11 day and 19 hour call

After Sunday’s two back-to-back runs of The Bald Prima Donna, our esteemed director gave us the thirteen day and one hour call. Thanks for that. At least he’s having nightmares. It’s somehow comforting. The banging nails into actors part is less comforting.

I usually start having some show-related nightmares in the final week. Nothing doing yet. Currently the only nightmares are confined to the kitchen. As we hit the full weekend rehearsals period, things tend to get dangerous in there.

I’m giving myself the eleven day and nineteen hour call. This is the state of my kitchen.

Do pay special attention to Thursday's noodles mixed with dried cat food. This photo cannot reproduce the unique scent of three-day old fish skin and mango rind slinking out of the biotrash. One of the rarer perfumes known to man. There is also an unidentified suspended solution in the neighbouring bowl.

Argh! 'It always wears its milk solids the same way!'

Catch 22

I’ve lost the headband thingamajig that I use to keep my hair out of the way when putting on a facemask. I suspect the cat.

A friend – who shall remain nameless to spare her blushes – once suggested that a pair of knickers fills this gap quite nicely. She must have a better head to bottom circumference ratio than me. I found it very difficult to keep my underwear in place at all and had to resort to all manner of crocodile clips. And I still got loads of little strands glued to my face.

Now all I need to do is stick a couple of pencils up my nose, practice saying ‘wibble’, and I’m all set for a bit of holiday.

There will be no photographic evidence to support this post.

Preoccupations

Tagged again , this time to reveal five obsessions!

Obsession is a mighty strong word (so strong in fact, it’s worth a tautology). I won’t say I’ve never been obsessed, I have. By things, hobbies, ideas, stories and, yes, people – alive and dead, real and fictional. But no longer. Not because I’m no longer susceptible to obsession, but because those particular obsessions haven’t lasted.

True obsessions last months, half a year tops, then you either break the enchantment or it destroys you. That is the nature of my obsessions at least. Brief, intense and self-consuming. Life under those conditions is unsustainable.

Maybe others have less flammable obsessions that can simmer away for decades. In my case, I’d class them as unhealthy preoccupations. (I’d never call an obsession a good thing.) A few of those I do have and can name. And I think this intro, as in introspection, counts as number five.

1. Woolgathering

I think I’ve only lived about half my life in the real world. Like many shy, lonely kids, I spent a lot of time making up friends and stories in my head. Sometimes they would be completely about other people, sometimes I would play the lead role. Sometimes I would write them down. That made it all okay – she’s not mad, she’s a writer!

The thing is, I’ve never stopped. Whenever my mind gets the opportunity to wander, it does. I don’t need an iPod, I have my iMagination. If I’ve got nothing else to do I find myself making up stories. These days, I usually write them down; but I confess to the other kind too. Somewhat disturbingly those plotlines tend to get rather Rimmeresque . But hey, what good’s a story without conflict?

2. Drama

And I’m not talking amateur dramatics here! In a recent post, I questioned my need to do theatre when I always seem to be living some play or another.

I don’t know whether I’m just starred unluckily, or whether I somehow make this crazy shit happen to me. As I’m more of a believer in the idea that we – consciously or subconsciously – engineer our own ‘luck’, I guess I’m going to have to plump for the latter.

Do I have some unconscious desire to always be involved in weirdness and drama; and if life’s going smoothly, must I always do something impulsive to shake things up? Or maybe it’s simply the next natural step from woolgathering?

3. Privacy

Home is the safe place you go to be yourself. There are times when we need our own space devoid of demands and other people – as dear as those people may be to us. At least I do.

Remember when you were a teenager and you could always slam the door to your room? (Or sort of shut it quietly in my case.) Then we grow up, move in together and inexplicably relinquish our sanctuaries. Or are forced to, especially in these tiny Finnish cages that pretend to be flats. I think we could drastically reduce the divorce rate simply by ensuring that everyone cohabiting has their own room – with a door and a Do Not Disturb sign.

I guard my privacy jealously. Probably too jealousy. I rarely let people in: literally into my home and metaphorically into my head. I have this thing about people being in my house when I’m not there. It makes me rather uncomfortable.

4. Independence

I dislike dependence: both being dependent and having anyone dependent on me. It’s a long story and I won’t expound on it here. Lets just say I’ve got too many bad memories from both childhood and adulthood.

I guard my independence as jealously as I guard my privacy. I sometimes go to ridiculous lengths so as not to feel obligated to others. Usually to my detriment. I find it very difficult to ask for help without feeling that I’m imposing on people.

With my preoccupations for privacy and independence, it goes without saying that I don’t want to live with anyone. This naturally makes relationships difficult when they reach a certain stage. People often take it as a personal insult. Far from it. I’d much rather be missing someone I love than wishing they weren’t there.

Sticky in Pink

Which bright spark decided to colour an antibiotic for cats pink?

When I ground it up and mixed it into His Lordship’s food, he gave me a look as if to say, “Cats are from Earth and humans are from Alpha Centauri.” And refused to touch the stuff, even though I gave him nothing else to eat all day. Cats are obviously not that keen on blancmange.

I’ve since been force-feeding him the pictured butter-based paste. Result? A sticky, pink cat who has a morbid fear of butter and runs every time he sees me pick up a towel.

I think he’s managed to swallow about a third of his medicine, most of it when washing himself. The beast is particularly good at ejecting the paste from his mouth in a variety of ways.

At least when it’s pink, I can spot the globs of buttery cat saliva on the floor, bed, furniture, etc. before I step or sit in them. Usually.

Dead Rat in the Freezer

I have a dead rat in the freezer, my cat is on Prozac and I’m getting hate mail from the neighbours.

Who needs amateur dramatics? I don’t know what play I’m living, but I suspect it’s one of those rather unamusing comedies. Something like 'Dead Rat in the Freezer – don't miss the zany new comedy about urban pet ownership'.

The cat’s howling just kept getting worse despite the vet’s recommendations, so I was referred to the specialist cat clinic. They were very good and gave the little beggar a full medical, which involved sedation, ultrasound and god knows what else. I’m not going to mention what they charged me.

When he came out of the examination, the poor thing looked dreadful. He was half conscious and attached to a drip, with one front leg covered in blood and the other in yellowish brown ultrasound gel – all of which looked twice as bad on a pure white coat.

Even though my vet had thought this very unlikely, it looks like his behavioural problems stem from a stress-related urinary infection with a strong indication of potential kidney problems. Lucky I went to the clinic! He’s now on a course of antibiotics and also antidepressants, because they’re painkillers as well as hopefully help for his stress-induced hypervocalisation.

Oh god, my cat is suffering from angst…

In these modern prefab boxes that some architects have the cheek to call blocks of flats, sound carries far too easily. I’ve started receiving complaints, full of expletives and accompanied by the rules of association, concerning His Lordship’s nocturnal singing in particular. Part of me doesn’t blame them. I live with this, I know how annoying it is.

The other part naturally wants to yell, ‘I know, I know, I KNOW, so just SOD OFF will you!’ I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to put up with drilling, teething babies and screaming toddlers – all at times unavoidable in the kind of ‘twenty rats in a cage’ conditions people are forced to live in. Young children you can’t complain about, no matter what. A foreigner with a sick cat is, however, a perfectly legitimate target; especially if you yourself have been accused of being noisy and want to shift the focus onto someone else.

And with all this, work and the Players, I still haven’t had time to sneak out under the cover of darkness to bury my deceased rat in the forest. I’m sure them at number 94 will catch me anyway – and put up a notice about it in the hallway.

If it wasn’t so amusing, I might be depressed. Or is it the other way around?

That Library Thing

Had trouble getting sleepy last night. Lying in bed trying to drop off is no longer an option, because His Lordship starts howling if he senses I’m awake. So I thought I’d check out this Library Thing everyone seems to be raving about. I didn’t actually intend to join, but one thing led to another and I managed to input a hundred plus books before I got sufficiently bored and dozy to go to bed.

Luckily, you can input the ISBN directly and get the book info from Amazon, which saves a lot of time entering data and searching for the correct edition. Although sometimes Amazon displayed a different cover to the one on my book and changing the cover to the correct option also annoyingly changed the ISBN. At least there was an option to get around this by uploading your own cover image or using one uploaded by another user.

Sometimes there was no cover image available from any net source, which was all very distressing when I looked at my virtual bookshelf, so I anally spent some time photographing the missing covers. This has resulted in some rather dog-eared and wonky images!

As I write this, there are 185,831 members and 1,893,149 unique works listed. I was most interested in whether I’d have any books that no-one else had. The pictured page is from The discovery of a world in the moone, which I initially thought would be an excellent bet on that front, but someone else actually had it!

I did have five books that no-one else has listed. However, they include the Players’ very own A Finite Number of Monkeys – which I know both Kanikoski and hannamine have – a brand new book in Finnish and one half in Polish. Bearing in mind that this is primarily an English language site, I’d say only two are ‘legit’.

Looking through various fun statistics clouds made me realise that the books I actually own are not necessarily that representative of the books I’ve actually read! I only tend to own a book if a) it was given to me, b) I wasn’t able to borrow it (living in Finland makes this even more difficult as library availability of English language books is a fraction of what it would be in England), c) I needed it for prolonged reference, d) I got it on sale, or e) because I just happened to have some spare cash when I decided to read it (very rare!).

Are most people’s bookshelves like this, I wonder?

Not So Sweet Sixteen

There's so much ground to be covered in the responses to my previous post that I’ve decided to tackle them in a new post rather than a post-sized comment.

In the summer when I was sixteen (how romantic), I went to Italy for a month to stay with an old friend of my mother’s. This was well before the phase mentioned in those five things not many people know about me, but at the time I was extremely nervous about flying and, as I had the time, decided to travel overland. (I won’t digress into the travel story here, because it’s topic enough for a separate post.)

Some people questioned my mother’s wisdom in letting her sixteen-year-old daughter travel halfway across Europe by herself. But one of her colleagues said that there was nothing to worry about: I looked scary. I believe I was in my ‘black phase’ – yes, yes, but we all have to, don’t we? – and my (then) shy, quiet and introverted demeanour could, in certain circumstances, be interpreted as rather unfriendly and, yes, ridiculous as it may sound, perhaps even somewhat intimidating.

Her colleague was correct, nobody gave me a second glance on the journey.

However, I don’t look scary anymore. I get hassled a lot, even in Helsinki. I agree with and want to emulate happening fish when she says, ‘Somehow the idea that my travel plans should be limited because I start to fear for my safety just gives me the horribles, and I really, really don't want to give in to that’; but I suspect the fish is way ‘scarier’ than me – and I mean this in the nicest possible way!

I feel uncomfortable being in certain types of public place alone, not just on holiday but in general. For example, I’d never go by myself to a pub or bar for a drink and I don’t really like solo dining in proper restaurants, although a quick bite in a café is okay. The restaurant thing is probably more about feeling awkward because, well, to me dining out is a very social thing and being alone in a restaurant just makes me a bit miserable in a billy-no-mates kind of way.

The pub thing is purely and simply the not worth the hassle factor. I was having a drink with a male friend the other week. During the time he popped to the toilet, three guys tried to make their move. It could well have been more if the third one hadn’t sat down at the table and warded any others off. Granted, it was a weekend night and not what you’d call a top class joint, but if that’s what happens with Finns, I dread to think what it would be like in an extroverted country!

I hate to admit it, but I think what I’m trying to say is that I feel more like a victim than I used to. Why this would be, I don’t know. I’m older, I’m wiser, I’m probably all the ‘–er’s except thinner, and you’d think that this would have the opposite effect?

The upside to travelling alone is that there is no democracy involved and you can get exactly what you want out of your holiday. (And don't have to storm off in a huff in Prague for a day.) There is a certain attractiveness in that to be sure. You may even meet interesting people. Although I suspect I'd meet the kind that I meet – or rather who meet me – in bars. But maybe it’s not something I’ll have to deal with after all. Anna’s suggestion of interrailing sounds decadently studenty – but come next year, who knows! And if I do find myself in Spain this summer, I’ll definitely take Rhys up on his offer, too.

So nothing definite on the holiday front yet, although over the weekend lots of mad and highly attractive plans were being made in bars at 3 a.m. Hopefully they have more chance of actually coming true than most of the mad stuff that gets put out there on such occasions. At least they remained attractive the next morning, which is not something you usually find yourself saying about most things in Baker's at 3 a.m.

Lone Ranger?

It’s time to start thinking about possible holiday plans for the summer. Last year’s highly successful Krakow expedition was taken on a well-travelled friend’s recommendation, so I picked up some books and inspiration when I popped round to visit him the other evening.

I like to think I’m a pretty independent twenty-first century woman – don’t we all? – but when I was reviewing my initial list of options, I suddenly came across an unexpected factor: where would I dare to go alone?

A couple of my male friends regularly go abroad alone, but I think it’s different for women, no matter how independent, etc. we are in our hometowns or countries. I’m reasonably happy to walk home alone late at night or in the early hours of the morning – at least along certain routes in the city centre to the railway station and then from Tuomarila station home. And I know where it’d be a bad idea to go.

But all that changes in a foreign place, especially a major tourist city. Not only are there people who make careers out of preying on tourists, but even ‘normal’ guys seem to feel they have a right to harass you. As I found out in Prague when I split up with my companions for a day.

I’ve suddenly found myself crossing off destinations simply because I wouldn’t feel comfortable there alone. Even during the daytime – either because of crime or the kind of male-dominated culture that frowns on lone women. Barcelona was high on my list until my friend mentioned the high crime rate and related a tale of three muggers who tried to rob his parents inside a shop. They turned out to be complete duffers and no one lost anything, but it makes you think twice.

But if I do go anywhere alone, I’m rather embarrassed to admit that I wouldn’t be comfortable going out in the evening past about nine thirty. If anything did happen, most people’s verdict would be ‘she was asking for it’. And would they be wrong?

Ah well, I’ve still got a bit of time yet, lets see if I can con anyone into accompanying me somewhere!

Pinky – In Memorium

A Tuesday at the beginning of April is not a good day for rats. It was the first Tuesday in April when I found Minttu dead last year. A year and a week later I find Pinky dead.

Not that I wasn’t expecting it. When I cleaned the cage on Sunday evening, Pinky didn’t have the strength to come out. Like Minttu, she had also developed a tumour. Apparently it’s what happens to many domestic rats as they get older, and vets don’t seem inclined to operate, especially on older animals, unless the tumour is malignant.

Minttu developed her tumours reasonably young, soldiered on like a trooper for about nine months and died suddenly and quite ‘healthy’. Pinky on the other hand was already getting on for a rat when her single tumour appeared. She was also doing fine until this last fortnight, when she suddenly started to look very old and sick. Part of the daily rat care routine became checking whether Pinky was still alive.

Pretty miserable, but I guess that’s the flip side of the coin with any pet.

Something Else

There must be more to life than work, rehearsal and the pub.

Of course, now might not be the best time to examine such notions. A combination of illness and Easter has meant that I’ve spent a total of nine days exiled in Espoo. Normally I’d have rejoiced at all the spare time for writing, but initially illness prevented even that. And now that I’m better?

Friends are on trips, happy couples are doing happy coupley type things; and I’m talking to the cat and trying to concentrate on something, anything, and failing because I keep getting sucked into the melancholies. I admit to being more than just a little depressed.

But I digress. I’m sure that compared to the majority, who come home from work and plonk themselves down in front of the telly for the remainder of the evening, I usually have quite a lively – and maybe even enviable – social life. Especially during productions. But sometimes it just feels like one big round of the same old same old. I want to do something social that doesn’t involve sitting in a pub!

What is it about the pub? A mixture of tradition and ease, I’d venture. It’s always a safe bet. You go there in a group, sit down and entrench yourselves for the evening. It’s almost like … live action telly! There’s a horrible thought if ever there was one.

I’m not saying that I don’t enjoy our plentiful evenings down at the local (as least as far as tradition if not geography goes) watering hole, I do; but there’s a whole world out there and I’m just sitting around getting older. Sometimes I just get this burning desire to, well, do something else.

Somebody, anybody, please, let’s do something else!

The Mourning Primrose

I’m going to be the Big Bad Director of autumn 2007.

There, I’ve finally said it. Although it’s a month since my proposal was accepted, this is the first time I’ve mentioned it here. Maybe because it doesn’t seem real yet, especially in the middle of rehearsing another show. I guess that will change once The Bald Prima Donna goes down and it’s time to run the auditions.

This is something I’ve been working towards for about eighteen months, so I suppose I should be feeling overjoyed or something. At least on alternate days I’m pretty excited. Although as I said before, The Bald Prima Donna is still the focus for a couple of months and so I can’t let myself get too into it yet. On the other days, I feel this mixture of disbelief and dread.

I’ve come to theatre, as I seem to come to everything else, completely lacking in qualifications. I’ve done a lot of theatre in my life, especially during the past few years, but I still feel that compared to many of the Players, especially the ones with theatre degrees, I don’t know jack shit. And here I am directing a play – and my own script at that! Are the committee mad?

Of course, I pulled off Closet Space last year and it goes without saying that I’m going to do my best on this one. But Closet Space was half an hour and The Mourning Primrose is two. In a proper theatre. With lights and sound and pirates and stage fights…

I don’t know about the committee, but someone around here is mad anyway.

Am I Missing Something?

I’ve spent most of today either wool gathering or trying to write a poem for Writing Society’s Bunny Monday meeting – none of several attempts worked.

Although I’ve been feeling a lot better the past couple of days, I keep taking two-hour naps – simply because I lack any kind of motivation to do anything else. When I do, it usually results in a self-pitying blog entry.

So today, I’ll just limit myself to noting that the other day I saw a teenage couple on the local train having a great time sniffing each other’s shoes. Tell me, am I missing something here?

What’s in a Name?

Anna has just congratulated me on coming up with a new nickname for Kanikoski. Sorry Kani! I apologise because I’m not particularly fond of nicknames. This is no doubt due to the ones I’ve been saddled with on and off over the years. Here are a few that spring to mind:

Junior School: Mutt – because I was as ugly as one.
Senior School: Miss Personality – because I was shy and didn’t have one.
Workplace: Rohmu (~Hoarder) – because I was always broke and scrounging for leftover food from meetings, etc.

The first two were meant very unkindly, the last one not at all unkindly, but all were still based on aspects of myself that I wasn’t particularly happy about.

‘What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet.’

No Mr S, it would not: its scent would wither and dry with it into a perfume of dust and decay. Well, depending on the word. Mutt became uglier – both inside and out – with every call; and Miss Personality became quieter and quieter until she was barely seen, let alone heard.

And I doubt Juliet would have been so eager to fanny around on her balcony in the middle of the night if Romeo had been called Humperdink.

The W Gene

Many people will know that pure white cats, especially those with blue eyes, are often deaf. In The Character of Cats, Stephen Budiansky tells us more about the link between the W gene (which prevents the development of colour pigment cells) and deafness and other neural defects:

‘A pure white coat in cats also has an odd characteristic that is common to other mammals. The cells that produce coloured skin and hair pigments derive early in foetal development from cells in the neural crest, an embryonic structure that also generates the brain and spinal cord. As a result, you usually can’t lose your colour without losing your brain as well, or at least parts thereof.’

I quite agree.

No Lucy Show

I’m guilty of a fallacy in my previous post. I did actually heave myself from the pit on Sunday night with the intention of buying cough medicine, orange juice and cat food. Except it was coming on eight in Espoo on a Sunday night.

I suspected I’d have to go all the way to Leppävaara to find something open, and I couldn’t even count on that. I got about as far as the railway station when I realised that this whole thing wasn’t going to happen. (I might say that I almost collapsed in a swoon, but I wasn’t suitably dressed for it.) So I took my photo of the day and stumbled home.

And coughed all night.

Where were the concerned purveyors of chicken broth, the bugles of the Anything I Can Get You Brigade? Probably playing croquet on some country estate with the rest of those mythical beings from romantic novels who are suitably dressed for swooning. His Lordship did try to groom me once or twice, but I suspect that was mainly because I was offending his olfactory sensibilities (and he wanted his dinner).

Time to face facts, girl: if you don’t have the sense to keep your own pre-emptive stock of chicken broth and cough medicine, you’re going to cough and starve (and so is the cat). It’s not my first day in America, it’s my tenth year in Finland, but as Marja said in Poetry & Jazz, this is no Lucy show.

Saturday Night Fever

It's extremely difficult to take a picture of your own tongue. The auto focus just won't. The camera must have some kind of inbuilt bad taste filter. Speaking of which, the state of my tongue is probably why all food tastes utterly DISGUSTING.

I suppose I should eat something after two days of near starvation, but it took me almost twenty minutes to force down a single banana yoghurt. After a disturbing encounter with a glass of milk, I nibbled at a variety of things in the fridge to see which tasted the least gross. The banana yoghurt won. The ham lost – big time.

It’s amazing the rapidity with which illness can strike you down. To quote Perttu – speaking just before falling prey to the lurgy himself – I felt I was suffering from a mild though ‘disproportionate hangover’ on Saturday morning. A couple of hours later, I suddenly felt extremely cold. I sought brief solace in the duvet, but only rose from my fever pit this (Monday) morning.

Although I had a temperature that hovered around thirty-nine degrees for about thirty-six hours, there was something that set the nocturnal twelve hours apart. All I did during those thirty-six hours was sleep fitfully, waking only to turn, throw the duvet off or put it back on, sip water and monitor my temperature to see whether or not I was getting brain damage yet.

So I guess that ‘something’ different was the darkness. It brought a heightened awareness of my physically miserable condition. In the light, each waking had been just a signal to turn or drink. In the delirium of the dark, everything became a primeval fight for survival against the Fever. The night seemed never-ending and in the morning there was truly a sense of having survived something raw. It’s a feeling that I find near impossible to recapture in the daylight.

In future, I shall leave a light on; but at least I now know the temperature of Saturday night fever – 39.48°.