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Can Barbelith at least turn up the heat in my apartment? It's officially cold enough to freeze the tips off old elves' ears at -13 and I'm plant-sitting for some friends who are in canada, which is where i wish i were in some ways.
I spent a nice day with my grandmother; I brought her her favourite chocolate, flowers and a spruce wreath to make the apartment smell nice. I vacuumed for her and we chatted about, well, stuff, and almost entirely in finnish. She's only 77 but she's aging really fast all of a sudden and she's really quite depressed. She has some back problems, can't sit or stand for more than 5 minutes at a time, sleeps a lot, and I'm the only family member who's living in the same city now, so I do her shopping and cleaning. she keeps saying this might be her last christmas, and i keep wanting to tell her she's got another 20 years before she's going anywhere. But today was really lovely, the sun was shining into the clean apartment and I wished I could have stayed later but all the buses stopped running at 4. If i want to go to church tonight (and usually my favourite part of christmas is singing with a bunch of anonymous folk) I'll have to take a 20-euro taxi both ways.
In Finland the big celebration is xmas eve, not on the 25th. I'm by myself unless you count the performing pigtailed women on television, singing in three part harmony and wearing elf hats. It's a bit surreal I suppose, and I miss my family, but I don't really feel sad as much as wistful. And given the quality of programming on telly tonight, I'll definitely be available to chat to all you crazies. |
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