Love and roots

Oh, hello, my old blog! 

All of your followers have probably disappeared, sorry about that. But I have things to tell you, so I'm back!

Kävelin kivisiä katuja,

ajelin kehäteitä.

Hiihtelin elämäni latuja,

ajattelin meitä,

kuinka nuorina tahdoimme

päästä maailman syliin.

Minkä sille me mahdoimme:

jäätiin maalikyliin.

--

Näissä elämän vesikeleissä

hahmottuvat haasteemme suuret.

Tärkeintä loppupeleissä

on rakkaus ja juuret.

I may have done the most radical thing I've ever done. I moved to Finland in August.

Making the decision to move took a lot longer than my decision to move to Scotland. That was something I didn't even have to think about. But moving to Finland was a tough decision to make.

I had fears that I would just "move back" and get stuck. I was worried that Finland would be cold and dark and I that would just get depressed and scared of life. — But actually: Scotland is cold and dark and I had been living there for 7 years. That's almost a decade. Practically (if you use a little bit of imagination and don't think about it too hard or precisely), a 3rd of my life. So I was about to get stuck there and wanted to try something else. I could have moved to somewhere completely different: Germany, Sweden, Japan...?

But no, Finland was worth a try. I had never lived here as an adult before. I have a 5-year old sister and a 3-year old goddaughter. It was about a time to get to know them. Being a bit closer to be able to meet them a bit more often wouldn't be so bad, right?

So I tried it.

I moved to Finland with my new kitten. And so far it's been awesome. I've probably never been this happy. And maybe it's time to share some of this happiness with you! Goodbye depression blog, hello happiness blog! That's kind of what the blog was about in the first place though, but maybe it's good to inform you about the fact that I've just had the best autumn of my life.

Finland has been so sunny. I've met dozens of fantastic people. I feel really extroverted in Finland compared to typical Finns you find in the streets. Well duh, who speaks to strangers in the street? (Apparently me.)  I thought I might be lonely if I lived alone, but it's been quite the opposite. Now, I actually have to leave the house to socialise and apparently I do that. Sometimes I also have guests over. And I have a cat, so there is no boring times at home ever. Not that I even know how to get bored.

I've started a new hobby and somehow got a temporary job where I'm allowed to drink water and go to the toilet. And all of my best friends live really close to me so I actually get to see them more than a couple of times a year. Instead of random messages I now get phone calls of whether I can meet them for coffee straight away. It's so crazy after so many years of communicating primarily online.

I love my friends, I love my life, I love my cat, and my roots are here. This city I moved to has been completely new to me, but maybe I'll grow some of my roots here. Some of them I left behind in Scotland. Roots all over the place. 

About hate and anger

I really didn't want to post this, because I want to be a person who doesn't hate. But I am struggling with that and am confused why. So I decided to write about it. Maybe it will help me to get over it. I gave myself a love therapy session here earlier and it helped. So maybe this will too. But I warn you, it will be a rant. If you came here looking for something sophisticated, you won't find it here.

I'm far from perfect and apparently have  many insecurities that I'm trying to work on. In general I really like people. Many people inspire me and I want to learn from their good qualities and develop myself to become better. I want to see the good in people.

© Yle Areena: Au Pairit Los Angelesissa.

But sometimes I have a bad day and feel disappointed and it's just not that easy. And I catch myself thinking bad and unhelpful thoughts. For example, the other day, I was watching a Finnish reality TV show Au Pairit Los Angelesissa  ("Au pairs in Los Angeles"), and noticed that I thought that one of the girls had a terrible style. She wore a lot of really cakey make-up and spider-like fake lashes, and I just didn't like that type of make-up. But then I thought about it and realised how judgemental I was. She was a teenager which is the best time to try out absolutely any style! She clearly liked her style and it was the way she expressed herself — actually she was great and really smart! After that realisation she became my favourite person in the series. I absolutely hate the fact how quickly I judged her in the first place based on her appearance. Just because I personally wouldn't use some sort of make-up doesn't mean that there's something wrong with that style.

Maybe I was so quick to judge after I was bullied at school, which has made me nervous around certain kind of people. And suspicious about certain appearances. It's crazy and I should try to learn to be less judgemental. And I most definitely don't hate any of my bullies. I wouldn't even be able to name them if I had to.

But there are two people I still do hate. And I don't know what to do about that. So here I am to confess you everything about my unhelpful thoughts.

© Fab After Forty.

The first person really angers me. A few years ago, I was suffering from depression and was really lonely. I asked her if she would like to meet up for a cup of coffee with me sometime. We had previously spoken about that, so it wasn't out of the blue. Although, of course in UK you sometimes suggest meeting up when you don't really mean it. But still, I thought I'd ask because I really needed more pleasant activities in my day and a human to talk to. We were messaging about how we were doing and I was honest with her, about my anxiety and depression. She said that other people's company helps with that. So I asked her if she would like to meet me for coffee because at the time I didn't feel like I had other people I could just meet like that. And then she told me that I should just go to therapy and get professional help and take a gap year. And honestly, I had tried to get to therapy but the queue was 2 years long. It can be difficult for a healthy person to understand how difficult it is to find and get professional help for mental health issues. Often you have to be self-destructive to even get on the waiting list. But I didn't want her to be my therapist. I just wanted to have coffee with a real human being. I am still hurt and angry about that and I hate her. I hate her! And I don't know why. But I never told her how much her words hurt me. She's still my Facebook friend and she keeps posting really inconsiderate and self-boasting comments on Facebook. But maybe I am just so annoyed with everything she posts because I have such strong feelings about that incident and her. I have considered deleting her, but I'm not sure if that's the best solution. 

She reminds me of another person I used to hate. There was a similar incident around the same time, when I was really sad about having no one in my life. I was so depressed and slightly suicidal and I was crying at someone else's home, because I just didn't want to go home alone. And I was told to leave. And I wasn't even angry because I was told to leave. I completely understand how annoying it must have been to have me around that day. I was angry because she told someone who was crying and suicidal to go away. You should never do that. You take the time to make them a cup of tea. If you don't have time to listen to them, you tell them that they are welcome to stay as long as they need to, even if you are busy. Or you make other arrangements. You make sure they are okay to walk home. WHATEVER. Never, walk pass a crying lonely person, offer a tissue. Never leave a suicidal person alone. Would you walk pass a person ready to jump of a bridge? Would you kick out a suicidal person? If so, it's very likely that I will hate you.

©Quotes Lover.

At least for a moment. I don't actually hate her anymore, I don't have such feelings towards her, but I still haven't forgiven her for kicking out a suicidal person, even though I have forgiven her kicking out me.

The other person I notice myself hating hasn't actually done anything like that. She didn't invite me to her Hallowe'en party once, which is hardly a reason to even dislike someone. But I get these same angry and hateful feelings about her when I see things she posts on Facebook. (Because Facebook obviously is the place where the social things happen with people you don't actually see in real life anymore.) And I really used to like her. I've written a blog post in my less public blog about how much I missed her when I was on a summer holiday. And I used to be so happy to see her. But after that Hallowe'en party incident something changed and now everything about her annoys me. Do I need some therapy again? Or should I perhaps just delete her on Facebook and forget about her like she's forgotten about me?

©Rick Quotes.

Wow, I sound really shallow and bitter. I am not proud of this. I just want to let go so bad.

But yes, unfortunately, there are two people I still hate, but I am working on it. People suck and I need to accept it and get over it. This post really sucked. Maybe next time I'll tell you about people I love.

What are all these clothes?

I have too much stuff. My inner nomadic soul is suffering from owning this much stuff. But I just love all of my stuff. I haven't figured out how to get rid of it all, but I just dream of owning little enough so that it wouldn't tie my down so much to where I'm living at the moment.

I'm doing my second load of washing today, but I don't understand where I am going to put it after it's clean. My laundry basket is so full I can't fit any more clothes in it. My wardrobe is full. My chest of drawers won't even close. I have a clothes horse up, covered in pyjamas I washed yesterday. And guess what? The cliché: "I have nothing to wear", quite often describes the thoughts that are going through my mind when I'm trying to get dressed.

This is where I lived and how I dried my laundry in first year.

Why is that? Do I really have nothing to wear or is everything I'd like to wear in that overflowing laundry basket? What is all that stuff that is making my wardrobe full? Do I ever wear them? How do I find out? Should I literally just wash everything and start taking notes of what I am actually wearing? How many clothes does a person like me actually need anyway? Do I want to become a person who wears the same clothes everyday? Am I already that person without realising and am just trying to hide that truth from myself by owning all of those other clothes? When was the last time I bought new clothes anyway? When was the last time I donated some clothes to charity?

Home sweet home and all of my lovely clothes. In 2008.

Okay, the last time I bought new clothes was last week. I bought two new vests from Primark because the ones I wear all the time are so worn I'm worried they will fall apart soon. And the other week I took a couple of jackets I never wear to a swap shop at uni. So I am trying. 

But maybe I should do more. Should I really start taking notes of what I like to wear? And create statistics? And renew my wardrobe so that it looks like a wardrobe that belongs to a 25 year-old (me). I'm worried there's a big "backlog" of my teenage years; clothes I am now keeping there just in case I decide not to do laundry for 6 months. Completely good clothes that I could definitely wear so that I wouldn't have to walk around naked.

Definitely not naked.

According to Jenna Marbles it's just embarrassing to keep wearing the same clothes all the time. I don't entirely follow that ideology but as a girl living in this society I am still probably affected by that. And also alarmingly I can recognise some similarities in my behaviour and this video:

My wardrobe is a lot smaller than hers though, you can see it in her "How Guys Get Dressed" -video. And I am planning to move house at some point in the not so distant future and I really need to get rid of a lot of it before that. I need to go through my sock drawer so that I could at least occasionally find matching socks. But I am sad to throw out all of those odd socks. But I honestly don't know what I could ever do with them. I am not a crafty person. And I don't like wearing matching socks anymore. I've done it. It was great, but sadly I have now moved on. I also need to get rid of my old clothes that I am saving as a backup. Perhaps, I should organise my clothes into categories when I take them down. Primary clothes and secondary clothes? And then I can donate all of those secondary clothes when it's time to move on with my life. That could potentially work.

Do you ever experience these problems? And how do you manage to throw out your old clothes?

Hyperopic vision problems

Hello,

I just wanted to give you a health update and ask for some advice. I had the most horrible week last week. I had a migraine all week that resulted me needing to go to a hospital in the middle of the night.

They found nothing wrong and thought it might be my prescription and sent me to an emergency appointment with an optometrist, but they found nothing wrong with my prescription.

I am fairly frustrated with my eyes at the moment and if you have any experiences or tips to share with me — they are the most welcome! Especially if you have similar eye-sight to mine. 

I've spent ages trying to search experiences that are similar to mine, but found nothing. I was almost hopeful when I found a promising YouTube-video made by a lady who was far-sighted, but then she started talking about Jesus and how he gave people different prescriptions and then started reading out bits from the Bible, and it wasn't really what I was looking for. But if you are looking for a "short discussion on receiving the prescribed vision adjustment and having the eyes of your heart enlightened through the true Counselor, the Holy Spirit" then feel free to watch her video. It was interesting, but I really was just looking for people's experiences with contact lenses when dealing with far-sightedness and astigmatism. But I just found experiences from people who were near-sighted.

Let me just tell you a little bit about my eyesight.

According to my mum, I had bad strabismus when I was little and wore glasses since I was 2 years old. This might be the reason why I still can't see 3D.

My strabismus, however, got pretty much fixed and I was able to see well without glasses — I stopped wearing them when I was 13. Then five years ago, I got reading glasses that I wore when I was working on something. Then, I started getting migraines that may have been caused, or at least made worse, by the contraceptive pill. I didn't want to make them even worse by needing to strain my eyes too much and started wearing glasses everyday.

According to my prescription I am far-sighted and have astigmatism. So when I sit on a sofa at home and look in front of me, the world looks like this:

How I see the world.

It's difficult to see things near me, but I can see well far away. This is fixed when I put my glasses on. After last weeks migraines though I started wondering whether they actually could be caused by the fact that my glasses keep constantly sliding down my nose.

I figured that if I wore contact lenses I most definitely wouldn't have that problem because they would stay on my eye. It just apparently cannot be that easy. I did write about my initial contact lens -struggle but the saga continues. I wore contact lenses at work for almost a year and was able to see things that were close to me but I had no hope seeing far away. I realised how bad my eye sight is with my contact lenses when I tried wearing them again last weekend to stop the headaches.

My vision with contact lenses.

Sure I can read medication leaflets with my contacts in but activities like watching TV are completely out of question. Unless I move it on the coffee table, approximately half a meter from my face. That's what I had to do last weekend. But it just isn't very practical.

I guess the way I see the world with contact lenses is quite similar to how most young people with bad eye-sight see the world. At least I've met far more near-sighted people than far-sighted people.

I'm going to go and see the optician again and ask about this, because I don't understand why it's happening since as far as I understand, my prescription is pretty much the same for both; my glasses and contact lenses. But I would also like to know about your experiences! Have you got similar experiences with contact lenses?!

In the mean time, I've solved my vision problem by properly attaching my glasses to my head.

I tied some hair ties around the frames. I then attached the hair ties to this beautiful headband with a hair pin. This keeps my glasses still, but makes it more annoying to take them off. But at least the headaches have stopped for now!

Any words of wisdom or personal experiences?

Also, if you came to look at pretty pictures and have not yet learned that this is not the best place for that, I would like to apologise your disappointment and the fact that I haven't really had the motivation to try and look presentable or tidy the house or use a proper camera to take these pictures. They are here mostly for expressional purposes.

Golden Hair!

Hi!

Surprises, I got bored with my hair again! I dyed it earlier with some non-permanent hair dye, which gave my hair a nicer shade, but after about a week I decided I wanted to try something different and decided to try a permanent hair dye.

I wanted to try and get my hair a bit lighter. I could have of course bleached my hair. I've heard that Jerome Russell Bblonde -line is good, but I decided to be a rebel and experiment something that I thought would be a bit gentler. I did a little bit of online research and watched some convincing YouTube-videos and decided to try out a brand called Naturtint. They have a very good colour chart and it had clear instructions how to mix the colours to get a shade you might want. I'm not sure if most self-use hair dyes do that because I'm very new to this hair-dying business. But for me it made it a lot easier and I was more confident about trying out this hair dye.

When I started my hair was maybe a bit an ashy light brown colour, with some lighter highlights? This was mostly due to my previous hair-dying experiment. Naturtint recommended to choose a colour which is 2 shades lighter than my starting colour, so I actually should have probably chosen the colour 9N. But of course I was a rebel and didn't follow the recommendations. I chose the lightest colour: 10N. But I wanted to believe that 10N would be more effective. I have no way of testing this theory, but I'm just going to show you what happened to my hair and make some sort of a review of this product.

I ordered this dye online, but you can also find it at Holland & Barrett and maybe at some other health shops. I'm not sure if this product is any healthier than most box hair dyes, but it doesn't contain ammonia, parabens, silicones, paraffin, mineral oils, heavy metals, artificial fragrances, SLS or formaldehyde derivates. I guess it's good that some of these are not included. I don't really need my hair dye to be fragranced. But I'm sure ammonia for instance has been replaced by some other chemical that does the same job. You can dye your hair darker with henna and coffee* but if you want to go lighter like me, you need some peroxide and other stuff.

The boxed contained the usual things: colourant, developer and gloves. So I put the gloves on and mixed the colourant and the developer. Unfortunately, I was a bit useless and run out of dye. But I combed my hair to get a more even spread and it was all OK after that.  One box is actually enough for shoulder length hair if you know how to spread it. So if you are new to hair dying and use this hair dye I recommend that you mix the dye in a bowl so that you can see how much dye you have left.

Apparently I'm just asking for rude anonymous comments by adding these unflattering photos here.... I don't know if all hair dyes are like this, but I found it really easy to comb my hair like this. Then I just hang out for 40 minutes before I went back to bathroom to wash my hair.

First, I tried to rinse all the dye out of my hair, but it was a bit difficult because my hair was so dry it just felt like one big knot. But I did that until the water seemed clear and then I decided to shampoo it.

The box provided samples of shampoo and Naturtint Nutrideep Multiplier Protective Cream which is a conditioner/hair mask. I guess the shampoo is a toning shampoo. It foamed a lot and left my hair feeling even more like knot. But at least it no longer felt like there was hair dye left. Then I tried the Nutrideep Multiplier and it smoothed all the knots straight away. I left it on for 2 minutes as instructed and then rinsed it out. It was fantastic! I actually ordered two tubes of it so that I could keep using it. Best conditioner I have ever tried! My hair has never really needed a conditioner though, so I've just used whatever, so I am not the most experienced person in this field. But for me it was amazing.

Under my living room light the colour looked very golden. Naturtint actually has dyes that have a more golden shade. I had chosen a more natural shade, but the result still looked more golden. I feel that if I look at their colour chart, I went from 7N to 8G with their hair dye 10N. But it's okay, I really liked the result. And it didn't look as brassy as some other blonding attempts I've seen.

It's entirely possible that my hair doesn't even look that golden outside. But I rarely realise to take selfies outside, and unfortunately, I don't have anyone who would just spontaneously take photos of me. It would be useful in this sort of situations. 

But I'm curious and wanted to try and see what silver shampoo would do to my hair, even if I wasn't trying to go platinum. So I went and bought Pro:voke's silver shampoo.

I found that it worked well, although the result might be more noticeable if my hair was lighter. I apologise for random drunken bathroom photos, but the Hilton just had better lighting than my flat does. Apparently the lighting makes a big difference here which I maybe should have realised before. Maybe in the future I'll try to be awake and alert while the sun is up. After that I can provide you with some proper before and after photos.

But I found this dye very good and I can recommend it! As long as you're prepared for it to go a bit more golden than what the picture suggests. The company actually does mention that on their website as well, and suggests that you mix the neutral dye with their ashy dye (10N + 10A in my case), but I didn't want to do that this time because I was curious to see how the dye would work on its own. I'm really happy with the result. And this range has good colour choices and their dyes don't stink as awful as some other ones I've encountered before.

Have you tried any particularly good hair dyes? What do you think of this result?

Year 2014 - autumn!

Hi!

So now it's time for the second part of this 2014 reminiscing thing I thought I'd do. In case you missed the first half, here's months January - June.

...So what happened in the autumn 2014?

July

July started with a trip to the vet. My cat died, and we buried him. I was very sad. I also spent a lot of time with my family members and best friends while I was still in Finland. I went to see my brother's first own flat, went strawberry picking with my sister and went to the Moominland with my best friends and goddaughter. Soon it was time to get back home to Scotland, but the weather was actually really lovely and warm so I got to go to the beach a couple of times before that! After that the rest of the month was just routine: working either early mornings or afternoons and getting home really late. 

These picture collages actually make my time in Finland look really long. It was actually less than two weeks, but it just happened to be the end of June and beginning of July and the most significant thing that happened to me in the summer.

August

August was actually pretty cool. I discovered my new favourite beer: Tsingtao 青島啤酒廠, a Chinese beer. There was also Aurora International Festival 2014 : a group of French folk dancers travelled from Toulouse to Aberdeen by bus (!) to perform their dances and to experience the Scottish culture. I went to a couple of their events and had a great time - they were such lovely people!

But the best thing in August was Manchester Pride Festival. It was such an amazing and well organised event! They had so many things going on and the whole Manchester Gay Village was accessible only with the festival wristband (which was really cheap considering all the events included in it!) which made it feel really safe as well. During a regular weekend, Manchester is fantastic compared to Aberdeen. Instead of one gay bar you get a whole street full of them plus a couple of extras but during the Pride Weekend it was just incredible! I spoke to one straight girl who had come to the festival just because she thought it would be a great event and she was so excited she said she would come back next year too. (So that's this year! Who wants to come with me?!) It was like one of these big all-weekend music festivals that I've been to before in my life but with all sorts of amazing extras. And really good performers. I'm so excited I saw Heather Peace, Foxes and Conchita Wurst. From front row. ... Aaahhh!  

Also, I sent my mum a postcard from Pride. That's something I thought I'd never do. Last time I went to a Pride Festival I had to lie to her and claim that I went somewhere else.

September

Carrying on with this theme of each months highlight being a trip somewhere: September was about Crete. I had never been to a beach holiday before. I had actually never travelled anywhere where it would be sunny or warm. My previous holiday destinations have ranged between Alaskan tundra, an uninhabited island in the middle of the North Sea, Germany in the winter etc. So I guess you can imagine my excitement? And perhaps understand that only 5% of the clothes I packed were actually even suitable for such weather conditions. It was so hot. What is that madness of not needing a jacket? Even in the evening? Mediterranean was such a beautiful and lovely place. I smothered myself with sun screen and enjoyed the sun and a few great cocktails. I was so pleased with the expensive sandals I had bought for this trip. I didn't want to wear anything else during this trip.

That trip was just so much more amazing than the new green coke – Coca-Cola Life –  that has 37% less white sugar because it has been replaced by Stevia sugar. But it was probably the most exciting thing in my life to happen in September besides the holiday. I mean, green coke. What is that?

October

October was wet. Very wet. And I was getting a bit tired. I went swimming, but it was pretty much the only excitement in my life. I felt a bit lonely as well. I was working only evenings anymore which I didn't really like – I preferred to have a mixture of late and early shifts. I wasn't really happy with how things were in my life. I started applying for new jobs and funding to go back to uni.

November

In November I got early shifts again and got to run to work with the bunnies before dawn! It made me feel so much better. I was also feeling really Christmassy since at work there had been all sorts of Christmas stuff going on for over a month already. So I put our Christmas tree up mid-November and listened to a lot of Christmas music. I also attended my work's Christmas party which was quite an experience... Before that I, however, had a sophisticated day trip to Fraserburgh's Lighthouse Museum which I would like to visit again, because we didn't actually have enough time to go and see the actual lighthouse.

Finland's government passed the equal marriage law which was a good reason for a wee celebration and some bubbly wine! It went well with some fajitas and a good lesbian movie Better Than Chocolate. 

I also had another successful job interview! I decided not to take it though because I also got money to go back to university.

December

December was fabulous. I quit my job and flew to Finland where I spent the first three days sweating and having problems breathing because the houses were so warm and the air was so very dry. And then there was snow! And my brother had a new kitten! And I went on a Turku-Stockholm party cruise twice! And there was Christmas and I loved all the lovely Christmas trees and all the yummy food!

I also turned 25 in December which is a bit scary because it's a quarter of a century which makes me sound really old. Like should I be sensible and know what I'm doing in life? I know nothing. But it's OK. I had a small birthday outing on my actual birthday but it ended up being like a double date in a table reserved for 10 people in a restaurant. It was a bit embarrassing, but at least the most important people were there. So much for those friends who didn't show up. But Tiia offered me a birthday dinner in a fancy restaurant when I arrived in Finland and afterwards we went to see Turku Christmas market!

I also liked that silly white T-shirt. I took that picture when I first saw it before Christmas and bought it later in January sales. Now I can wear it and be creepy.

The end. 

Okay, life goes on, and 2015 looks fairly promising!

Year 2014 - spring!

Happy new year, guys!

... Okay, I admit that my plan was to do this post last month. But better late than never, eh?

I did a similar post last year and found it really therapeutic to say goodbye to the year 2013. So I think it's worth it to review what happened in my life in 2014 as well. Maybe it will remind me of my mistakes so that I can learn from then? And more importantly I can see what I've achieved last year so that I can be proud of it. And maybe after this it will be easier to focus on this year and the future.

This has potential to be a bit long, so I'm going to do this in two parts.

So what happened in spring 2014?

January

I welcomed the year 2014 in a small Finnish town with my friends. We stood on a muddy field with sparklers. I had bought myself a fancy new camera with objectives and everything for a Christmas present and had great intentions to learn to use it. 

We sailed to Stockholm with my friends and had a great day out in rainy and wintery Stockholm. When Reseda and Anna would sail back to Finland, Mayumi and I were supposed to catch an evening flight to London. But of course there were problems. We had locked our suitcases, passports and plane tickets into a locker at the ferry terminal. But we hadn't realised to check what time the ferry terminal would close and of course the place was empty and the doors were locked when we returned there to collect our luggage just before our train would leave to the airport. Fortunately, we managed to catch the security guard before he went home. It was his first day! Thankfully, he was lovely and helped us to get back into the building to get our stuff, and we made it back to UK in one piece.

Before travelling back up to Scotland I spent a couple of days in my favourite city, Oxford. I visited J.R.R. Tolkien's grave and just wandered around the familiar streets and felt nostalgic.

When we got back to Aberdeen, Mayumi and I decided to compare whether differently priced Jaffa cakes actually tasted any different. They did. The medium priced were the best ones.

February

In February the sun started shining and Aberdeen didn't seem quite as miserable anymore. I decided that I needed to do something with my life and to start living again. I started yoga. I applied for jobs. I got contact lenses. I travelled to a job interview in Glasgow — and for the first time in my life it was successful job interview! My favourite shop, Lush, was campaigning for equal love. We also had a lovely candlelit Valentine's double date night. Also, our flatmate's Japanese boyfriend was visiting and we organised a road trip to visit some Scottish castles.

March

In March, Satu and I visited Manchester, bought some Lush bath bombs and may have ended up having a bath wearing our party dresses after a wee exploration trip to Canal Street. 

I also went to another job interview, got offered another job and started working in Aberdeen. And that's how the era of riding buses began.

April

In April, I had a lot of early mornings which involved getting up at 3am and running out of the door to catch a my bus to work. Those mornings were made a lot better by our neighbourhood bunnies who ran down the street with me. I really loved living there! Working was exciting but commuting for 3 hours everyday was tiring and I started drinking a lot of coffee.

I had a wee holiday too! I travelled to London to go to #rosweglyn -event, to meet "role models for the next generation of gay girls", also known as, "One venue, a handful of YouTubers and 600 screaming lesbians". I was quite excited to go to this thing! I got to meet Kaelyn and Lucy, who I had been following for a long time! And it certainly didn't make it less exciting that two other lesbian youtuber couples: Wegan (Megan and Whitney) and The Roses (Rose and Rosie) were going to be there too. Because Youtube has become sort of like my best friend, I obviously have been watching their videos too. Unfortunately,  Rose ended up in hospital that morning and wasn't able to be there.

May

This was fairly work-orientated month. I took photos of animals I met on my way to work each morning. It was dark, so I'm sure you understand that my phone wasn't able to produce high-quality photos. But I was so happy about meeting these animals! In May, I also finally got paid and celebrated that by buying a new hand bag and eating some fancy Japanese-style food. I also moved to a new flat, and then back to the old flat because the new one sucked. I also got myself a pool and sauna membership to the new aquatics centre. It was so good for me to dip into a pool after a long day of work and then to relax in the sauna. It made such a difference! And afterwards I liked to go to the pub to get a glass of cheap champagne.

June

I enjoyed summer in my favourite neighbourhood and admired our local Pictish standing stones. Then I received some bad news from Finland and travelled to see my poorly cat. Jonna happened to be hosting a breastfeeding celebration party so I travelled to her village to spend time with her and my goddaughter and some friends. We also got a chance to explore my hometown's dangerous nightlife... The same night, there was someone trying to get into a nightclub with a scythe. I don't know why my mum thinks the rest of the world is dangerous, when this sort of thing happens when I visit home.

So that was the first half. Here's the second half.

Do you enjoy looking back to see what you have done last year? I think I've seen some apps on Facebook that do that for you without you needing to dig through your photo albums like I did for this post. Oh, and if you have written similar posts yourself, feel free to link them to me!

Struggles of trying to be straight

"Is it impossible for you to keep your leg straight?" asked my yoga teacher last week.

In other words, I've started yoga again. 

The Hatha vinyasa yoga class I attended last time is not running anymore, but I remember that it was good for me. It was physically very hard but I noticed development in my fitness. I was able to do more and more in each session! The main focus of vinyasa yoga was in breathing though, which I still am incredibly bad at. 

This time I am attending a Iengar-style yoga class where the main focus is in bodily alignment. I'm most definitely the worst yogi in the class. My posture is incredibly bad and I have no sense of how to align my body. But I'm not attending this class to be a good yogi, I'm attending it to become a better yogi. There's really no point trying to compare myself to others. But I try to develop myself and improve my skills. I am so incredibly wonky — if I learn to even keep my leg straight, it would be an improvement. My goal is to learn to stand up straight though, it would be fantastic and probably a lot better for me! To get there I will really have to develop my muscle strength though.

What surprised me again was actually how physically hard yoga is. I mean, I am very unfit and really did need some serious exercise. Still, just face-planting at my yoga mat while everyone else was doing some fancy postures was quite a humbling experience.

Have you tried yoga?

*I'm doing the postures presented in the pictures completely wrong. My teacher would cry to see these. They are here for the comedy value only.

I dyed my hair!

It's spring time* and I needed some change...

*by which I mean: I finally took the Christmas tree down and the sun is shining!

... so I decided to change my hair.

I've never dyed my hair myself before, but I actually really dislike going to the hairdressers because it makes me feel so vulnerable. There was a phase in my life when I would actually cut my hair myself because I didn't trust the hairdresser to do it properly. Thankfully, after many disappointing and expensive trips to various hair salons, I have finally found a fantastic Polish salon where I've always got good service and they have managed to make my very difficult hair look great. But those disappointing salon experiences have taught me to be really nervous about other people touching my hair, so I wanted to learn to dye my own hair.

I started getting my hair dyed when I was 12, because it was the thing to do in the small Finnish town that I come from. "No one" had natural hair there. And I didn't want to stick out that much — I was already getting bullied enough for other reasons. But after I moved out of Finland I've let my natural highway grey, maantien harmaa, hair colour grow back and I've been pretty content with it.

My natural hair colour.

So this time, instead of being ashamed of my natural hair colour, I decided to dye my hair out of curiosity. I wanted to try what I would look like with another hair colour.

I meant to buy a permanent colour and checked what they were selling on Boots.com. They appeared to have some serious problems with their website and Boots Botanics Non-Permanent Hair Dye came up when I looked for a permanent hair-dye. I really liked the colour Palest Oatmeal Light Blonde and I didn't find this colour in the permanent section. Because it was cheap, I figured that I could just go and buy that one as a practice hair-dye. After all, I had no idea whether I would even manage to get it on my head. Maybe it was a mistake to choose the cheapest hair dye in found... But this is what I went with.

Batiste dry shampoo bottle did not come with the box.

I bought two boxes because I had read that sometimes you may need two boxes to dye longer hair. Each box contained conditioning hair colour, developing lotion, enriching after colour conditioner and gloves. To me all of those things sounded awfully similar and it took me a while to identify which ones I was supposed to mix together. Why could they not just call them "developer", "colourant" and "conditioner"?

I did my best at following instructions but actually made a mistake when I was trying to test whether I'm allergic to this hair dye or not. I was supposed to mix one teaspoon of the colourant with one teaspoon of the developing lotion, but I opened the whole cap of the colourant instead of the tiny tip of the cap. I poured too much out, freaked out and posted a Facebook status about it. My Facebook friends provided me with some great advice and moral support and I managed to mix the hair dye and got it all over my hair and nowhere else. 

Although, I had bought two boxes, I only used one. There was enough dye for covering my hair. The dye didn't smell too bad or make my head itch or eyes hurt. The box had some serious claims for a non-permanent hair dye though. It promised to make even brown hair blonde. I was feeling fairly sceptical about these claims, but since I figured that my hair was probably closer to "dark blonde", I gave it a chance.

I let it develop for 20 minutes as instructed before I rinsed it off and used the conditioner that came in the box. 

... Then I spent quite a lot of time analysing whether my hair colour actually even changed.

... Maybe it somehow looked more even? It seemed maybe a little bit more brown? Not darker or lighter, but just a little bit less grey. I guess non-permanent hair dye just can't do much to my hair. People did tell me that it's impossible to make your hair more blonde without just bleaching it, but of course I was rebellious and way too curious not to test the box's claims anyway.

When the sun came up the next day I analysed my hair in my kitchen where I had taken the photos of my hair before I had dyed it. Do you think it looks even a little bit different from what it was? 

 

I was a bit too excited about my little experiment and hair dying experience to even be disappointed that the dye didn't do more than that. The dye was quite conditioning, but if anyone wants to use the same one I advice you only to use it if your hair already is lighter than what you want to dye it to. The Botanics line has some other shades as well, all of them look like natural hair colours.

Result?

When I compared my hair against the sun, I could see that it did actually give my hair the tint it promised on the box, but because it didn't actually change my hair colour it was hard to see whether it had even done anything. But I guess you need a stronger dye to do more than this. The box says that it will wash off in 24 washes, so if it had done more, maybe it wouldn't wash off?

I've been analysing my hair colour a lot know and I feel that I like it more now  — not because it changed, but because now it's an "approved" colour because it came out of a box. No one would be able to sell a lame hair colour. So maybe next time someone asks what my natural hair colour is, I can describe it as pale oatmeal blonde instead of highway grey as they call it back in Finland.

I've already ordered another hair dye to see if permanent hair dyes are able to do my hair a bit more than this. I really like my hair now, but maybe I will be bored again in a couple of weeks time.

What do you think — do you think the colour changed? Do you dye your hair yourself? Any tips to this complete newbie?