Rowan Tree and Red Thread

Sunday morning I was on first with Rowan, and she had apple juice and cardamom cake for breakfast, with a side order of sliced cucumber. That's an odd breakfast but what she wanted. I wonder if I was as eclectic as a toddler.

We had a quiet day, with some playing in the snow, and didn't really get up to much until the evening when we went with Eoin and Noora down into town for a couple of drinks with Eoin's friends who were staying in an apartment near the centre of Saariselkä. My mother stayed in to keep an eye and ear on the sleeping Rowan. Our conversation centred on dislocated knees (Eoin's friend Dave was about to attempt snow boarding in the morning and has a dodgy knee), toddlers in snow suits (Noora's friend Krista has a son about Rowan's age who is an old hand at playing in the snow) and mocking Eoin's friend Joel for his new found deep knowledge of snowboarding based on one afternoon on the slopes.

We walked back through another wind-blown snow fall and were very glad to see the house lights at last. Into the sauna (bless the timer!) which was unfortunately not as hot as the previous one. However we did have some honey and herb sauna oil to add to the water. It gave a lovely scent to the sauna and the steam raised the temperature nicely. I trotted outside into the frigid air to enjoy cooling off, but I declined to throw myself bodily into a snow drift. Even with the newly fallen snow I knew that there was ice just below the surface. Besides which, I'm a cardio-vascular coward and didn't want to provoke an arrest.

When I came in from the cold, as it were, I found that John Paul II had died. This was hardly a surprise but judging by the masses of people in St. Peter's Square I had to wonder if others weren't a little more shocked than I was. Sam and I engaged in the obvious conversation of two hardened irreligious types who have disliked JPII and the Catholic Church for a long time.

Much later, after Sam and I were asleep, Eoin and Noora returned at about 4am. Much vodka had been consumed after we'd left, leading to a communal sauna and a mad dash out into the snow. In the morning Eoin proudly displayed the ice burns on his chest. Ouch!