Thursday, November 29, 2007

Has it really been that long?

I've been a baaaaaaad girl. It isn't enough that I've fallen out of the blogosphere, but I've had a lot more free time since Mr. Na started school in September and I'm no further along in my writing than I was...oy...I don't think I can openly admit when. Let's put it this way...Pa and Na are ribbing me much like Stewie does with Brian on Family Guy:


Needless to say, I'm enjoying my respite from full-time, hands-on, 24x7 parenting.

And yet...

We're gearing up to bring number two home from Ukraine sometime in 2008. Yup, I'm a glutton for punishment.

Life's been good, albeit Kindergarten has been an adjustment for all of us. Mr. Na has had his world turned upside down, what with sharing his attention with 27 other little five year-olds and he's coming around, albeit slowly.

Anyway, on the "me" side, let's see...the last time I blogged, I had returned from New York, I think. And so, in June I spent some time with Pa in Helsinki, Finland (my first vacation sans child in 4 years!)

Yours truly with my new Marimekko scarf





While there, I took a day trip (I love saying that...it was just a jaunt between countries!) to Talinn, Estonia, which was just beyond awesome.
Talinn--->

Helsinki was "nice"...but I could have totally done that city in, like, a weekend, while I could have totally spent a few more days in Estonia and would have loved to have gone down to Latvia...but hey, it was only a week!

Funny thing happened in Helsinki...so, I'll back up by saying that whenever we travel together in Europe, random people always come up to Pa and talk to him in either French, German, Russian...Polish...you name it...And if you know him, you know why...he's got very strong Eastern European features (though France, I'm not quite sure why they love him so much since he's like Gigantor over there). But ME? Ha! They take one look at me and call me
"Disney". Doesn't matter what I'm wearing (and no I don't dress like a frickin' tourist, so shut the hell up), doesn't matter if I stay quiet or open my mouth...they SMELL it on me or something.

Well, I finally felt vindicated in Helsinki where EVERYONE came up to me and gave Pa dirty looks while asking me questions in Finnish or Swedish. People scowled at Pa because I think they're still a little angry with the Russians.

Another odd thing about Helsinki is that they are all about the extremes. I'm thinking maybe it has something to do with the fact that it's completely dark for 9 months out of the year, but I dunno...it'd be an interesting study to conduct. For example, Helsinkians love either "dream pop" (or "cuddle music" as we like to call it...but more on that later) or heavy, I mean HEAVY metal...like Black Sabbath, Motley Crue and Iron Maiden. And so going out to bars or clubs was quite the experience because we'd either come across places where people played air guitar, wore black t-shirts, and in some cases, mullets. Or we'd stumble across a place that resembled somebody's livingroom, circa 1972, complete with the white shag and the modular furniture and people would be sitting on these couches, chatting, drinking, laughing and listening to music that I swear Nokia uses for its ringtones. Some examples of "cuddle music" would be Air or Zero 7, though Pa would have to disagree because his idea of "cuddle music" is that it's only instrumental. Ok, so here's a good compromise:
AirMike Mills






Me, in a cuddle bar. My cuddler's takin the pic.


Well, I'll plan to do my updates in a few installments, dear readers (all two of you!) That way, you'll tune in to read more about my exciting adventures (yawn!)

Until next time! Ciao!

2 comments:

princess kanomanom said...

Woohoo! Lovin' the re-emergence. Reading this entry, I can totally see/hear you talking, which is a real Monday a.m. treat.

Cute Marimekko...

LeFemmeMonkita said...

Thanks, my all-time favorite Girl Scout, I mean, editor! :-) You GO girl with that red pen of yours! Ha, I can only imagine what sort of a field day you'd have with my GOD AWFUL sentence structure!

xoxoxox