Skip to main content

Winter puppy love


My boyfriend’s father’s dog recently had puppies. The result has been that I constantly hint to him, beg him and cajole him about taking one in. My efforts haven’t persuaded him that my excitement about the puppies will last longer than a week (he’s probably right) but out of the kindness of his very generous heart, my boyfriend has taken me multiple times to go see them, even though his father lives an hour away and we have no other real reason to go there so often. I have thus had the chance to see them grow from being tiny soft blobs that could fit into my hand to fluffy, cuddly fur balls that love climbing into our laps and chewing on my boyfriend’s shoes.



Here they only a week after being born






And here they are at six weeks old.


 

 





My boyfriend’s father’s house is not very big and so he has literally had a houseful of puppies. They are now getting big enough to climb onto furniture which means they are making a mess everywhere and are quite the handful. The last time we went, he had covered as much of the floor with cardboard as he could to keep it from getting messy all of the time.



We are not going to be able to go see the puppies again before they are given away but they have still been a cheerful pastime during the dark days of November.



Finding ways to keep the November blues is important here when we are already down to six hours of daylight and even then have constant clouds and rain. Some other cheer-me-ups so far this year:



1.     Going out for tea and cake. Sitting over a cup of hot anything somehow makes the darkness friendlier. My recent favorite has been milky oolong tea (no idea what it is but it is delicious with cake).

2.     Having mini celebrations at home. Between Friendsgiving, Pikkujoulu (Finnish Christmas parties, literally translates to “little Christmas”), Finnish Independence Day,  graduations, and learning how to make dumplings, we’re finding whatever excuse we can.

3.     Cooking food at home. Now that I cook for two on most nights, I’ve started finding something rather relaxing about cooking evening meals. We put on music while chopping onions and tomatoes and the process goes even faster.

4.     The Christmas market just opened up and so on weekends the old town square is full of stalls selling things that seem all the more appealing when lit up by Christmas lights. There’s something grand about it though since the city’s large Christmas tree is just across the street standing in front of the cathedral.

5.     This song has been an obsession. And this one. I listen to them both almost everyday, sometimes on repeat. 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Heart of the City

The past week in New York was jarring to say the least. Though the city still makes me overwhelmed by even the smallest of tasks (where do you go to buy a pack of cards??), I have begun to slowly get used to the constant movement of the city and everything that comes with it. The sound of airplanes flying constantly from La Guardia over my apartment doesn't register any more. I can estimate how crowded the train will be based on what time I am leaving my apartment in the morning or TC in the evening. And although the feeling of always needing to do more still raises the specter of anxiety to make everything I do feel inadequate, I've become resigned to its presence to the point that it is part and parcel of the city itself. Solitude is rare in the city, but last week it was the norm All of these things fell apart this week though, one by one, as another phantom seeped into our lives. Starting with an email from our college president that optimistically called off only no...
Post a Comment
Read more

Critical Wisdom

The Department of Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College has a reputation for being difficult, especially at the doctoral level. It isn’t difficult in the way my advanced data analysis class is difficult, where we are expected to learn complex statistical concepts while also learning how to code in the dreaded Stata software. Instead, it is impossibly abstract and theoretical, with most classes requiring us to write papers where we construct complex arguments supported by plenty of other people’s theoretical musings. These frameworks challenge us at our very core, a process that is fraught with emotional ups and downs, so much so that a professor in the department has called the program as a “Pedagogy of Monsters” and written an article about it. The program has changed the way I see the world. For example, I recently went to go see Isn’t it Romantic with some colleagues from the Writing Center. Besides the social aspect of actually going somewhere that wasn’t to work or acc...
Post a Comment
Read more

Holding Sand

 My mother once gave me the sound advice to avoid holding tightly onto things (she was specifically talking about people at the time) because if you do, they have a habit of slipping away. She did this through a marvelous metaphor that went like this: If you have sand in your hand and make a fist, the sand begins to fall out and you are left with less sand than you started with. If you gently cup you hand and let the sand come in however, it remains in your hand, and you can perhaps even add more. This metaphor has stuck with me because it helped me with the problem that I was having back then. But I’ve come back to it again and again and slowly been realizing the smaller and more subtle ways that I grab onto things. These things are now always visible or tangible, but they still have important implications. Take meditation. I meditate every day. It’s like brushing my teeth, I simply can’t skip this part of my day. But unlike brushing my teeth, which is a methodical and easy ...
Post a Comment
Read more