A non-humorous home-rant. What!?!?

Unfortunately the shower I just took (the highlight of my busy morning if coffee doesn't count) did not inspire me the way that I was hoping it would (or tweeting about), or at least I didn't come up with anything shower related, which is probably for the best (I was contemplating a whole thing on weird mineral shampoo, but that will have to wait). Feeling lucky, eh?

I did come up with total theft though. Yesterday I was reading up on some new (for me) blog finds and noticed that B of Cuttings on a Blog was writing about something very familiar to me, but not yet made fun of, or ranted about, in this here blog - namely the concept of home. B divides her time between England and Spain (her native land, also check out her Spanish blog Blanca en la Luna if you hablas español), but has a hard time at the moment really calling either place home. My Issue, though still about belonging in a place and such, is a little different.

(Oh, and in case you haven't already noticed: Warning! Deep and meaningful crap, and possibly some passive aggressive mentions related to grudges from my earlier years.) 

As you know (because you religiously follow my every move in the blogosphere [wow, it is a fokken word] and Twitter, correct?), I haven't lived in Finland for many years, but haven't really adopted any other country either. Still, that doesn't mean I haven't tried. 

In fact, in my roughly five years in Denmark I really, really tried (Oh no, will this be a rant about the in-laws? I hope not!). I learnt Danish, and still probably use it most of all the languages I speak in my daily life, and even passed a regular translation from English to Danish exam at the university (Okay, so they gave me an extra hour to complete, since I'm such a foreigner, but I did not score the 'barely-passed' grade. Patting myself on the back here, since it is too early in the morning to make a toast for and about myself.). It was clear to me that home was on the second floor of that leaky, yet protected building, 50 meters outside of the city border of Copenhagen. No question about it. To me that is.

Many others, the Danes I would meet in my daily life and the ones whose family I had married into ('cepting the hubby of course) would never let me be at home in Denmark, or let me think that I was at least in some way approaching the potential to being one of THEM - a kind of a Dane. Now, I like being a Finn, will always be one, am proud of my nation (apart from the not so mentioned collaboration with the Nazis, or the suicide statistics, or...), but always being thought of as the foreigner (yup, extranjera) was sometimes just too much. Every single summer for five years, when me and the hubby were getting ready to invade my parent's house for a couple of weeks (this is why we now own the 'summer cottage'), people would ask me whether I had been missing home. Note, had been, as if I still lived in Finland. They would ask me whether I was excited about going back home, what I would do at home, when I returned would I be bringing back with me all the stuff I missed from home, yada yada (a fancy etc)... This used to seriously piss me off. Still does.

Nooo. Really. Would never have guessed.

My home is where my books are (Thanks B). My home is where the Hubby is (he comes only slightly second to the books). My home is where I am comfortable enough to take a shit. My home is where my computer is. My home is where my cellphone works. My home is where I myself have to change the sheets (or tell someone exactly how to do this, folding corners is a science after all). My home is where I can hang out in my green bathrobe until noon and then walk around naked while I'm waiting for the hot water to kick in (and freak out guys mowing my lawn in the process. Bonus!). My home is where my green bathrobe is (didn't see that one coming, did you?). My home is where my weirdly-out-of-place collection of religious paraphernalia is. My home is where I feel comfortable enough to leave dirty tissues lying around (apparently my handbag is my home then). My home is where I can make my own coffee, just the way I like it (a sub-branch of the greater science of controlling pointless things) and drink ten cups of it, without getting a lecture on blood pressure and insomnia. Home is where I can drink as much wine as I want to without receiving eye rolls for unbecoming behavior. 

I don't have to speak the language to be at home somewhere, or have spent all of my life there. I don't have to own my home, or even most of the stuff in it. I don't have to know the place like the back of my hand (Has that cupboard always been there? or What brothel across the road?). I don't even have to have a support network of friends - that will come, and hubby is kind of a superDane. 

I just want other people to let me choose where my home is, not for them to assign me one.

(Passive) aggressive enough for you? I feel better at least.