The second half of half of Jo’s daily December questions!
17. What do you like most about your family?
That my Mom gets me the way no one else does. When I forget words she always knows what I mean, and vice versa. She knows me like no one else.
18. December 18 is “Bake Cookies Day”. Do you have a favourite cookie recipe? Care to share?
I rarely bake cookies. The only cookies I make with some sort of regularity, as in a couple of times in a couple of years (LOL) are kaurapitsit. This is one recipe https://www.kotikokki.net/reseptit/nayta/482068/Kaurapitsit/ that I’ve used but I really have no favorite. The fewer the ingredients the better the kaurapitsit. We had a recipe I loved when I was a kid, but it doesn’t make them anymore like it used to – either the products have changed, or I’ve forgotten how. Either is possible! But really, I think the kaurahiutale (oat something) has change since the 1980s and as the result kaurapitsit don’t come out anymore like when I was a kid. They need to come out very thin, much thinner and more like lace than in the picture above to be how I like them.
19. In what forms of housing have you resided?
Two apartments that my parents owned when I was a kid; we moved into the bigger one in 1976 when I was two and and me & my Mom owned that one until we sold it as I moved into my own apartment. I don’t remember the first apartment but the second is my childhood home. It was a three bedrooms + kitchen, toilet, bathroom and walk-in-closet apartment in an apartment building on the third floor, and I had my own room.
While I was studying library sciences (age 17-20) I lived in student housing which was a three bedroom + kitchen apartment in a luhtitalo (like an apartment building but the stairwells are unheated and open to outdoors instead of closed and heated) in the Helsinki metropolitan area. Each student had one lockable bedroom and shared the kitchen/batchroom/toilet. One of my roommates from those days is still a good friend, but the third room never had a steady inhabitant – it was empty more than half of the two years I lived there. When my studies were done I moved back to my childhood home and lived there alone for about 3 or 4 years because Mom had moved in with her boyfriend at the same time I moved back from the metropolitan area. Then I used some of my inheritence from my Dad to buy into a luhtitalo apartment and then 20 years later bought it as my own with pre-inheritance money my Mom gave me. So now I live in an apartment I own.
These all have been in apartment buildings or luhtitalos, not detached houses. I’ve never wanted to live in or own a detached single family house although that is the stereotypical Finnish dream and supposedly what everyone wants. I don’t like yard work or garden work and I hate shoveling snow etc. so I want to live in an apartment building where the maintenance crew takes care of all that.
20. When were you last onstage, literally or figuratively?
Literally… I have a very faint memory that we performed a song as a class in our school’s Christmas festivities back in some year of the Years 3-6. So it would’ve been in early-1980s. So a long time ago.
Figuratively… again my thoughts go back to 1980s and comprehensive school when we had to do presentations or something sometimes. I have memory of feeling on stage after comprehensive school, at least.
21. True or false: people only eat cupcakes for the icing.
True 99% of the time. I find majority of cupcakes either too dry or sort of tasteless, but admitedly I haven’t eaten very many. My circles never got into the craze, and I’ve never personally baked cup cakes, only muffins, so maybe I just have gotten to eat not-so-great ones. But I suppose there are a few people who genuinely enjoy the whole thing..?
22. Do you have a TV series that you wish had run longer than it did? What about one that you think ran on too long?
Dark Skies and Space: Above And Beyond – both were cancelled after a single season and ended on a cliffhanger. I’m also always devastated when Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles ends while doing a rewatch and there isn’t more to episodes to watch. It takes me by surprise every time!
23. What songs hit you with a wave of nostalgia every time you hear them?
Miami Vice opening credits and all of the OST tracks such as Crockett’s Theme as well as many songs that I only ever heard on Miami Vice episodes or Miami Vice soundtracks such as Lives In The Balance by Jackson Browne. Whenever I watch a Miami Vice episode and the opening credits start, I’m immediately transported to Saturday night, 10-11pm no matter what weekday and time of day it really is! Because that was when Miami Vice aired here, and feels like it’s tatooed on my bones.
Star Trek TOS opening and closing credits! Whenever I hear them, it’s always Saturday afternoon in the mid-80s.
24. Which of your vices or bad habits would be the hardest to give up?
I’d find it very hard to give up Frezza cold coffee drinks entirely. And eating candy and particularly, chocolate.
25. Do you self-censor a lot?
Depends on the people around me. Most of the time I don’t have to self-censor much, but I’m not interested in debating politics or treatment of the poor with fanatic right-wingers so if I have to be around them, then I self-censor or rather try to avoid such topics. That doesn’t happen often – because I’m not going out much.
26. What happens in your country regularly that people in other countries would find strange or bizarre?
I’ve heard that we’re really weird because we queue obediently, quietly and orderly.
I’ve also heard that the Finnish penchant for comfortable silences freaks foreigners out. Just because we don’t like to fill every silence with empty chatter.
27. Was there ever an event in your life that defied explanation?
Nope. There have been many times when I think something uncomprehensible or incredible, but the explanation is always that the law and/or calculated norms are seriously outdated and always too low. So my common sense asks “how is this supposed to make sense?” And common sense answers “it doesn’t but the law/the calculated norms says “it is so”.
28. What decision have you been putting off?
Nothing at the moment. There are a couple of things I might have to make decisions about in near future but they depend on other people and the system whether that need comes to pass.
29. Most Valuable Player (MVP): an accolade or award, originally used in team sports to recognize one player for game-changing excellence, and also used outside of sports to recognize excellence in the contributions of an individual to a group effort. Does anyone stand out as your own personal MVP, either at work or in your personal life, for this year?
My Mom, always.
30. As the year comes to a close, what’s something you’d like to put behind you?
This whole inheriting-my-biological-father-even-though-I-was-adopted-as-a-baby-and-wasn’t-supposed-to-but-the-law-was-changed-on-us fucking thing. I’m just fucking pissed that I’m involved at all when I’m not supposed to be because that was how the adoption was done back in 1975 and then several years later the politicians went and changed the law (twice!) and didn’t bother to notify those concerned :/ We didn’t learn of this until my bio sister contacted me after my bio father died in April and they learned that I existed and am one of my bio father’s heirs. To day that it was a shock is the put it mildly. Worse is that the resolving the inheritance thing is taking a fucking loong time because the involved document offices, courts and legal aid is so backed up.
This year won’t really “complete” for me until that shit is entirely resolved and complete and behind me.
31. As the year comes to a close, what are you looking back upon most fondly?
Fondly? Nothing at all.
Satisfied? Got my adoption confirmed quickly after discovering it was a “weak” adoption as a “strong” adoption – which means the situation is now as we always thought it was and that I can’t inherit my biological mother or siblings and they can’t inherit me. Should I die while my Mom still lives, my Mom will now inherit me as it was always supposed to be because I don’t have kinds or a spouse and none of this weak-adoption-strong-adoption bullshit can interfere with that anymore.