Under the heatwave

Huh. Finland is basking under a hot, hot Northern sun and I'm living on a diet of ice cream and Fanta Free. Temperatures have been around 25 to 29 degrees Celsius for about a week now without any signs of the weather getting cooler and it's wonderful and terrible all at the same time.

I, personally, tolerate the warmth quite well (except for at work, where there's no airconditioning whatsoever and it makes you feel tired and irritable as soon as you put your headset on), but I know people who really wouldn't mind a bit cooler weather. I do worry a bit about my grandparents, for example. And honestly, I'd rather tolerate the weather by the seashore myself...

Yesterday was good in that sense. After having spent the Saturday evening alone at home and bored to death, I was happily surprised by my brother. He called me around 11 a.m. and said "I'll be there in 5 minutes, get yourself ready." I of course started to protest, as I had just taken a shower and it'd take me at least 15 minutes to get ready, but then he informed me we'd make a few hour stop at the beach on our way to Nousiainen. Ahh. No need to dry my hair for a day at the beach.

I'm really not much of a sunbather, because the idea of lying in the sun doing nothing tends to make me feel frustrated (and it's not healthy, either), but the swimming part is absolutely fantastic. I love to swim and to float. My brother, the competition swimmer, doesn't like to "not go anywhere" while in water, so he went in and swam back and forth across the medium sized pond we were at, and naturally I had to do the same, too. But I took time to float in the middle of the pond, unlike the dolphin of our family.

Floating is so much fun. The sense of weightlessness is wonderful, in fact it's a feeling I sometimes have a physical craving for during the winter months. Floating in natural water. (Swimmingpools don't count for this.) And the silence of the water, when your ears are below the surface - I cannot think of many things more relaxing than that. In fact I've been thinking I may have to try that floating therapy thing sometime when I'm really stressed. Although I'm not sure I wouldn't get a claustrophobic attack in the dark "sense deprivation tank".

In addition to the beach life, yesterday turned out to be a really good summer day in at least one more way. I got to test drive dad's VW Beetle for the first time! That, if any, is a real summer car! It's as cute as a car can get and the "attitude" of it is from a whole different world than the attitude of my old Skoda, for example. It'll be fun to borrow the Beetle for some summery occasion. Maybe I'll ask dad if I can borrow it to go to my old friend's wedding in August. They'll be wed in Nousiainen, so I wouldn't have to drive too far.

Which brings me to the matter of weddings. I've already got two wedding invitations for the rest of the year. Whee! One wedding in August, the other in October. That particular October weekend is going to be like one long party, because my birthday's on Friday, the wedding's on Saturday and my cousin's confirmation is on Sunday. Yay.

But the wedding in August is going to be really special, too. This is, after all, one of my oldest friends getting married. We literally met at the same church they're going to have their wedding ceremony in. Some 13 years ago both me and Kirsi were attending a service in order to collect the necessary "points" to be confirmed and while sitting next to each other in the pew we noticed that we both had the same letters colored in our textbooks' cover. Turned out we both had a crush on a guy from 9th grade (we were 8th graders). Luckily not the same guy, though, they just had the same name. And that discovery marked a beginning of a long friendship. (Nothing ever happened with those teenage crushes, btw. We were both seriously shy and insecure girls, so we just watched from afar.)

We haven't been in touch very much lately, but every time we meet, we instantly fall back to the comfortable chitchat of old times. For me, that's a sign of a friendship that will survive through periods of time, when we don't meet that often. And since I sort of had something to do with Kirsi finding her significant other, I'm delighted to attend the wedding. I can't wait. I'll probably cry like a fountain in the church... :) And finally I get to say "I told you so!".

It was Kirsi who thought in the angsty times of our teenage years that I'd be the one of us who finds herself a good man right away and got married and had kids in a few years' time, while she'd still be waiting for her Prince Charming in her retirement years. Ha, I tell you. Now that she's going to be married, maybe the powers-that-be will feel pity for me and present me with a charming man to marry soon. :) You never know. *enter lots of wishful thinking here*

Oops, I've been rambling for so long that I'd better start getting ready to go to work. I'm so not in the mood now. I'd rather go to the beach. Anyone reading this between now and 7 p.m., feel free to drop me a text message in which you promise to take me to the beach around 8 p.m. today. Would be muchly appreciated, wink wink.