Spring is finally here

Today I continued my experiments with wearing somewhat unflattering pieces of clothing: cropped, wide-legged trousers. They aren't exactly easy to pull off, but the volume makes one feel like a sailboat. (And just in case anyone wonders, it's a wonderful feeling.) I bought these Marimekko trousers for 1 € at a charity store - not bad. I was trying really hard to get a picture taken where it would show that they are trousers... but to no avail. There is just so much fabric in them! 

Anyway. Who cares about what I'm wearing - SPRING IS HERE!

It's 10 pm and the sun has just set a few minutes ago. The cascading curlew calls ululate all around our house, there is a slight mist hovering over the lake, the horizon is still painted orange... This is such an awesome time of the year. 

The Hideous Skirt

About a month ago a style consultant told me that pear-shaped women should wear fitted skirts that flare out at the bottom like a trumpet. It was one thing to recognize the fact that she was flat out wrong, but another entirely to realize that I had forgotten that such skirts even exist. Ugh, I thought to myself, I hated those skirts in the late 1990s. They were hideous. Fast forward to this past Saturday. I came across such a skirt at the thrift store, and found myself thinking that perhaps I should try it on, just for a laugh. A few minutes later I was the proud owner of the said hideous skirt.

The hideous skirt makes my legs look shorter and it makes my bum look bigger. Seen from the right (or wrong) angle, the shape of the skirt distorts proportion like nothing else I've ever worn. There are moments when it looks cute, then others when it's horrid all the way. I honestly think that these types of skirts don't flatter anyone's figure. But that's not the whole story. After all, I now own the hideous skirt. Here's what cracks me up: the ruffle at the hem has a lovely kick when I walk. It has a bounce that is light as air, but it moves and shakes like there's no tomorrow. It's a truly fun skirt. As I walked along the corridors of my office building today, I felt like swaying my hips from side to side like Carmen Miranda. I felt like taking smaller steps than usual. I felt like twirling. There's magic in the hideous skirt, it seems. And in certain angles, it doesn't even look half bad.

My Marimekko trench coat

I've been waiting for months to wear this Marimekko trench coat. I bought it just before Christmas at my sister's second hand store. I often hesitate to buy clothes that aren't immediately wearable due to seasonal issues, but as soon as I saw this coat, I knew that it would be a keeper, no matter how much snow there was on the ground. I've never thought of myself as a trench coat person (if there is such a thing), but I guess it's just a matter of finding the right one! 

May Day

Our house looks cute on the outside, but it's sad on the inside. Chris and I are heartbroken over Willow's cancer diagnosis. Thank you so much for all of your kind words regarding Willow and her illness. It means a lot. We try to focus on the positives: that she is still with us, and will be for a while longer, that she is not in pain yet, that she still purrs and plays. But it's tough. We've had a strain of bad luck with our cats in recent years: first we lost Cassie, then Blue, and now Willow has very little hope of surviving more than a handful of months. I guess that's just the cycle of life. Things live, things die. It's not fair, but then what is. Life will go on, in one way or another. 

It's been difficult to focus on anything else but Willow, but there is one thing that takes my mind elsewhere: gardening. I don't know what it is about the smell and the texture of the earth, but my mind stops in its tracks once I get my hands into the dirt. My brain is at ease, almost on autopilot, when I work in the garden. I guess I am lucky that our yard is a complete mess. It hasn't been tended in years, so there are plenty of soil-greenery-and-tools-filled moments on the horizon. The perennials are almost drowning in weeds, but we should be able to salvage a bunch of them.

Our greenhouse is very modest at best, but it will do. It is still too cold to plant anything inside, but I plan on cleaning it up this coming weekend. The old dirt is full of weed seeds, so it must all go. Out with the old, in with the new.

These crazy gulls were camping on the field behind our house. Don't they just look a little nuts? The lake is still frozen, but not for long, I think.

The Willow Report

Our joy was short-lived. Willow has been diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma, a very aggressive type of cancer. She will be spoiled rotten and intensely loved for as long as she'll be around.

Stripes and red

What a gray day it is here. Rain, rain, rain, all day... and that results in bad light, which in turn makes my photos all grainy. Ugh! I'm including the pictures anyway, because I felt really happy wearing this outfit today. That doesn't happen every day, even though it should!

I'm wearing all second hand, except for the socks. Pretty much everything in the outfit was thrifted recently. Chris and I had to wait for hours for Willow to be able to leave the vet's office on Tuesday, so we killed time and stopped by at some flea markets in Seinäjoki, the biggest town in our area. Overall the prices were pretty high and the clothes weren't all that great, but I grabbed a few things on the cheap. The cotton sweater was 1.50€, the red trousers cost 4.50€ and the brogues 2€. Now I have to think of three pieces of clothing to let go of. Shouldn't be too tricky, and now that I think about it, I might have to start posting about that process in detail. It's interesting, really, to compare one item to another, to weigh the options, and then make the decision: what to keep, what to recycle. I think it might make an interesting read.  

Hmm, looking at the photo above, I think the brogues might need some TLC.

The relieved cat owner reports

We got home from the vet a little while ago. Thank you so much, everyone, for all of your kind wishes for Willow! Things went well, although completely differently from what we thought was going to happen. The surgery specialist, whom Willow saw for the first time today, gave us a whole new diagnosis: what other vets thought was a tumor on Willow's chin is actually enlarged bone tissue, which is growing to replace bone loss that Willow has suffered due to severe teeth problems. It appears that Willow's lower jaw is very fragile, and the bone growth under her chin is trying to compensate for the lack of bone under her teeth. To confirm this new diagnosis, the specialist took a big biopsy of the enlarged bone tissue. A part of me is hugely relieved, the other part slightly pissed off that they didn't take a bone biopsy in the first place, and that they gave us news about a malignant tumor when the tissue sample was insufficient for a proper diagnosis. Okay, I'm more than  just slightly pissed off about how the other vet messed things up. But still, mostly relieved!

Here's the champ now, all zoned out. Even though the vet only took a bone biopsy, Willow has been out for over five hours and she is just starting to come around. She has a handful of stitches, she to wear the collar for the next ten days, and she's on antibiotics and pain killers. Poor kitty - although I can only imagine what things would be like if the vet had gone ahead with removing the extra bone tissue and all that. Recovering from a big operation like that would have been a whole different ball game!

I wore somewhat spring-y clothes today. And yes, a short wool jacket, cotton-and-wool mix tights and proper boots count as spring clothes! The snow is melting fast, but it's going to be a while before I can skip the tights and the boots!