After today, this would have been my answer:
I can sleep in, meet a friend, go to a museum and then have lunch at a Turkish restaurant, after which we can go to my friend's place for a cup of espresso, until it's time for my stretching class at the gym. And a day like this is not a rare treat for which I've had to armwrestle my husband for two weeks, any given Sunday can be like today. Heaven.
More reasons here: Benefits of Childfreedom
(Bare with her, she's obviously had to deal with the daily "surely you must want to have children, every woman does!" a lot as you do when you're a woman in your thirties. But although the list doesn't have to be taken literally, a lot of it means business.)
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Monday, April 7, 2008
Coming (home) at the same time
One of the reasons I'm so convinced that an apartment block is the best place for a human being to live is my neighbours. I've always had a good luck with neighbours, even in Spain, when we thought that the couple downstairs was always fighting - I later realized it was just normal conversation in Spanish.
I've lived in this house for 4 years and the first 3 went kind of unnoticed. Last spring I suddenly noticed a new phenomenon: all my neighbours started opening up to me on different subjects when we met in the stairwell or in the backyard. My friend Ilkka explained that I had spent the magical 3 years in a flat that it takes in Helsinki, where people move a lot, for the neighbours to start trusting the newcomer.
In our house there are people of all ages and all kinds of family situations. There's one lady who's lived here since the house was built - that's the year 1950. Her daughter, whom I imagine to be from around that same year, also lives in the building. There are a couple of young families (thank you for proving that it's possible to live in an apartment building with children!), one woman with mental health problems (sits in the backyard and talks to herself all summer), a Blazing Show Girls dancer with her two chihuahuas. Before I moved in, my flat was owned by a gay couple. When the opening up phase started, my neighbours were ever so eager to share about their tumultuous relationship and how they took turns in kicking each other out from the flat, naked, in the middle of the night. (Luckily for the community, they were replaced by another odd couple, a Finnish woman and a black man.)
I realize that in an apartment block, you will always hear noices. I can hear my upstairs neighbour snore, and when their grandchildren visit, it's very clear they haven't been raised in a flat. My downstairs neighbour bangs the door like a crazy person, and then there's the other kind of banging that I like to call "noices of life".
There are 3 doors in my floor. My next door neighbours are a young Finnish-American couple. In the flat opposite me lives a girl whom I recently found out to be one of the board members in Pro Fair Trade association. Interestingly enough she was also responsible for the football campaign that I'm running. I found this out because she was wearing the campaign t-shirt, not through work. :0
The Finnish guy with his American girlfriend moved in last autumn. My previous next door neighbours were the only ones that ever bothered me. A young Finnish couple with obvious problems in the bedroom department. Pardon me for being so cynical but I don't think it's possible for the woman to always, I mean every time, reach...krhm...climax just 10 seconds before the man? And it always sounded just the same. (Like killing a small dog.) In all friendship and as an older woman, I often felt like slipping a letter in from their mailbox to tell him that when a woman screams like that, she's faking it. But she moved out after 6 months just to prove my point about their problems (next door to a friend of mine!!!). Not that the new couple is completely silent... but that's what it's like in an apartment building.
Today all the 3 of us that live in the 2nd floor came together... home at the same time. And when in my previous posting I was so worried about being middle-aged, today's friendly chit-chat with my neighbours made me feel like I live in a hip, young, possibly a student house.
(And when I had my Easter garland in the door, someone had left a small chocolate egg in the nest there, along with the wooden ones.)
I've lived in this house for 4 years and the first 3 went kind of unnoticed. Last spring I suddenly noticed a new phenomenon: all my neighbours started opening up to me on different subjects when we met in the stairwell or in the backyard. My friend Ilkka explained that I had spent the magical 3 years in a flat that it takes in Helsinki, where people move a lot, for the neighbours to start trusting the newcomer.
In our house there are people of all ages and all kinds of family situations. There's one lady who's lived here since the house was built - that's the year 1950. Her daughter, whom I imagine to be from around that same year, also lives in the building. There are a couple of young families (thank you for proving that it's possible to live in an apartment building with children!), one woman with mental health problems (sits in the backyard and talks to herself all summer), a Blazing Show Girls dancer with her two chihuahuas. Before I moved in, my flat was owned by a gay couple. When the opening up phase started, my neighbours were ever so eager to share about their tumultuous relationship and how they took turns in kicking each other out from the flat, naked, in the middle of the night. (Luckily for the community, they were replaced by another odd couple, a Finnish woman and a black man.)
I realize that in an apartment block, you will always hear noices. I can hear my upstairs neighbour snore, and when their grandchildren visit, it's very clear they haven't been raised in a flat. My downstairs neighbour bangs the door like a crazy person, and then there's the other kind of banging that I like to call "noices of life".
There are 3 doors in my floor. My next door neighbours are a young Finnish-American couple. In the flat opposite me lives a girl whom I recently found out to be one of the board members in Pro Fair Trade association. Interestingly enough she was also responsible for the football campaign that I'm running. I found this out because she was wearing the campaign t-shirt, not through work. :0
The Finnish guy with his American girlfriend moved in last autumn. My previous next door neighbours were the only ones that ever bothered me. A young Finnish couple with obvious problems in the bedroom department. Pardon me for being so cynical but I don't think it's possible for the woman to always, I mean every time, reach...krhm...climax just 10 seconds before the man? And it always sounded just the same. (Like killing a small dog.) In all friendship and as an older woman, I often felt like slipping a letter in from their mailbox to tell him that when a woman screams like that, she's faking it. But she moved out after 6 months just to prove my point about their problems (next door to a friend of mine!!!). Not that the new couple is completely silent... but that's what it's like in an apartment building.
Today all the 3 of us that live in the 2nd floor came together... home at the same time. And when in my previous posting I was so worried about being middle-aged, today's friendly chit-chat with my neighbours made me feel like I live in a hip, young, possibly a student house.
(And when I had my Easter garland in the door, someone had left a small chocolate egg in the nest there, along with the wooden ones.)
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