last day of my quarantine holiday

these past two months have been bliss for me. to wake up in the morning without the need to rush to catch the bus to work, to take my own time at my own pace, to do things that i truly love doing, to bake, cook, do some gardening, walk in the forest, relax, read...

{deep sigh...}

but everything has to come to an end...even good things. 

i will miss spending time in the house all by myself almost most of the day. i will miss being alone. 

but now, i have to change my mindset and get ready for the working days ahead. i'm thankful that i have work to go back to. i truly am. it just needs a little bit of adjustment again. i've gotten used to being on a holiday that my mind just wants vacation forever. 

i'll just go outside now and enjoy the sunny (19 degree Celcius) weather.

i hope you are having a nice Sunday 🌞

how i learned to do stonework

the story of how i learned to do stonework is up in my youtube vlog

p.s. i'm not so good at it. i obviously need practice and speed 😁 

down with the flu

 i started feeling sick last thursday. i had the difficulty to breath. a familiar feeling actually. something like how it felt when i had an asthma attack when i was younger. i've been sneezing a lot and coughing. 

i don't usually get sick. not even with the flu. with this pandemic going on around us, i feel alarmed but not to the highest level. i've been taking great precaution.  but i guess, once in a while my immune system weakens, too. 

yesterday, i was just home, reading and watching videos in bed. i was okay and wasn't really bothered by the flu. after dinner, we watched a movie in the living room. while laying on the sofa, i had to turn around a little bit because i found it hard to breath. daddy opened the window right away and the fresh air helped. before i know it, he was already calling to the emergency clinic. he was telling them my symptoms and asked for a COVID test. i was shocked! i mean, yes, i'm quite sick but not so sick. i protested about going to the clinic because i didn't think it was necessary and i didn't want to spread any virus there. but he insisted. 

about 11 o'clock in the evening, we drove to the clinic. they checked my temperature, took a blood sample and the doctor checked on me. he said, there's nothing that looks unusual. i had a little fever, nothing to be alarmed of. he told me to take paracetamol.

i said my thanks and got out of there as fast as i could. 

i still feel a bit down. i didn't sleep well last night because of my cough. but other than that, i'm fine. 

this baby is keeping me company

p.s. stay safe, everyone 😊

reminiscing

after sometime that i haven't actively posted here, i feel regret. i regret that i let many memories pass by without documenting them. 

so these past days, i have been skimming over my previous blogs. yes, it feels nostalgic, in a good way. memories come flashing back. the simple happiness and relief that i found when i wrote my sentiments down brings another layer of joy.

it has been 12 years ago when i started this blog. i've been in and out in my writing. when inspiration hit me, i wrote. or even when when i wasn't so inspired, i still wrote. for sometime now, i have been thinking about making a new blog. like a fresh start. but when i browsed and read my long-time-ago posts, i felt that i can never leave this blog. there are so many memories here that i just won't throw away.

so, i'm staying...

a visit to the graveyard

last week, the sexton at Hausjärvi called to inform that Mummo's mom's gravestone has dropped to the ground and somebody has to fix it. daddy, me and henri drove there to see what we can do about it. it wasn't really a big job. it took us less than 15 minutes to put the gravestone back to its place and we had time to plant carnation.

visiting the graveyard here is kind of relaxing to me. especially on All Soul's day when it's dark and there are lighted candles everywhere. it feels magical. 

daddy and i have this habit of walking around the graveyard after the christmas celebration. when our tummies are so full of kinkku and all the casserole dishes, we would walk to the cemetery on top of the radiomäki at midnight. we'd take a look at some random gravestone while burning the calories. 

personally, i don't want to be buried when i die. i've told this to daddy many many times but he always shrug it off and say ¨don't say that¨. well, i would continue telling him anyway that i'm claustrophobic that's why i don't want my body to be buried in the ground. instead, i want my body to be cremated and my ashes spread from the top of Mt. Skäla in Loen, Norway. huh! somebody has to climb up the whole 1,848 m above sea level mountain! hmmmmm...but in a nutshell, that's what i want to happen when i die. that would be make me so happy in the afterlife.

p.s. i don't know if i need a permit to have my ashes spread over Norway's territory. that's something to look into.

decorating a cake with garangan and granada

on the third of May, i celebrated my sixth year here in Finland. it has become a habit to make a cake on that day, so this year, i made yogurt cheesecake. i quite got carried away and i wanted it to look so pretty. i went to the grocery store and found some exotic fruits. well, they 're not really unusual to me because they're common in the Philippines. 

anyway, i've never thought that ¨garangan¨ (in the kinaray-a dialect) would look good on a cake. i was just used to eat it just as it is. i remember when i was in grade school, i used to climb on our neighbor's ¨garangan¨tree and collect its fruits. i was quite good in climbing then. 😉

also, our other neighbor had a pomegranate tree. as a kid, i ate it a lot and for a time, got tired of it that i just ignored it. here in Finland, they're kind of expensive. but to make my cake prettier, i'll spend some extra euros for them. 😊

six years is the longest time that i have lived in one place after i left my hometown 14 years ago. i have adapted to the culture and way of life here. the only thing that i'm embarrassed about is that i haven't fully grasped the language and couldn't speak well to save my life. 

stonework - day one

one day, i didn't have anything to do inside the house. daddy was at the backyard, keeping himself busy. i went out and started asking him about random stuffs that have been lying around the yard. then, there's this pile of stones. i've been walking past it for six years now. they're just stones until i asked about them. before i knew it, i was volunteering to do the stonework in front of the garage. yeah, right! 

the next day, i actually started working out there. after a few hours of scraping the top soil, i was telling myself ¨why did you even ask?¨ and ¨next time just ignore the stuffs that you see¨. it's hard work! i had a flashback of the couple of weeks when i did my stonework on-the-job training. the shoulder and back pains...then i also remembered that i lost a lot of weight during that time! that thought kept me motivated to do this work that i volunteered to do. 

this is just the first day. i don't know how long it will take me to finish it, but i'm determined to do so.

sunny Easter Monday, snowy the day after

on Easter Monday, we took a walk in the forest. it was supposed to be just a usual walk around Liipola. since the weather was super nice, we decided to walk the 7 km way to Mummolandia. Fasu was having fun...i was enjoying taking videos and admiring everything new that i saw along the way...and daddy wasn't so happy that he had to wait for me all the time. hahaha! it took us around an hour and a 30 minutes to reach our destination.

we had coffee at Mummo's place. after some catching up, we headed back home. this time, we walked along the road and dropped by the shop to do our groceries.

the next day, there was a surprise! the moment i opened the curtains, i felt happy to see snow. we didn't have so much snow last winter, so having it now, was like a gift! it was also a nice excuse to stay indoors and be cozy. i suddenly had the inspiration to finish my fingerless gloves-crochet project. i started it sometime in the winter, but then i lost interest in getting them done. but on that snowy tuesday in spring, i finally did it! and when we took a walk with Fasu in the evening, i wore my gloves. since they were fingerless, my fingers felt cold. 😬 when i get inspired again, i'm going to crochet a cover for my fingers. 😁

welcoming spring with pansies

last year, i planted roses in the flower bed by our window. this year, i decided to go low key and plant pansies. well, they are much easier to maintain. i also get to choose several colors that i wanted.

a month has passed since the quarantine started and i have this feeling that i haven't been so productive. although i feel so tired at the end of the day, i still feel like i haven't actually done the things that i really WANT to DO. 

so i thought of going back to blogging + vlogging. hehehe! in times like these, i just easily forget what i have done in a day. in case my memory declines from this day forward, i have my blog to remind me...