Cimorene

(Not G)IP! After years and probably a hundred attempts to draw a version of my old default icon that I liked better than the original, last week I succeeded! I've wanted for a few years now to replace the vintage photo of Helen Kane that I've been using as a default since probably 2008ish?, but I would always get hung up at the last minute in a panic of identity crisis: how will anybody recognize me without a teal side-eyeing profile? (I have a constant urge to make my pixel Art Deco radio my default, but I just can't stand the strain of it being non-teal and not giving side-eye. But I wouldn't like it as much if I made it teal and gave it eyes!!!! It's a dilemma.)

Karar i arbeit. (This means "men at work" in a weird western Finland Swedish hick dialect and is the title of a song by Kaj, the Finland-Swedish band that Sweden are sending to Eurovision this year. And it's what waxjism has started saying anytime it is remotely relevant, I guess because it sounds funny to her.) The diggers are back this morning digging up the rest of the intersection next to our house. They dug up most of it in February and replaced some pipes, but then they've left it and most of the street below covered in compacted gravel since. The longer they leave it there, the likelier that our plumber will manage to get the digger guy to do the digging he needs to do to fix our pipe before they repave the road (not calling people back apparently applies also to contractors and not just to end customers! Great!), so I guess that's good. Possibly this development is bad, in fact (like what if they just keep going until they finish and then immediately start paving?). The cats like watching out the window though, and that's always cute.

At least a few flowers! All the maples are blossoming now, like little chartreuse pom-poms everywhere. Very cute. Possibly my favorite tree decoration. Lilies have been coming up, but nothing else but our daffodils is blooming yet, not even our tulips (there are some tulips open in town, in much sunnier spots, but our yard has a great deal of shade from tall trees around it).

Knitting for Niblings (they grow up so fast): The triplets I used to help bottle feed when they were born are turning eighteen this month and one of them is working this summer at a bar here in town, so has sought permission to crash at our place in the event he misses the late bus. They are basically adults!!!! Full-sized people!!! I mean he's been taller than me for a couple of years already, but still. Also this means I guess it's time to make them Adulthood Sweaters, but they're all the same age. (We made their older sister a nice sweater for her 18th birthday under the theory that she was now for the first time unlikely to outgrow it quickly.) (We did make her a sweater when she was a small child once but we never managed to make sweaters for the triplets because of this three-at-once issue. Not that they minded: it would be hard to find better-connected small children and they were always drowning in so many presents and party guests that they wouldn't notice our presence or absence.) So I'm thinking we will give them cards explaining that we will make them each the sweaters of their choosing now, but one after the other (Wax has tentatively agreed to this but she's probably forgotten by now because the discussion was a couple of weeks ago). It's summer anyway, so it's not like anybody will be in a rush for a sweater. And with any luck they will choose things that are easier to make than the long allover-cable mohair-and-merino cardigan Wax made for their sister. And I guess we need some kind of smaller symbolic present to go with the cards, but baking is out because their birthday party always features more sugary desserts than can be eaten. But also my shoulder still hurts (slightly, intermittently) and I still haven't called the doctor (or done the other stuff on that list from ten days ago. It was too scary and I froze up and didn't know where to start! Maybe I can start now, idk). So I couldn't start knitting right away anyway.

Fandom drama update, secondhand: I also forgot to mention that the two-week hiatus in Wax's fandom (911) ended and last week the new episode went up! And, as she and I expected, ( 911 spoilers... lol... ).

Reading Old Stuff: I made another attempt to read Le Morte d'Arthur and didn't get very far yet. The narrative voice is just incredibly dull! I did read the introductions to the Standard Ebooks edition with great interest, and obtained this list of sources which I hadn't heard before: "the great bulk of the work has been traced chapter by chapter to the "Merlin" of Robert de Boron and his successors (Bks. I-IV), the English metrical romance La Morte Arthur of the Thornton manuscript (Bk. V), the French romances of Tristan (Bks. VIII-X) and of Launcelot (Bks. VI, XI-XIX), and lastly to the English prose Morte Arthur of Harley MS. 2252 (Bks. XVIII, XX, XXI)." Having read Robert de Boron's "Merlin", the beginning of Le Morte d'Arthur is recognizable and also startlingly less interesting and fun to read. I looked up the English metrical and prose "Morte"s mentioned here and concluded that they didn't sound very fun either, although perhaps I will try them soon. Also started William Morris's translation of Grettis saga, and contrary to Morris's transports about characterization and poetry in the introduction, so far it is just wading through a lot of run-on sentences of geneology and short summaries of who attacked/burned and looted someone's house, just like the other Icelandic sagas I've attempted to read in the past. Amazing to think this in any way could represent a story designed to be told orally to a live audience who were supposed to not be falling asleep or getting up and leaving.

It's waxjism's family Christmas this year.

One brother and his family are coming from 5 hours away for 5 days and bringing their two teenage kittens, but our house is still Divided in Cat Divorce so they booked a local AirBnB in mid-November.

We knew they were driving down yesterday, but I was kinda expecting to see them like, at dinnertime, after Wax got off work at six.

But there was a knock on the door at 5 o'clock. "Do you have someplace we can put the cats? Something went wrong with our AirBnB," said BIL. "We went and found the key where they said it was and opened the door, but there was a dog there that tried to come out."

We put their cats in the larger of our two bathrooms with a litterbox. Over the course of a few hours, while they ate leftovers for dinner and we did some grocery shopping, SIL texted the AirBnB owner repeatedly but got no response, so BIL drove back over to see if maybe someone had come to fetch the dog. This time the door was answered. By the new owner.

Their AirBnB hosts had sold the flat and the new owner was living there with her dog. They had sold it BEFORE THEY EVEN BOOKED THE AIRBNB IN NOVEMBER. The lady who lived there was welcoming and concerned and offered to let them stay, but she didn't have anywhere better than a bathroom to put their cats either.

"But I got a text from the owner just yesterday!!!" said SIL. And what about the key? How was the key still in the same keysafe, with the same digital entry code, if the flat had been sold? BIL finally got the former owner of the place on the phone.

He was apologetic and said he had been 100% sure he had removed the listing from AirBnB. He said that all the messages they had received had been automatic and he was not even aware of receiving any notifications from the site that it had been rented. He made a complaint to the site and asked them to as well.

So they made a complaint to AirBnB, but BIL thinks it sounded like the guy was not very tech-savvy and might have turned on the automation settings and failed to delist his property like, completely by accident. (But that's still the site's fault, because what the hell kind of site design is that? Also how is it even possible to make it so fully automatic that a human being doesn't even have to click OKAY at any point? How do the designers of AirBnB think the place is going to get cleaned and prepared for visitors?)

My other SIL said her sister was going out of town tomorrow (today), so maybe they could stay at her place as they have before.

In the meantime, one of the nieces and SIL slept in our bed and I slept on the little cot in Wax's office with Tristana - our bedroom is the only other place in our house with a door you can close to store cats, besides Sipuli's suite down here. BIL and the other niece went to sleep on the guest bed at the other BIL's place in Turku.

But we woke up this morning to hear that SIL's sister's entire family have stomach flu and aren't going after all. What about the oldest niece, a college freshman who has her own flat in Turku? Or SIL's best friend who owns an AirBnB flat in town?

But within a few hours we heard: 1. The oldest niece was "not so enthusiastic" about letting her uncle and family stay in her flat for a few days. 2. SIL's best friend's AirBnB does not allow pets.

However, they found another, smaller AirBnB locally this morning and called the owner to confirm that it does allow pets, so they will take their cats there this evening if nothing else goes wrong.

In the meantime, just last night and this morning they have already managed to take the one plate in the china cupboard that can't go in the dishwasher (because it has a gold rim) from the middle of a tall stack of occasion dishes instead of just taking one of the everyday plates from the top shelf AND to take the one spatula in the house that can't go in the dishwasher (because it's bamboo) out of a drawer with like 20 spoons and spatulas in it this morning for making oatmeal. (Family culture in Wax's family is that your sibling's house is your house and you just make yourself at home without asking unless you have made a good faith effort to shift for yourself first and can't find what you want. But I didn't know anybody would be staying here that I needed to guestproof my kitchen against because they weren't supposed to be staying. Also we didn't clean the upstairs at all.)

Well, we finally just called the plumber on Thursday. No go. Just like every other plumber we've talked to, he doesn't have enough time for a job where he has to do a survey and make a plan before potentially digging up the yard until next year. (That's only a couple of weeks now of course. The first time a plumber said that to us was over a month ago... but then again, it could still be that he means not until February!). But in the meantime, in all their defence, this isn't a standard emergency as long as our sump pump is still working fine. I mean, our current situation IS acute or emergency in the sense of "there has been sewage contamination in the basement and it will recur if anything happens to the pump" but not an emergency in the sense of "the tenants' apartment lacks functioning plumbing and drains": the radiators, hot and cold running water, toilets and other drains are all perfectly fine in their apartment. The latter kind of emergency is the kind emergency plumbers usually deal with - stoppages and blockages and things like that. The former kind actually can't be fixed at all without installing new pipes either under the yard or under the cement floor of the basement (preferably the former because that's faster and cheaper, but it's still not actually FAST to do it legally). And that's why nobody has enough time to do it in the next month, because that's just how plumbers' schedules in this area fill up: they have holes where they can run off to a quick job but they don't have gaps long enough for a whole proper job, because they've got all those booked in advance.

I was complaining to my newest friend about the situation and saying how agonizing it is knowing that we're causing pain and inconvenience to our poor Ukrainian tenants and we're trying to fix it but we can't become better landlords because we lack the people skills, and they would be better off with my BIL or MIL or someone like that for a landlord, because, I said, probably we would have found someone to agree to help us by now if we were just friendly extroverts who know everybody and are good with people!!!

But she said actually, her parents had a nearly identical problem just a few years ago. They own a house and a pipe failed and flooded their basement and even though her dad IS an extrovert who knows everybody and is really good with people (he's a fantastically likeable guy, he's great, remind me to show you a video of him throwing an axe at the Viking village last august). He worked as a manager in a big local industry plant (he's an engineer) for his whole career, so he knows even more people in the building trades than your average small town extrovert, but he STILL couldn't find a plumber who could fit them in, and they had to wait over a month, including Christmas, with whatever he could MacGuyver together.

Also the Ukrainian tenants just asked Wax about renewing their lease next year and we are happy to have them, even though we are surprised they don't want to run for the hills.

Anyway, after the last plumber said no, I did look up a few businesses from the next town/island over who say they do work out here, but we have not called them (yet?), and we've discussed the possiblity that we should just call the guys we already know and ask how soon they CAN fit us in, even if that means waiting another month or whatever, and go from there. We were both kind of "Hmm, yeah maybe that's what we should do" about it, but after two phone calls on Friday we didn't have any energy left to make that decision. I suggested we should try sanity check by asking her brothers if this sounds smart to them, because even if they aren't smarter or whatever, at least they are not four months into crisis mode, which really does a number on your ability to compare and contrast things, or make decisions, or strategize in any way, because everything is just INTERNAL SCREAMING all the time, like Anakin's Vader reveal in RotS going NOOOOOOOO, and anything you have to choose or judge just seems insurmountably huge, like all the options are equal but with a huge heap of existential despair on top, like "Should I buy socks for BIL? Would BIL like socks? But would anybody actually like socks? Does anybody need anything at all? Probably not and also probably not socks!" So anyway: maybe we will try this sanity check idea, but it's also a nontrivial task to compose the question readably for them.

Getting some stuff done around the house still; not on a scale with last year, though. We're putting our hope in attempting to continue to get at least SOME things accomplished once we have started working again.

And the fact that my sister and her husband are coming to visit at the end of August! The last time she was here was 2009. He's never left the US. ❤️!

But Anubis is still peeing on everything. In fact, he's escalating. The breeders seem stressed too and they worry that, if it comes to us being unable to handle that much pee in our house, it won't work out well at theirs either, because they have gotten a whippet puppy since he left and it's not fully house trained; their place is hectic. They suggested that maybe if it's terrible, we could lock him in the bathroom instead. But we can't, at least, not for long, because our bathroom just isn't big enough and he's so big and energetic. We had a huge shower with a laundry area and a sauna at our old flat downtown! That would've been another matter. But here, it would feel cruel. If the pee and the stress of having a cat pee on the walls and furniture and anything else we own about 5-10x per day exceeds what we can handle, they're just going to have to take him and, like, put him in THEIR bathroom, I guess.

Our intention was to try Helen Rennie's Earl Grey chiffon cake and a chicken pie with mash on top and I was hoping also dal, but there's only three days left before I have to start working again (ANXIETY KLAXONS) and we tripped and fell into making a big batch of guacamole and one of pesto. Most expensive pesto we'll ever have eaten, after buying four little potted basils from the produce department! (We should try to grow from seed, but that takes a while, so... maybe we will start some seeds soon, when Wax sets up a glass greenhouse cabinet?, and then we can make pesto again in a year or whatever.)

I've been having a pretty nice time at work (personality issues aside), because there's less to do in summer but not NOTHING, so I get to spend a lot of my time on my long term graphic design projects (making advertising materials for our chapter and its various volunteer groups and services) but there's still things to give some structure to my time. There's a couple of projects for the city government going on and I've been accepting some donations; I've been soliciting, comparing and summarizing offers of copy machine contracts; and I've compiled a scavenger hunt and prepared the paperwork for a collection of teenaged summer workers whom I will be helping to supervise for a few weeks in June. It is hotter there every day though: it is air conditioned, nominally, but the building is fronted with massive plate glass windows facing east. I expect the month left between now and my vacation to be hot enough to require me to retreat entirely from my desk, the hottest spot until early afternoon, at some point.

We have been getting through our spring cleaning little by little and all the rooms have been done now, though it took so long the first ones are ready for vacuuming again while the curtains we washed aren't ironed and hung yet. One pair need to be hemmed. We found a big shoebox of MIL'S jewelry, never actually sorted through after her death in 2019, and in it we found a bunch of furniture keys that we need to try in all the old furniture. Also a silver cigarette case that belonged to Wax's maternal grandfather and his father, which I can use as a sewing kit! Wax already had a sewing kit in a cigarette case that belonged to a paternal ancestor. I've put needles and thread in it already, but I need to collect some safety pins and obtain a pair of embroidery scissors small enough to fit inside it. There was also jewelry in there, but that has to wait for a family reunion.

Wax and I both tend to kind of ignore presents, for the most part. We share the quality of being able to buy most of the stuff we actually want, which tends to be like things for our hobbies. We also don't attach much sentimentality to them, I guess.

(I like getting presents that are surprises, but not enough to care that much, and also I'm hard to pick things out for, so my sister - the person I talk to about my hobbies and interests the most, because she shares most of them - is the only person who's very well equipped to give me that kind of present, something you like or want enough to be pleased with but not enough to have got it yourself even though it is related to your hobby.)

I'm thinking about this because in Finland, birthdays that are a multiple of 10 are a big deal. My MIL, who was both sweet and thoughtful AND good at organizing and planning, always gave slightly fancier presents for them - in fact she gave me one of my favorite necklaces when I turned 25 and one when I turned 30. The one I got when I turned 35 was even better because it was an heirloom. But on our own, Wax and I tend to consider birthdays just another day. My SIL is just a couple of weeks younger than me, so we've always both just had a birthday when we have a Christmas reunion, and she asked me if Wax got me anything special this time and was a bit shocked that I said no. She asked for a kayak and got one. There's a good spot for it near their house, and they've already been multiple times with rented ones. That's adorable!

This year at Christmas Wax and I bought ourselves:

1. Wax and I get more enjoyment miles, or minutes as it were, out of pajamas than anything else, and we decided a few years ago to get them for each Christmas. But we didn't want to wait to open them at Christmas, so we didn't. (We got two different colors of what we agree is the perfect nightdress: Ristomatti Ratia Adina. )

2. I spent about 75€ on fountain pen stuff (a nice sturdy Twsbi Eco that I could take to work worrying able damaging it, like with my beloved Pelikans which have softer, springy nibs, and a glass dip pen, but I chipped the tip right away), and ordered about the same amount of cake baking stuff for Wax (a mousse ring and a set of piping tips and the plastic reusable foil that you use to line the mousse ring when making mousse cake, all from the delightful posh kitchen store whose invoices tragically DON'T look like wedding invitations anymore, but they sent us a free spongecloth in the last one). But obviously we didn't wrap those things.

3. I was saying we should get something we could stand to wait and open at Christmas, and I happily remembered our Rörstrand Mon Amie mugs - we had two, so I bought us two more, and then when they arrived I reminded Wax that the reason I ordered them was to have something to open on Christmas Eve but she looked at me like that was ridiculous, which, like, it was, so we just used them right away.

4. I also bought the hilariously minimalist Swedish midmod design candleholder Stumpastaken, which holds 9 tealights by default so I've been coveting one to use as a menorah for years. I laugh whenever I look at it - it reminds me of the Bauhaus nativity. For Hanukka, obviously, not birthday or Christmas.

5. Last fall we discussed me ordering a KitchenAid mixer after my first few paychecks, but I kinda rethought it. We have a Kenwood which is, yes, inferior. It's lighter, the body is plastic that's already yellowing, and it's got places you can't clean bread dough out of without taking it apart. It's got attachments that are not stainless or enameled so they can't be washed in the dishwasher. But we use it comparatively little. Wax has gotten really into making cakes and she bakes much more than me these days, but usually with the hand mixer. Since all the Korean and Japanese pastry chefs on YouTube that we follow primarily use hand mixers too, I now feel that this is a legitimate choice. Also if we got one we'd probably have to drive to Turku just to donate the Kenwood.

And I don't really want any more expensive fountain pens right now! I've found my ideal pen in the Pelikan 200/400 series, and I like them so much that I don't want any more pens that aren't piston-fillers, except the Twsbi (for its sturdy hard nib that I'm not afraid of damaging) and a handful of Kaweco Sports, which not only have hard nibs but which I prefer to load with cartridges because they're so small. They're handy to have in the pocket, but I don't want a whole collection of them; if you have a pen inked up and don't use it for a few weeks it'll dry up, which is bad for them.

I would like an endless collection of sweaters, but there's a limit to how fast we can knit, so buying more wool in advance would be silly.

Last night we baked the four tins full of gingerbread for next weekend's family Xmas party and I mixed up a big batch of sugar cookie dough to bake today when we frost the gingerbread! And then we spent a few hours sweeping and vacuuming and changing the bunny litter boxes. The amount of hay that bunnies can scatter EVERYWHERE in the space of one week is truly amazing. Little inverse Roombas trundling around on the floor spreading mayhem and hay in their wake!

We still need to buy more ingredients so that Wax can bake two cakes for next weekend and I can make the fudge and chocolate pretzel sticks this week. We're gonna have to go to the store again to get the salad ingredients at the end of next week, and I'm now about halfway through hemming the diningroom curtains. There's literally one new curtain and one old curtain hanging side by side right now, and we also need curtain weights and curtain clips because I accidentally made the curtain like 2" shorter than intended and approx. 1 cm shorter than its minimum acceptable length, so curtain clips are the only way to possibly avoid having to unpick the bottom hem and make a smaller one (I can't find the seam ripper either). Also I guess we need to hang up the Christmas lights.

Reports indicate they will be selling trees in front of the supermarket today, so we will attempt to buy a tabletop-sized one (there's no room for a big one, but the bunnies would eat it anyway). Even though I prefer our menu, I miss Wax's mom right now because she simply had so much executive function at all times: you could always count on her to schedule, delegate, and direct everyone to get everything coordinated and done on time.

The plus side of having people over like we did Saturday is that it forces us to quickly do a bunch of cleaning, so we should probably continue that in the future. But having only one day of the weekend to actually relax is very emotionally trying! Wax did make a coffee mousse cake with chocolate cookie base that might be her best cake yet, but most of it got eaten by our guests. Probably not really a bad thing, I guess. The sooner you eat up one cake, the sooner you make the next cake, after all. (Not this week though, because she has to work evening shift Tuesday and Wednesday and then she has to work Saturday.)

Anyway, we slept till noon Saturday but then cleaned intensely for four or five hours and hosted a family dinner with her brother's family of six and then stayed up late and slept till noon again and then stayed up even later trying to squeeze more knitting in Sunday night because we just couldn't believe our weekends were over... even though she had to get up at seven and I had to get up at nine. In consequence, we both fell asleep for several hours this afternoon after our respective shifts ended, but I never stopped feeling tired all evening. I'd like to just sleep for about fourteen hours, perhaps several days in a row. And then a few days where I don't have to go anywhere to finally get a satisfying amount of knitting done. And then maybe another day off for good measure just to chill before I have to go back to work.

I know research supports the idea of a four-day work week and a three-day weekend every week being healthier and more productive. And was it a six-hour work day? My work day is five hours, though. And it isn't an excessive amount of work! It's just the fact that I have to get up at 9 and leave the house and interact with people five days out of the week that wears me down regardless. Fortunately the 'interact with other people' part is only maybe 15 minutes per day. So maybe this is close enough to be able to estimate what that would feel like: I think that 4 days/6 hours arrangement might actually not result in backed-up sleep debts every other weekend (or rather, every weekend where we have to do anything that takes all our energy and attention for half the day or so)! It wouldn't be enough in the middle of winter, though, because in the middle of winter everybody has less energy and needs more sleep, and in Finland when there's no sun coming up to speak of you should probably get about ten hours of sleep and two and a half hours of sitting somewhere cozy doing nothing per day.

We can't even sit somewhere cozy now, because by the time one of us got around to calling the chimney sweep this year it was already the second week of September, and at that point the looming energy crisis had his time fully booked until mid-December. So the first time we can light a fire in our little cast iron stove will be in December, well past my birthday. Fortunately we don't actually have to turn our heat down this year like so many other people have to do, because we have a fixed-price electricity contract and our rate won't go up until next June. So there are two armchairs in front of the stove, but they're turned to face the room instead because there's no benefit to being there yet. Fortunately it has just been very gray and damp so far, not cold. In fact, it has been warmer than average through October and November so far, but meteorologists are predicting an especially cold December. Not snowy (which would be some saving grace because then it's pretty, and it reflects the light): just cold. Probably rainy.

BIL & SIL and the niblings left this morning after being here all week with their elderly cat because they couldn't get a cat sitter. ( That went okay, but I really felt for the poor lil guy and am relieved on his behalf that he is returning to his own territory. There were no major conflicts of personality but Tristana had to be arrested a bunch. )

Now the spare mattresses are removed from the floor and the cotton rugs are back to allow bunnies to run around. The box of hay, the napping cushion, the stuff to chew on and the little house to hide in are all returned to their spots in the dining room and Rowan is cautiously jogging around sniffing everything, so nature is healing. ( The bunnies had much to endure, but nobody got bitten and I never yelled LEAVE THE BUNNIES ALONE FOR FUCK'S SAKE, so I'm counting it as a win. ) Tristana spent a day or so mostly hiding, but she got over it and became friendly with all the new guests, even the smallest child (who is I think 9?), even though there was always a large risk of being picked up by her. (Tristana doesn't hate being picked up in principle, she's just usually busy because she has to cram so much playtime in. She is docile about being grabbed unless she was really interested in what she was doing, and by the same principle, she will start to wiggle after a short time, but there's no hard feelings once she is released.)

We made tortilla pizzas for everybody Monday, which, if you don't know, are pizzas made on store-bought flour tortillas. ( How to make tortilla pizzas. ) This meal was delicious and it created a convivial atmosphere, with all the adults hanging around the stove/kitchen munching on toppings and chatting, because you have to cook one pizza at a time and each adult had to consume a total of 2-3 of them for a meal's worth. (The resultant pizzas were not considered nutritional enough for child consumption, so the children's ones were topped with shredded basil leaves and fresh mozzarella and like... chopped grapes??? by my SIL. The kids liked it, so whatever.) We shared a bottle of red wine, and among four adults who rarely drink wine, that was enough to render all of us slightly tipsy. We had a three-language conversation with lots of shouting. It was great.

Tuesday BIL made spaghetti primavera, but he has to make this with basically zero seasoning because of the children, so it was an astonishing taste experience. Very reminiscent of when my dad used to cook when my mom was in grad school (around the time I was silent pastel goth goddaughter's age actually). Also he decided not to bother us by asking where the parmesan was and instead grated up a pile of Oltermanni, a mild and creamy-tasting soft cheese similar to Edam. Obviously, unlike parmesan, it just melted into little melted blobs when put on a plate of hot pasta. Still fine, I mean, spaghetti and olive oil aren't bad flavors, so at worst it needed salt and pepper. But very funny in contrast to my expectations with the name of the dish. It reminds me of the time we were staying with MIL and she announced her intention to make fried rice, but it turned out she meant Rice That Has Been Fried. She served pre-steamed white rice that had been sauteed until soggy at a low temperature in olive oil, with no seasonings and no other ingredients. The spaghetti primavera was not nearly that bad, obviously, because it was still mostly vegetables, but still. LOL.

Wax's cousin once removed is about two, and like every other small child who has been to our house, he's enchanted with the cats and bunnies. As usual:

• Snookums was cautious at first, but is a super chill cat, so he quickly allowed himself to be touched, petted, hugged, his tail held (not pulled), and he has been followed around a fair bit. I had to protect his eyes from possible poking because the kid is learning the words "eye" and "ear" in Swedish and was pointing enthusiastically. Every now and then he shrieks piercingly with delight/laughter and Snookums runs away and hides, but he comes back.



• Tristana has spent almost the entire time upstairs, hiding, and part of that time she was under our bed just to make sure, after Wax's favorite aunt's husband walked up to her and petted her. She was alarmed by his deep voice, even though he was gentle and courteous and correct by cat introduction standards. The toddler has only caught sight of her a few times and she quickly ran back upstairs every time, but when he was absent or asleep everyone else has been able to see her slinking around cautiously a bit.



• I held Japp in my lap and let the toddler pet him (also protecting the eyes) for a while, and later while I was grooming Rowan (actually checking Rowan for bites because he and Japp had a fight) the child got to pet him too (again, protecting the eyes with my hands). Apart from this, the bunnies have both hidden the entire time - usually visible as poofs of floof. They've endured a lot of pointing and yelling up close though, because the cages aren't really large enough for them to get more than a meter away from someone who is next to the front of the cage. They have emerged from behind the curtains in their cubbies though, and let loose so far as to eat their treats and salads and even to go to work (nibbling on cardboard boxes, I mean). They both took some opportunities to binky/run around when the child was napping or absent though, so they have got to stretch their legs. Although Wax's aunt and uncle are old and the uncle stayed up later than us last night and then he and the aunt were both already up at 8:30 when I went to let Japp out of his cage, so he didn't even get to enjoy his solitary morning binks because they were stationed in the armchairs with newspapers. Not paying any attention to Japp, obviously, but that didn't make a difference; their mere presence was enough to prevent him from playing. He just snuck over to the plant table, under which there's a couple of bathmats and some cardboard box bunny forts with doors cut out of them. (He's not bold enough to be there when the child is around, because there's no fencing between it and the rest of the room.)

Wax's younger brother and 13-year-old goddaughter who has become a pastel goth and apparently isn't speaking out loud right now (the other goddaughter is 18, you may remember) were in town for Wax's paternal grandmother's family reunion, which took place on the family farm where her grandmother and her 13 siblings grew up. There were 142 attendees even though it was pouring rain most of the time and we were stuck in a bunch of tents on the lawn. Because of pandemic concerns, this was the first in three years, so Wax's mom and one other (one of her grandmother's brothers) died in the interim, but 18 children were born. The youngest attendee was 2 weeks old, apparently. After the reunion, BIL & goddaughter(13) and the aunt/cousin family hung out at our house all evening, and the 13-yo goddaughter spent at least an hour or two patiently standing upstairs petting Tristana, which is the only way to bond with Tristana right now since she won't come downstairs, and probably represents a big and exciting breakthrough for a girl who, in her own time, followed Snookums around slavishly and stared mournfully through the bunny cages. (They went back to Turku to sleep though, unlike the cousin and aunt's family.)

I think they're leaving tomorrow? They're going to visit some other parts of Finland. I've become somewhat peopled out already, but none of the other adults on site apparently can be trusted to intervene if the bunnies need to be protected unless I lock them both in and cover their cages with dropcloths first.

The child was excited to draw with me though, and that was really cute. I have a box of 240-something Crayola crayons that my mom sent me some years ago pursuant to my complaints that there was no equivalent product here. (Wax crayons exist but are rare and tend to come in boxes of max 6-8 colors. Preschools' standard coloring materials are cheap colored pencils, which, as you know if you know art supplies, are crap - the colors are too pale and a bit gray, the leads break easily, and they're thinner than the ideal shape for little toddlers to hold and learn to manipulate, plus you have to apply a great deal more force to get good color intensity, comparatively (compared to crayons or to expensive colored pencils with softer leads). And even when you press hard, the colors you get aren't as good because cheap colored pencils use less and cheaper pigments.) Crayola stuff isn't marketed here at all and there are no imitators, and I saw some portraits and caricatures in crayon a few years ago that made me really want some to play with, and here we are. I DO draw with them occasionally, but not that often, so almost every crayon still had most of its original point - none had ever been sharpened.

The toddler was shy at first, but when I handed him a crayon and participated by drawing with them myself he quickly got enthusiastic and we made friends. He then discovered that he was perhaps even more interested in dumping out the interior sub-boxes to leave the crayons all lying in a big heap in the bin and then putting them back in the boxes only to dump them out again. (I put them away and then got them out again three times yesterday, but I didn't mind that. It was nice to draw with a kid.) He's at the multi-colored scribbles which he will point to and tell you what they represent stage. He's talking a lot, too, in both Vietnamese and Swedish (albeit not always understandably), in two-word sentences - subject-verb or verb-object, at least in Swedish, which is standard at his age for monolingual children.