Forssa Pride Party 2012

I can finally said it's done! After two years of being back, two years of thinking about how to get in touch with the gay community in Forssa, 2 years of trying to make friends and trying to "infiltrate" the gay community in Finland...I can proudly announce the first ever gay pride party @Bar 54 in Forssa!

Life's a fickle little thing. You never know where your decisions are gonna lead you. I've been thinking about my decisions a lot lately. Is it just a bad luck when your life sucks? When I was sending out job application after job application in USA and getting nowhere and my "deportation" date was getting closer and I felt more depressed and helpless each day...was that just bad luck or was it how everything was supposed to go?

When I think about all the great things I got to experience there, was that just luck, or is there a moment in my past where everything changed and took me to that particular path? Obviously TLW is a big part of all that, but I think I can pin point a moment from before that, that changed my path. Choosing to go to UK as an au pair.

Decisions.
I don't do well without direction in my life. I don't do well when others are in control of my destiny, of my life. No matter what I did, no one in USA was hiring me. I can safely say that at some point I gave up. I got depressed. What's the point of sending applications when nothing is going to come of them? When I came back and was under the impression that T would follow me, I perked up a little. Then the break up happened, and there was nothing I could do about it. I wasn't in control of my life. And nobody understood what I was going through. There's only so much that a married Finnish hetero people can understand about my cross-the-pond legal woes and heartache.

The decision to go get trained as a gay advocate was one of the best I've made since coming back to Finland. It brought new friends to my life, who have been so great, so great. And they are coming to the Pride Party. Just because I asked them to.

Internet. The decision to contact Noora has lead to this. One fine Friday night at the roof terrace we were using our gaydars for good, e.g. checking people out and talking about their gayness. Which lead to "wish we could be sure," which lead to "I wish we had a gay bar in Forssa," which lead to "What if we organized a party"...which lead to an impromptu advertisement pitch to the owner of the bar. And here we are. He said yes. He gave us 3 days to choose from. And we chose October 19th, 2012. We have a place, a date, a person creating a poster for the event, a Facebook page for the event, and a facebook event created for the event. We also have me coming out PUBLICLY in a magazine to promote the party.

Go to facebook.com/ForssaPride and share and like it, please!

Recap

It's been way too long since my last post and I have so much to write about but I just haven't gotten the stories out of me. If it was possible to record my blog and either some app writing it into words or a person doing it for me, I'm sure there would have been plenty posts between now and the last one.

• Job is still awesome. 2 projects finished in April, one new started in June so I now have 4 all together to manage. We have our first public event, well, MY first public event to introduce plans to public on Thursday...I'm not nervous...yet!
• Helsinki Pride was awesome. I had a great time with Heidi and Ella but sadly my old body can't handle 3 nights in a row in a bar drinking. 
• Tampere Pride was great also, with the same crew. The Parades here are different though, they are much more political and not about really enjoying and having fun like NYC Pride. 
• I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism which explains the constant tiredness, no appetite and my non-pregnancy pregnancy buddha! I really don't eat a lot but my weight keeps increasing. I mean there's something seriously wrong when after a body pump class I don't feel like eating a burger or anything greasy, which was normal for me back in the day. I didn't eat them, just craved them. I have medication but I don't think it's working just yet. Been on it for 2 months now.
• All the 13 lbs I've gained have gone to my belly. Why couldn't it have stayed north just a bit? 
• It's probably illegal in at least 100 countries to have cats as cute as mine! Like they are seriously the most adorable cats in the world. I'd put up pictures but I'm too lazy. I just downloaded almost 400 pictures and videos from my iPad to my computer but don't feel like going through them just now. One of these days I'll make a whole post about them.
• The furry babies turned 1 last Thursday! I wanted to have party hats and put a candle on their food but couldn't find party hats small enough to fit their heads. 
• Finnish summer this year has been anything but hot and sunny. Nothing like the past 2 summers. Not a huge deal for me since I only had 2 days for vacation but probably not fun for those who had whole 4 weeks in July.
• Folks finally found a buyer for their house. It's been a year...
• There should be some pretty exciting news coming up if not this week then next. I have something great planned if only the venue clears.

Stay tuned!

What are the chances?

What are the chances that in a town of 18000, with a thriving gay community (yeah, right) two 30 something year old lesbians who knew nothing about each other have american exes?


What are the chances?

Charging batteries

I went to bed at 7:30am this morning. I slept maybe 3 hours and I still feel like my batteries were charged. Wanna know why? I spent the weekend in Helsinki and went to a gay bar with a friend. I feel slightly hangover but no nausea or a headache. I can't remember the last time I went to bed at 7:30am. Is it Pride week yet?

And I even skipped the Finland bronze medal game today. Who knew?

Bipolar gay news day

I woke up this morning to the news that Amendment 1 had passed in North Carolina defining marriage as between a man and a woman and banning civil unions as well in that state.

The this evening I get the pleasant surprise of reading that the President of the United States, Barack Obama, who previously has said that marriage is between a man and a woman came around and said he now supports full marriage equality!

That is awesome and for a news day, especially a gay news day, so bipolar.

But as happy as I am about Obama changing his mind, I cannot help but think of this as a political move. The presidential candidates now are as far apart on civil rights issues as they possibly can. Romney the ultra conservative mormon, and Obama supporting marriage equality. I just find the timing curious.

Interviews

Within few months time I went from looking for interviews to being the one doing the interviewing. How crazy is that? Life works in mysterious ways! And the shit storms end eventually. I'd like to offer more profound knowledge and words of wisdom but i'm gonna sound too out of this world (and not me), so I'll end it here.

Pay Day

Pay day is probably the happiest day of the month. It certainly is my favorite right now. The days following pay day can be dangerous. I may or may not have bought some new stuff, all needed I might add, to the cats, or for them. Was able to stay under 100 though...

Grocery store was bad too. Had a list that would have come up to about 20 euros...went just a tad bit overboard. But all of the things I came home with were on my endless list of things to get so basically I am just making that list smaller.  I don't necessarily need to get ALL of them right away but it makes me happy. I haven't been able to get myself anything for the past 2 years so this is much needed retail therapy to get myself over the poorer times.

I was also able to reduce my debt to R2. He lent me the money to fly to Finland 2 years ago when I had to bring my broke ass home and he's been so patient with it. Good times!