* A Spanish evening with tapas, wine and wild dancing with hot-blooded people while the weather was being very Finnish outside.
* Sushi-making lessons from a teenager who had just bought a Kevlar vest.
* Election night watch party where we forgot to watch and booked a trip to Ireland instead.
* Ice hike and picnic alone on a deserted island - mushroom pie and coffee.
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| Ice hike |
* A wild car chase to get free tickets to the theatre - the wonderful musical Billy Elliot in Finnish.
* Blind date with a window blind salesman. It was blindingly obvious that we weren't meant to be.
* Another non-skiing day with the Ski Club: luxury hamburgers with foie gras and dancing to dodgy music.
* Ireland in April: beaches, mountains and narrow Dublin streets, friends in various moods, dreams and Donegal.
* All-night drive to get home after a long journey, which gave a whole new meaning to the phrase "midnight madness".
* Birthday celebration, times two, on my balcony with traditional silver pear cake.
* May Day brunch on raw food with the Ski Club (still not skiing).
* A bucket of chicken shit that I carried into the main hospital to give to a friend.
* Autopsy that I attended in a carefully planned outfit.
* Ear massage (heavenly!).
* Poodle week with strawberries and gorgeous summer mornings.
* Anxiety pills that I gave away to a friend.
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| Not feeling anxious anymore |
* First day of summer vacation: visit to the world's most boring museum.
* Tree-felling weeks with family and poodle.
* Midsummer with the Midsummer People in a cottage deep in a rain-soaked forest.
* Sing-along and beer at the micro-brewery with the Ski Club (need I say it? there was no skiing).
* Picnic in the park with the Ski Club on the hottest day of the year (33.7 degrees Celsius, not enough snow for skiing). A nap afterwards to sober up, on brown grass with a wild hare for company.
* Lots of summer floating on the sea (peaceful) and quality time with mother (not always peaceful). Heat headaches and a desperate search for cold water.
* Weekend in Helsinki with a friend, Bukowski and an electric fan. There was unbelievable heat, a hunt for a golden lion, dead presidents and a party with Hare Krishnas. We fled the city when Trump and Putin arrived.
* Encounter with (what might have been) a monster of the abyss, on a summer morning boat trip.
* Pergola planning for the garden by me and my equally non-planning, non-gardening sister.
* VIP tickets to a festival. Music, great food and wine, and everyone soaked in sweat. "Can you believe how much your employer invested in you?" gasped my plus-one.
* Barefoot pizza party on a tiny balcony during the thunder storm of the century.
* A dead squirrel and traumatized kids, all my fault.
* Guided excursions to a waste treatment plant (with its own Grand Canyon), a theatre, the City Hall, an opera cellar, the dangerous roof of the icehockey arena and the smelly locker room of the Vaasan Sport icehockey team.
* Badminton - my old Irish hobby became my new one this year.
* Two days shopping in the city that tends to give me suicidal thoughts. Not so this time. It gave me good coffee and quality time with friends.
* My first and last cooking class ever.
* Flirting with a vegetable vendor who took my pulse, right before I was given a book about a vegetarian lion - all while undergoing a health examination.
* Lessons in first aid.
* Large party with strangers only - I mingled with boat people and entrepreneurs and loved it.
* Turku visit with nuns, bad weather, happy memories and another party mingling with strangers.
* Christmas celebrations for nine hours straight, with thirteen humans and five dogs.
* New Year's Eve with friends, prayer, wine and fireworks - and the worst storm in recorded history.
Ongoing projects of the year:
* Getting silver hair - loving it.
* Volleyball - playing and watching with friends.
* Church - mostly avoiding it.
* Becoming a morning person and a bus person and a less lazy, unorganized person.
* Doing piano lessons on winter evenings and intense French studies through an app.
* Having party evenings with my nasty friends, other evenings with my good friend watching bizarre reality shows about au pairs.
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| Text is my thing |
* Frequent food: Carelian pasty, croissants, eggs and carrots.
* Freezing winter when wolf packs became the talk of the town, scorching summer when I watered squirrels and constantly stuck my head under the cold-water tap.
* Self-analysis of the year: "I am made of spiderweb and birdsong." And I have a deep anger, am more harmonious when responsible for someone, and need to get in touch with my body.
New experiences: Sing-alongs and autopsies, reflexology and traumatizing smear tests, wild boar steak.
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