20150817

Cold Finnish Summer = fighting against cancer

The summer is almost over, so I thought it would be a great time to tell you a bit about how my summer was and to be honest, I think this was the worst summer in my life.

First of all the so called ''summer'' that we have had here in Finland is probably the coldest one in a history. It's not usually very hot in here and that's fine ( I hate sweating and extreme heat ), but this year the temperature has got barely over 15 degrees Celsius - and that's cold even for a Finnish summer. And also we've had so much rain. So while the rest of the Europe is having super heat ( 28-37 degrees) I've been wearing my leather jacket and thick stockings the whole ''''''summer''''''.

Second thing, at the beginning of the summer my Mother was diagnosed with cancer. She's only 53 and very skinny and doesn't smoke or drink, so it was a bit of a surprise. A few years ago my Mother's father had a cancer and thankfully it was healed. My Mother has now had the surgery and she's currently at a sick leave from work and I've been staying at home taking care of Nemo and Mom. Thank goodness I haven't been sick in these couple of moths. I went to see my Mom at the hospital after the surgery and me and my brother went to get her home the next day. We cooked her a three-course meal and I bought her flowers and a card. She was so happy and thankful. I've also been with her in every hospital visit and hugged her when she's been feeling hopeless. So I have to stay strong for her. If I crumble, she might as well. I'm very proud of her tough.... Only once she has started to cry when she was in a lot of pain. And I don't mean that she shouldn't cry, but I just feel like she's dealing with this whole thing very well. We all are and that's mostly because we're quite open about this whole matter and we have a loving family and friends who really support us.

 Also my/our oldest dog (Mokka) was almost about to die for a couple of times this summer. She's already 12½ years and very sick, taking about 5 drugs in a day, but she's very lively and happy when she has a better period, so we're not giving up on her just yet. We've been talking about putting her to rest, if she gets any worse or is in serious pain. But just the thought of that is almost too much for me.

So yeah, a very, very shitty summer for me, eh?

But we did also do some fun things! We could not travel far because of my mother's condition, so we only did day trips to beautiful Finnish cities.

First was Hanko! It's actually the most southern place of Finnish mainland. We do have many islands that are more in the south, but this is the most southern city. It's about 1½-2 hours car ride from our capital, Helsinki. Hanko is a very beautiful small city that has long and beautiful beaches and absolutely gorgeous old villas. So we took Nemo with and went off to experience some beach life.

But of course, since we're geographically in the zone of  ''fu*k you Northern people'', the day turned out to be cold and windy.... No need to think about getting burned in the sun.

Nemo was more interested showing his butt that posing for a picture.


A very typical Finnish sea view. The house on the rock is an old restaurant and cafe. 

I have to say, that even though I love the vasts forests of Thailand and Asia and the green Mountains of Germany
I still think this is very beautiful. Just plain sea and rocks. I don't know if it's just a Scandinavian thing?

Cold and windy.


The restaurants. They are about 20 meters from the sea. 

This is a face of true happiness! We went to a restaurant called
Makaronitehdas (Macaroni factory) and they had SO amazing
pasta dishes! 

I had hand made pasta, red wine sauce with herbs, lamb fillet and
Parmesan cheese. It was absolutely divine!

Nemo went to take a swim in the sea and after a great deal of running
and exploring he got tired and wanted some patting.

Dark clouds over a beautiful beach. On the background a huge villa.

I did, of course, have a bottle of water for Nemo in my zombie backpack and also his towel and some treats. In Finland you can't always take your dog inside a restaurant - usually the terrace is OK, but not always. So we always have to make sure and ask beforehand if dogs are allowed. This is quite annoying since at least in Germany it was a exception if dogs were not allowed inside some restaurants or cafes. But Finland is a bit 'stiff' when it comes to things like these.

We also went into a few shops and drove around and admired the beautiful villas - and took only 1 picture of them. Poor me.


On out next trip we went to Porvoo. It's also a very small but very old and beautiful city. This time my brother joined us. Unfortunately I don't have lots of pictures from the city itself, and that's mainly because we've been there many times, so I didn't even think about taking pictures. lol. But we did take some... Porvoo is about 45 minutes drive from Helsinki and it's a very iconic Scandinavian city that is very popular tourist sight during the summer. There are a lot of little iconic and cute shops that sell antiques and hand made products. There is also Brunberg's factory shop, a big Finnish chocolate factory, that has been making sweets for almost 150 years. Porvoo is also known for it's great food and restaurants and also it's idyllic small cafes.

I managed to close my eyes just when the picture was taken. My brother still browsing the Menu. We were in a restaurant near the river bank called Fryysarinranta. Don't really know what it means... lol.

Waiting for the food. Dunno where my brother is looking at... We both had cross checked shirts on. Mine was just
dark green and you can only see the collar of it.

I really did you a favor when censoring my face... I had a VERY
stupid look because my Mom forced me to pose in front of
the restaurant. Nemo didn't like it either. Look at his face!

At a cafe. Drinking my oh-so-good latte while my brother stares at a small bug that's on my hair. Can you see
the tiny little white spot on my bangs? Yep, that's the bug!

The cafe's backyard terrace. 

We all agreed that in this pic I look like one Finnish woman comedian,
 Pirjo Heikkilä. And Nemo looks so small. My tiny little Casanova. 

I also have to tell you that I HATE MOSQUITOES!!!!!! This happened at the beginning of the summer. We were actually in Helsinki and I got bitten by a mosquito 10 ( I mean really, TEN?) times on my legs. Mostly on my left knee. And as I am allergic to many things I think I'm also a little allergic to mosquito bites, because look at my legs!!


You can't see all the 10 bites, and the picture somehow doesn't show the most brutal aspect of these bites - they were so itchy and swollen! I couldn't wear thin stockings 'cos my legs were so ugly, red and malformed. I even tried to apply some makeup on them, but nothing worked. This was about 2½ months ago and I still have a tiny bruise on some of the biggest bites. Thank you, you little pieces of jhdhgligvnpu*!="?) !!!!!

Now I have to go and take Nemo out. I just gave him a bath this morning, and now our whole apartment smells so good! Every time he runs past or a wind blows from his direction, you can smell a sweet scent of lilies. So to the ones who say that dogs smell:  it only depends on the owner. Nemo never smells bad. We even brush his teeth so his breath is also very scentless. And he's almost 5 years old already.

Goodbye for now and I hope you liked reading. Sorry for the very long post... heh heh.

XXX
TOKI

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