Finland Journal, Day 1

I made a promise to myself that I would, in addition to getting this article done (can't wait-- it's going to be phenom) that I would start to update Beans a lot because I think that while it's all good and fun to piss away the day sitting on the dock and scribbling the most glorious prose that ever Athena lactated from her beknowledged tit, you really have to keep in mind the burden of entertaining someone else, some imagined public, or else you get all turdy and sappy.

(I have GOT to clean up my language, dammit!)


As soon as I'm done posting this picture of a farting tabby.

So even though there are about 17 people that read this with any regularity, I'm going to post all the time! YAAAAY!


So I got to Finland yesterday.

Nothing exciting happened today except for the POISONOUS SNAKE that lives under our patio finally reared its head. Now Mommy's afraid to garden. Lord knows what will become of our shrubbery! Seriously, she keeps shuddering these elaborate shudders every time she passes the patio ("Pheeeweeough yeeeee guck!")

But other than that, it's about 80 degrees, sunny, no wind-- when we drove in, I asked if it had been raining (it hadn't for days), because it looked like a tropical rainforest, big shaggy moss hanging off everything, forests I would have no trouble believing could easily furnish a couple gorillas. Alas, no gorillas in the mists, just cousins and grandparents. Really I'm really the gorilla, being congratulated and rewarded for simplistic communication. (Me: "Good Morning." Them: "What did you do today?" Me: "Fine, thank you." Them: "Good girl! Someone give her a bundle of rye.")

Mommy made me wade into the water with huge shears and cut the seagrass. I kicked up all the clay at the shore and it smelled like poop (plus it was low tide), and I got all Troop Beverly Hills about how this was so fucking nasty and it smelled like poop and I didn't want to do it. PS I was dressed like this:

Like full head to toe crazy gardening clothes (Mom: "these underwater gardening pants are so good! I have no idea where I got them!" Me: "Waterworld, starring Kevin Costner?") And I hacked at reeds. Now I have a lima-bean sized blister on my finger, but at least I earned my supper (perch fillets, salad from Mummu's garden) and maybe a doublewide G&T (after all, it's not for nothing that I was made to cross the Atlantic with a suitcase full of limes. I was terrified that airport security would check my bags-- not because I'd be in trouble, but because they would think I was totally retarded. Like I look like a normal traveller but you open my suitcase and it's just hydrangeas or something and I'm like "I'm going to a business meeting in a volcano! See you in 2050!") OK, more tomorrow.