be forever. And I don't want to do the same kind of work forever, I already feel that I have been doing it forever.

I have been fortunate enough to explore my passion at work, to figure out what it is that I really enjoy doing. And I think I have a pretty solid picture now. The problem is that I just don't know how to get there. I lack the proper education but also the necessary experience. There is no other way to describe the feeling than "it sucks". It sucks to realize that you have been doing your entire life the wrong thing. I went to the wrong school, studied the wrong things, took the wrong job, ended up in a hole that might be just a bit too deep to get out. It doesn't prevent me from trying though.

Nothing does.

I'll keep on networking, applying for different kind of jobs, trying to get every experience I can. Maybe eventually I get there, or at least somewhere.

Thirty

Today is my birthday. Happy birthday to me. The first blog post about my own birthday was ten years ago. It's sometimes very hard to believe that I have had this blog over a decade now. My blog has seen so many of my birthdays since. I've described my birthday parties here, whenever I have had them, and my birthday presents too. A lot have happened during all these years. In a way I am still the same person, and in a way I am not.

I still don't feel like an adult, I'm not sure if I ever will. I consider that to be a good thing. I never really want to grow up. I am happy being this way, feeling young and utterly confused about everything. I've move forward, taken some steps bavkwards and then moved forwards again. That's life, as it is. I've ended relationships, said goodbye to fading friendships, found new love, found new friends, started new things and new chapters.

I am grateful that I have kept my blog all these years, even though I have some years missing here and there. I feel grateful that I have this chronology of my life. I can recall events that I have forgotten, remember feelings, be sad about certain things, be happy about others. This is a gift, truly, and a best birthday gift I could give myself. Sometimes blogging is hard for me. I feel it gets harder the older I get. I am less careless about the things I write, censor myself more. I'm worried about coworkers, future employees finding my blog and expecting me to be the same person I was ten years ago, or even five years ago. I do change, like all humans too. I wish I could let go of my constant fear of being discovered one way or another. I am writing under this pseudonym, but today's technology just makes it harder to hide.

But do I really have anything to hide? Other than my past. But is my past worse than my current moment. Or is my past worse than my future? I don't know. I am just afraid of people making assumptions based on the stupid childish things I've written ten years ago. It's hard to determine the fine line between the person I used to be and the person I am today.

Sometimes even I am consufed about the person I am today. Who am I in the first place? What is the essence of me? When I was younger, like in my teens, I thought that being thirty means being an adult. That by the age of thirty I would have it all figured out. I'd have the education, the career, the everything. Little did I know, indeed. Being thirty is no different than being twenty, at least in my book.

I do have the education now though. And I am actually trying to get back to school, to get a higher education. I don't really need it, but I am thinking why not. I can study while I'll work, I should be able to arrange it. I think getting another degree could give me a kick to some new direction. I am not sure if I need it or want it, but it's good to have some options open and explore new possibilities. It can't hurt. Now let's keep fingers crossed that I get accepted.

And the career. A career. I am not sure if I have a career, but I do have a job. And it's a job I enjoy throughly most of the time. I have responsibilities, projects, challenges, all that. I respect and appreciate my newest boss and I like my teammates. I even get to work together with my best friend. I wonder what else could I want, expect the three things I can't get: a transfer to another team, a bigger salary and a big ass promotion.

And my life. I think it's getting sorted out for once. For the first time I am on medication. Antidepressants and anti-anxiety. It's time to tackle this son of a bitch depression. I've suffered way too long and way too much. I am also waiting to get into psychotherapy. I am too old to fees ashamed for being such a mental case. Sometimes I feel that my blog is mostly a history of my depression too. Occasionally here and there it shines trhough even though I've never really directly addressed that. Sometimes I wonder why it took me so long. And sometimes, still, I wonder I need that at all. I can't decide. Sometimes I am fine, sometimes I am not. But when I am not fine, it damages things and it bothers me too much to just ignore it.

Love. There is a line in one song I like that goes "your last love is the best love". I don't necessarily agree with that statement. I loved my ex-husband and I still do. I cherish all the years we spent together and even the bitter end. I have no regrets, nothing. I still speak very highly of him and I get angry whenever someone tries to say something mean about him. None of this was his fault, he always tried his best. And I am not saying it was my fault either. It's just the way things went and I am OK with that. I've moved on. And while I don't agree with the "your last love is the best love", I feel that I have found something that simply works better for me. My relationship with my boyfriend is not better or worse, it's just profoundly very different; different personalities, different dynamics. I love my boyfriend very deeply and very passionately and I feel confident he brings me joy and happiness for many, many years to come.

I used to own an apartment. I've taken a step back and now rent one, along with my boyfriend and roommates. It doesn't bother my slightly. I feel my attitude towards owning things has moved to another direction. Material things mean very little to me, only care about the very obligatory things. I need clothes on my body, but I don't care them too much. The same goes for everything, really. What I need to own, I own. But I've lost my interest of owning fancy things or things that fall more into the luxury department. In a way I'd be interested to become more minimalist, but at the same time I feel too lazy to go through my things and downsize. I don't mind having the things I have now even though I don't need them all. I feel that the things I get now are more imporant. I don't want to clutter my life with stuff. Stuff doesn't correlate with happines, that's what I have learned.

I've lost friends, both best friends and acquaintances, during this past ten years. They come and go. I am generally just really bad at keeping touch. I know that using things like Facebook might help, but I am still against Facebook. It doesn't interest me one bit. I have no interest of keeping up with friends who I am no longer really friends with. I don't care about their babies or their fancy jobs. It would probably just make me feel bad about myself. Or maybe it would be make me feel guilty of being the one who faded away. I am always able to make new friends and I feel that the friends that I have made during the last few years are better than the ones I have ever had. Occasinally I feel this flutter of nostalgia, thinking about people I used to know and care about, but what I have learned that reconnecting with others is not as easy as it might sound. People  change, me included. It's better to keep things in the past and just have the nice memories of things that used to be.

Now I realize this post is turning to a megapost. It's not a bad thing. Actually this is the very thing that I wanted to do. I wanted to capture the current. What I am right now, how things are in my life in this very moment. So when I turn fourty, I can reread this and write a new one. I have no idea where my life leads me next. Maybe after another decade I live in another coutry, speak different language, have a completely different career and completely different social circles.  Who knows. I never expected to find myself here and yet here I am.

XYZ

I would love to blog more about my life in a commune, but I feel there is nothing interesting to tell. To me living in a commune is just living. The longer I live with the people I share the apartment with, the more ordinary and easy it becomes. It's like working with a team of people. You never take a moment at work to wonder how you ever end up working with those people, and especially you don't wonder why they work in the same place in the first place. Our living arrangement is the same to me. I no longer stop to think about these things as they have become so normal and ordinary to me. I never look at my roommates and wonder what they are doing in the same apartment with me. My boyfriend and my roommates feel more like an odd family, like people I expect to live with me. It's strange and completely normal at the same time.

Also, the longer I live with my boyfriend and my roommates the more I wonder why they are so many people who choose to live alone. In a way it makes sense to me, but most of the time it doesn't. I get the idea of freedom, the idea of doing whatever you want whenever you want. But more than freedom I enjoy the life around me, the living breathing human beings and the little noises and the little signs of things happening. Our apartment feels eery when I am home alone. It feels wrong, like its soul is missing and I can't get a rest. I'm not sure I could ever choose solitude. I like the feeling of not being alone. It gives me joy and comfort. I don't even need to see my roommates or my boyfriend, nor hear them, I just need to know they exist and it makes me happy.

I know I am strange girl and feeling strange things and living a strange life. But it suits me. It suits me just fine. And I feel that these are the best things that have ever happened to me. Life is full of surprises and I have come to realize that there are always more surprises around the corner, waiting for me. I can't really foretell where I end up. I just need to live it to see it.

I am now the kind of girl who runs half marathons

I ran a half marathon yesterday. I felt that maybe I should blog something about it, since most people consider it a quite big deal. I, on the other hand, have really mixed feelings now when I have actually finished it. It was just so much easier than I expected. I expected it to be kind of a struggle but in the reality it was just a really long run. I wasn't considerably different than my regular 10km runs.

I signed up in February. I wanted to sign up as early as possible so I wouldn't chicken out, plus it was cheaper the earlier you signed up. It took me a long time before I even started my running season this year. I am not a winter runner. I needed to wait until the ice and snow are all gone. And then I stopped running. Until I started running again. Seriously, this has been the worst running season in my life. And by life I mean these past years I have been actually running and not just imagining it in my little head.

But on the other hand this has been the best running season in my life. I finally got a running partner who is not far better than me. Just a little better. Good enough to get me out and running, to get me motivated, to make me work just a little bit harder. It also feels good to share the love of running with another thing you love.

I had hesitated. I had not been running as much as I should have. I had not really trained at all. My runs have been sloppy and all over the place. But the runs that I had, the good runs, they were really good. I got the flow, the feeling that I could go on forever. Other days I felt so good about going and doing the half marathon, other days I felt that it could never happen. I felt both of these outcomes were exactly as likely to happen.

But eventually my boyfriend managed to push me on the more positive side. Sometimes he seemed to be even more into the idea of me running the half marathon than I was. I wanted to do it for him too. So all his support wouldn't go waste. If I had put one of those "I am doing this for" signs on my back, my sign would have had his name on it.

So I ran a half marathon. That's 21.1 kilometers.  The first 10 kilometers were quite easy. I've ran 10 kilometers more times than I can remember. The next five kilometers weren't exactly bad either. I was mostly running on my own, no other runners nearby. I couldn't tell how many runners were running behind me or in front of me. I only saw a couple other runners in my second 10 kilometer lap. It was quite easy to achieve some kind of a flow when you just ran and followed a single chalk line on the ground. I didn't need to think about anything. I mostly admired the landscape. The sky was a really nice when the sun started to set. The sea was fabulous too. It was a really nice route to run and since it was new to me, I didn't exactly get bored either.

The first time I experienced something I could call as a minor struggle was in the 17th kilometer. My feet didn't hurt. I still felt pretty good considering that I had already run 17 kilometers. I was just somehow getting bored of the motion, bored of running. But the urge to do anything besides running wasn't really strong enough to stop me from running. I just thought to myself "When was the last time I couldn't run four kilometers?". Never, that is the answer. I can always run four kilometers. So I ran the final four kilometers, all the way to the finish line.

And the view from the finish line was beautiful. I just sat there, on a little piece of grass, eating a banana - even though I don't like bananas - and thinking to myself that I had just finished a half marathon. That was the only time I wished there was someone with me. I enjoyed running solo because I was able to run my own comfortable pace at all time... but while I was sitting there I wished there was someone sitting there and sharing the feeling with me. The trembling sore legs, the slowly steadying breath, being so sweaty you don't even know where to start, the everything. But at least I was able to share the moment with the beautiful landscape, while hearing the list of names of the people who finished after me.

It was easy. And then again not. Mostly easy, but there were moments. I wanted it to be a struggle so it would feel like a real accomplishment. I don't know what to make of it. I don't know how to be proud of something that felt so easy to do. I feel like I should be proud of myself but I just can't. I just did something I was very able to do and achieved it with almost no effort at all. I didn't train, I barely even ran. I didn't have any special diet, any special plan. I guess I should have had a goal or something. To make it a struggle. To make it something impossible to reach. Maybe next year. Maybe next year I try to run every kilometer one minute faster. That way I should be able to drop 21 minutes from my time. That's a struggle.

Either way. No matter how I feel about it. I am now an official half marathoner. I got a little medal to show for, though it doesn't say anything on it. Just the name of the race. Nobody knows whether I participated in the 5 kilometer walk or the half marathon. At least my race bib shows the real distance.

Now I have another race coming up; my third Midnight Run Helsinki. My boyfriend is participating too, I just signed him up yesterday. It's kinda weird to think about sometimes. That I am the kind of person who signs up and participates in races. Who knew? After all I was the girl who used to hate all sports. So I guess in that sense the half marathon was quite an achievement. I was definitely not born to run. I've had to learn how to be a runner, how to run, and how to keep running. That is still the real struggle. How to keep running despite of everything.

Vad i helvete?!

Be careful what you wish for, they say. Be careful. I remember this one blog post I wrote back in 2008, in which I semi-seriously pondered whether I should study Swedish, the other official language of Finland. I can't remember why I got the idea and why I thought it was a good idea, but I remember discarding that idea pretty much as quickly as I got it. I guess I assumed it would be too much work, to be too laborious.

But little did I know... that in 2015 I would actually pretty much fall in love with the Swedish language. Fall. In. Love. I am 100% serious. I fell in love with the language I used to hate for years. And it happened by an accident, because of a stupid joke that wasn't even funny in the first place. It's amazing how little things can change the way you view things.

It started with Duolingo.com, the language learning website. I had heard so much about it that I eventually just wanted to give it a try. I wanted to see what it was all about and whether it worked or not. I made an account and suddenly I was faced with a tough decision; what language should I try?And in case you don't know already, there is a surprisingly wide selection of languages to choose from! Hastily I decided to make a fun decision, something to entertain me at work. So I chose the language everybody hates, that I hated; Swedish.

I am highly motivated by magical invisible internet points. I love getting experience points and level-ups, they do wonders to me. So once I started "playing", I wanted to advance up in the skill tree, get more level-ups, get more experience points. I was hooked. And suddenly I forgot that Swedish was supposed to be oh-so-dreadful and oh-so-boring. That I was supposed to dislike it, even hate it. The more experience points I got, the more I was sucked in. Swedish started to make sense, kinda started to sound beautiful. It had it own flow, I liked it. I started to appreciate it. I relearned grammar and widened my vocabulary.

So yeah. I'd say Duolingo works. At least for re-learning languages.

It took me a little over month to finish the Swedish skill tree. I worked hard, one could say I was even a bit too addicted to Duolingo. But it was all for good! It wasn't just a stupid mobile game to waste some time on. I was actually, very seriously, learning something. And I wanted to keep learning even after I finished the skill tree. I started to read books in Swedish and ultimately I made a decision to read nothing but Swedish books this year.

Det handlar också om mig

My progress with books is quite slow, but it is definitely still progress. I try my best to learn Swedish from other sources too. It's easy here in Finland, there is Swedish practically everywhere when you really start to look for it. I've learn countless new words for example from ads, street signs and instructions. Sometimes I feel impatient, like I should be working harder or learning faster, but then again I understand that it takes time and practice to become fluent, it doesn't happen overnight and it doesn't happen easily. After all it has taken me a decade to become fluent in English and I've only studied Swedish actively for a year. Couple new words every week is more than enough. I'll get there, eventually.

Besides, I am also in level 14 in Dutch.

Papu update

I mentioned in one of my previous posts that I only have one dog now, Papu. The current trend with dogs and divorces seems to be a joint custody, but I never wanted that and nether did J.R. Papu has always been more like my dog and Niila has always been more his dog. It was the most obvious choice for us to divide the dogs.

Some people were surprised that we decided to divide the dogs though. Apparently it's considered to be cruel to divide dogs who have grown up and lived together. I believe it depends on the dogs. I lived together for three months with my friend after J.R. and I broke up and Papu was the only dog in the household and she seemed to enjoy it tremendously. She was happier than ever before, much calmer and she seemed to enjoy human company more than usually too. I feel that I built a better relationship with Papu too when I was able to really concentrate on her. I even managed to teach her a new trick. I could not see any sign of suffering in Papu, she was just fine. Like Niila never existed in the first place. In a way it's a sad thought, that Papu is able to forget Niila just like that, in a blink of an eye, not being sad for even a day, but on the other hand Papu is a dog and who knows if dogs are really even able to miss something or remember anything. The only thing that matters to me is that she is happy.

My boyfriend also has a dog so now when we live together we have this blended family going on. Papu's new baby brother is called Tomu. I was a bit worried how it would turn out since Papu is pretty bad ass (as miniature pinschers often are) and Tomu is definitely on the softer side of the spectrum. But so far everything has been just great. I think Papu enjoys Tomu's company much more than she ever enjoyed Niila's. Niila was more like a constant nuisance but Tomu understands to keep his distance and have some respect towards Papu too.

Tomu looks mostly like a furry sofa-pillow or something. I can never remember his breed. I just tell people that he has a lot of hair and that he is small. I think I am a bad step-mama for not remembering, but I simply can't remember everything. I can't even remember Papu's birthday (more bad mama points)!

Tomu

Tomu looks quite smart in the picture and almost majestic, and like something that could actually survive alone in the nature. But it's all false. Tomu is most of the time the most retarded dog I know. Just retarded. But not in a bad way though, retarded like in a silly way. And he would definitely not survive in the nature alone. At least that is what I think. Anyway. I think our blended family is doing good. I try to be a good step-mama and Papu enjoys all the attention she gets from the new housemates. I think this has been the best possible outcome of the situation. There could have been problems, like lots of them, but we got lucky. Papu and Tomu get along and Papu accepts all the new housemates as her loyal servants and worshipers.

The Importance of Imperial Units

"Be careful what you wish for", they said. But I wasn't careful so I actually got what I wished for: measuring cups with imperial units. One who does not bake so often probably can't understand why it is so unbelievably handy to have the correct measuring cups. There is Google, indeed, and it's really easy to convert units to other units. Cups to deciliters, no problem, just google it. But it's just pain in the ass really, there are usually several measurements to convert and you have to round them down or up in a weird way. It takes time and the actual baking is annoying because you have to stare at your one deciliter measuring cup and wonder how on earth do you measure 0,36588 deciliters with it. Have you ever tried it? You just can't do it very accurately. And did I already say that it is annoying. It makes you wonder why you chose such a recipe and what is wrong with Americans in the first place.

I assume that my boyfriend chose the measuring cup set based on the functionality (it's not exactly easy to find measuring cups with imperial units here in Finland as they are not the official units here) but they are actually really pretty and please my aesthetics. Somehow I wish all my measuring cups and bowls and other baking equipment were as pretty. I enjoy pretty things in the kitchen too and I am quite of a snob sometimes. Not snob enough to use my ugly old plastic bowls though but still snob enough to wish they were prettier.



Having these measuring cups as actual physical objects also helps me to understand their size better and how they relate to each other. It's easy for me to imagine how much is one or two deciliters since I'm very used to the size of their measuring cups. It's like knowing the size of a regular mug or a glass. You just know how big they generally are. But trying to imagine the exact size of 2,36588 mugs or glasses: considerably harder. So it is difficult for me to imagine the size of the dough when reading through a new recipe. I know how much one cup is in deciliters but multiplying that with one or two or three... I just get lost. Three cups doesn't sound much but it is actually quite a lot of flour, enough to bake one bread! I believe that being able to actually hold the measuring cups, being able to feel their size and to see their size, will definitely help me with this, especially when I get more and more used to them. I expect that eventually one cup becomes one cup for me, and not 2,36588 deciliters. It's a nice thing to think about.

Amoena baked White Chocolate and Cranberry Cookies

My favorite store-bought cookies are cranberry-white chocolate cookies. I'm not really a fan of cranberries... nor white chocolate, but somehow the combination works. Since I am not into baking and expanding my repertoire to cookies too, I decided to google for a recipe! I found several promising recipes, but I also found this old Google Plus post of mine:

This is a cranberry - white chocolate cookie. It looks home-baked but it's a lie. They're store-bought, a very cheap brand on top of everything. And they're wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. I wish I knew how to bake cookies like this, it would make me so proud. I would be baking them all the time and forcing people to eat them so they would have to admire my baking skills. That's how wonderful they are. Just telling you, they're wonderful.

Obviously there was a picture attached too but it is irrelevant. Anyway. Apparently I used to dream about being able to bake such cookies, back in 2011. I think it's the circle of life. You dream of something, never do anything about it, and then later realize you've achieved it anyway. Or maybe it is just my life that works that way.

I found several recipes that pretty much sounded as the same thing. They all had white chocolate and cranberries in them, who could have guessed. No, really, the recipes were quite alike, they just had different amounts of things. I eventually chose one recipe from Good to Know website. Not because it appeared to be somehow more excellent than the other, but because the recipe was in grams and other measurements I was able to comprehend without consulting Google first. I have a really nice kitchen scale but I don't have US measuring cups. Though considering how many US recipes I use, that would make a nice gift. You know, for me.

I prepared my main ingredients. I made the dough. I forgot 100 grams out of my 190 grams of flour. No biggies, I was able to fix that even though I had already stirred in my cranberries and white chocolate. I am sure it made no difference. The cranberries were nice and soft by the way, got them right next door from Lidl.

Mmm...

According to the recipe I should have been able to make balls out of dough, roll them even. My dough was definitely too moist for that. And that is how I originally realized that I have way, way too little flour. But adding more flour didn't fix the problem. I just had to spoon the dough to the baking sheet. Not exactly pretty, and definitely not what I expected. That is not a ball! That is not anything you could work by hands. Ugh?

But how did they turn out! How! And are they as good as the cookies that inspired me? Are they something I would force people to eat just so they could admire my "baking skills"? First of all, they turned our really ugly. They spread quite a bit in the oven and they stayed quite moist. The cookies I like are really dry and small. I need to try to fix that next time. I just don't know how. More flour? Less something? I'm quite a novice when it comes to cookies.

Taste wise they are quite OK. They could taste better, but on the other hand they do taste like cranberries and white chocolate. It's more like the consistency I didn't enjoy so much. But this was just the experiment #1, and there will be more experiments in the future. I had to bake bread like million times before I got it right, I expect the same process with these cookies too. They will become better, every time I make them and after every recipe I try. Practice... makes perfect? Or at least prettier cookies?

And so... this was my first post about baking. But I am not turning this into a baking blog. This blog will be what it has always been: a blog about me. And I am not a pastry!

The story of "us"

This is the story of us. And by "us" I mean the story of our commune. Who are we and how did we end up living in the same apartment?

There are four of us. I am one and I am Amoena, the writer of this thing I call as my blog. Then there is my boyfriend who originally (afaik) got the idea of a commune and made it a reality. I shall call my boyfriend as I.B. here since using initials has always been my way of referring other people in my blog. Then there is M.R who is actually an ex of my boyfriend, but don't get fooled. Our commune is not some kind of weird polyamory arrangement, it's just the way it is. Besides she's a lesbian now, and it makes it more OK. I sometimes find it kinda cool to say that I live together with my boyfriend's ex. Since it makes me sound like all tolerant and shit, even though I have never ever really thought of her as his girlfriend. And the last person is T.R, my boyfriends best friend. There is nothing particular to say about him, except that he maybe was a monkey in his past life. He's not hairy, no, but he seems to like hanging upside down like one.

You can probably get the logic now. We're all connected by one person, and that one person is my boyfriend. And I was the last addition to the group. I've never seen us as a group though but if I did I would feel blessed to be accepted in it. I'm hardly ever accepted to anything and nobody has ever adopted me in that manner either. But I'm as close to being accepted and adopted than I ever will be, I guess.

When I first heard of the idea of living in a commune I was like yes, let's do it. But I had this doubt in my mind that it would be one of those things that we just keep talking about. Like one of those dreams or goals, like going out on a trip or making something big happen. Like quitting a job and starting an own business. That kind of thing.

It was not just that alone that made me doubt. It's actually quite hard to find an apartment that fits four adults. Most bigger apartments are meant for families with kids, and they have one master bedroom and them considerably smaller rooms for the kids. Big rooms are hard to find. Another obstacle was to find apartment that suited our life: none of us wanted to make our commute longer and we all worked in a very different directions.

So I kinda assumed that we would just keep talking about it and keep looking for the apartments and never really fining anything suitable. But actually we find the right apartment quite fast in the end. If I remember even half correctly it only took couple months of active searching. Though it took some time to get in that active searching phase... Anyway.

Our apartment is not perfect and I think most of us had to make compromises. The room I share with I.B. is actually quite small for two persons, though the size it makes quite cozy and nice. It's like our little nest. M.R. has not one but two rooms for herself, but they are small so one is her bedroom and one is her study. She seems to be content with the solution even though I was originally afraid that she would just compromise to make us happy. T.R. probably had to make a compromise with the location of his room because his room is probably the noisiest because it's just next to our nest and the bathroom and the kitchen and all. It's like a black hole that sucks all the noise.

But even though our apartment is not perfect it is still our home. And it will get better as we get more used to it, when we live longer in it.

And so that is life

A lot has happened in my life. I got married. I bought a house with my husband. I got divorced and sold my share of the house to my husband. We divided the dogs, I now only have one. But you know what? All that is life and life goes on after that. Just bring it on, bring it on.

I found a new love. It didn't come without obstacles but it was worth it. It somehow became everything I ever wanted. It's not like there was something wrong with my marriage, though there definitely was since it's over now, but there is something else now. I can't explain it but I  can feel it and it feels just great. I gave up a lot of things but I ended up gaining new, unexpected things. It's like my life was strongly heading to one direction, to this ordinary life, but then I just turned around and it become something else.

I think I could be considered as someone who leads an alternative lifestyle. But to me it is called life and it is something I  call as normal. I now life together with my boyfriend like any other girl who ended up falling in love with someone. But we share our home with two other persons.

We like to call our living arrangement as a commune but in reality we're more like regular roommates. We just happen to be work-going adults instead of poor students. Me and my boyfriend share a room and the others have their own rooms. We don't cook together or anything very commune-like. We have our own individual lives. But I like it that way. I'm not really social anyway and I am more than happy to spend time alone with my boyfriend. Like any other girl who has ended falling in love with someone.

But this new life has changed my interests. Not tremendously though since I still run. Running never goes away. I've already signed for 10K race and for my first half marathon. But I picked up baking. Baking is great and I'm getting a hang of it. I think I'm becoming more motherly, always baking things for my boys to enjoy. I've baked cakes, pies, cookies and everything and I am constantly trying to find new cool things to bake and new ways to improve my recipes.

And I've been meaning to pick up blogging again. I even borrowed a laptop to do it, but this is the first time I actually got around to do it. It's been on my calendar for months. It's so hard to start something again that you have neglected for such a long time. But I should try as writing/blogging is one of the things that do make me happy. Words make me happy.

I know that my blog has no readers but I don't mind. I always, always blog for myself. And even when I don't blog... I still do. All this time when I have not been updating this blog, I have still writing my own secret, childish diaries, notes and lyrics and all that. Writing is like running, it never really goes away. Never. I just need to continue from where I left.

In the future there are some topics I'd like to write more about. One is about my life in the commune. I don't want to get into details as others really don't have a say in the things I write and I tend to respect privacy. But about the general idea of being an adult and living with roommates. I think it should be advertised more as it is actually a really, really nice and economical way to live.

And second is baking, my newest and currently my dearest hobby. I would like to share my triumphs and no-triumphs with pictures and maybe even recipes if I ever get so far to have my own. My blog as always been about me and about the things I enjoy and that is currently what I enjoy. I want here to be bread porn and noms. Maybe more noms than bread porn but anyway.

And thirdly... just everything. Everything there is between waking up and going to bed every night. I don't put myself into a box. This blog has been about so many things already that I can add in anything. Maybe I start to write in Swedish when I write it fluently. Maybe I start doing something else.

I hope that I can keep this up, Blogging I mean. Not like every day obsessed kinda way but in a way that makes me happy about it. This scares me a lot, you know, Starting again. Took me months to find the courage as I thought this blog would be dead already. But like everything, this too has come with obstacles and it's time to get over them. Time to pull the head out the sand, to suck it up, to do it.

And so that is life. As it is right now. And it's good. It's still good.