Tutorial anyone?

There have been some of you who have written to me asking me how to write a blog. While the only answer I have is "how should I know" I thought I would show you how my brain works while I'm writing. 


Don't worry, this is the edited, child-friendly version of the bowel movements of my dear brain and only contains the occasional misspelled expletive. 

1. I start with a weird thought. Today it is laundry.

I am staring at a huge mountain of laundry and thus I'm turning to the lovely world of blogging.

2. From the first thought I move onto the next. Today my brain goes from laundry to my maid, who I have a love/hate relationship with.

I should do the laundry though, because I don't want it to be all pink if it is supposed to be white, or be put in the closets while it is still wet but in an ironed state, or all of it come out in the size fit for the neighbor's new pug, who the crazy people next door clothe like a baby leaving me planning an intervention on behalf of the poor dog who does not look or behave like he's pleased.

3. I decide I like another thought better than thoughts 1 & 2 combined and decide not to rant about the maid after all, lest you should all think that I am completely spoiled, which I am, but I won't be the one to bring it up.

I know it's cold, but the dog doesn't want to wear a pink cape on top of a Blue Bulls 'sweater'. I wouldn't either. They don't match. And I'm all about being fashionable at all times, wherever I go. Indeed.

4. I go a fourth way after all, and decide not to mock people who dress their dogs too much, because I remember I have a friend who sells clothing for dogs. I cringe a little bit, but decide that sometimes cool people do weird things. I am a case in point myself. I decide to mock a subsection (pretty much half if I'm being honest) of Finns instead.

I admit it, I don't do the 'Rural Finn', which involves I and my partner in life purchasing matching windproof jogging outfits (Wikipedia wants me to call them shell suits, but it's the Finnish Wikipedia so I refuse immediate trust), called tuulipuku and then rocking up at the grocery store wearing those selfsame outfits while discussing the pros and cons of sausage, but I do rock up at various places wearing inappropriate clothing, which either gets me the label of the 'rebel', or of the 'slob' (you guessed it, overdressing has never really been an issue). Having people know that I am Finnish usually relaxes the expectations quite a bit and the fact that my Birkenstocks are not lined with socks is all of a sudden considered a fashion moment.

5. All of a sudden It occurs to me that my mother reads this and she is always saddened if I mock Finns or Finland, and she doesn't quite think I do it warmheartedly. I also realize that despite of referring to my Birkenstocks on multiple occasions I haven't actually ever written about them. I wander into the back garden and take some photos too.

My beloved pair.

The old ones and the new ones beating each other to a shoe-pulp. 
Edit: This just occurred to me. Perhaps instead they are making me some new tiny Birkenstocks?

I have been wearing one pair of Birkenstocks now for three years. I just bought a new pair, and honestly feel like I'm neglecting the old pair. They have hiked with me in Panama (yes, it's possible, there's more there than the canal. Yup, for there to be a canal there needs to be some land as well.), climbed a volcano in Guatemala (although my Ecco's had to take some of the heat by orders of our guide), lounged on the beach in Mexico, walked up and down the (surprisingly boring) strip of Ipanema in Rio de Janeiro, been marveled at by whores in Havana, Cuba (they all wanted them instead of the toothpaste), watched corn with me in Lusaka, Zambia, taken an accidental dip in a pool of pee in Stone Town, Zanzibar, and many more places.

6. After thinking for a good couple of minutes where all I have been, I realize that I'm just bragging with my travels (this is where the some people can't stand me comes in...) and coming off as horribly spoiled, which again I am, but you guys are not supposed to know that. So I decide to balance the travels with something nicer. Cue charity.

The Birkenstocks have been there with me and for me, and only lost two rhinestones while at it, one of which I had to dig out from the mouth of a toddler in an orphanage in Mexico (a HUGE lesson in childcare). I love them and tell myself I only bought the new (shiny and black) pair to take some heat off the 'actual' pair. I'm sure Hubby wishes I'd feel as sentimental and as attached to certain other things (like the jewelry he gave me as a wedding present - now where did I put it?) or places (Hubby in a typical fit of nostalgia: Look, there it is. The first apartment we ever owned together. Me: Good riddens you leaky bastard! ...Why the fokken long face Hubs?)

7. I think about this orphanage story for a while and assess whether it could count as bragging as well, as I believe that good deeds are even better if one is able to keep quiet about them. I look at the pile of laundry again and consequently veer off to Hubby. because most of it is his and I always come back to him anyways.

Hubby really is much more sentimental than me, and I know that while I sometimes think that there isn't a thing in this world that isn't replaceable in one way or another, he sometimes holds on to things that are either superbly fugly (we own two of the fugliest paintings on earth because he inherited them and they are not even nudes or something cool like that but fokken landscapes), or just weird. Like the brace he had on his knee after his surgery back in the late 90s. Meanwhile, if it was up to me, we would be living like hobos out of two suitcases containing only necessary items like my Birkenstocks, and no paintings nor leg braces. I don't think even my books would be there. GASP.  

8. Here I stall. I realize I have completely missed any sort of point in this post and there is no way "I digress" will work, because I didn't really establish any kind of point to begin with, unless it was laundry, which I don't think I would like to write about. I go make some more coffee, and make a firm decision to actually do something tomorrow worth writing about, or at least write about that nice elderly gentleman I almost killed on my way back from the airport. He was African, so I think I can spin the story to involve South Africa somehow. I think.


9. I think and think, but come to the conclusion that I've got nothing more on Hubby that can be publicly divulged as I seem to have gone from accidentally killing someone while driving to conjugal visits in prison, and decide to just wrap the post up and press publish. I've been at this too long already. 


Well, I'm off to chuck some more suspicious crap out, while the hubby is working his little viking ass off in Tanzania. He won't even realize when he comes home.

Have a good one y'all!