APOst - Comics

PERTTU'S DIARY by Jane

Fiction
The ideas for this diary come from a lot of different everyday scenes.
To mention a few: A lesson in Fisheries biology, a diary, a visit to IKEA. But it all started when Anduine and I were discussing possible subjects for Apo-fics on the train to Hamburg .
I hope you will like it.

Title: Perttu's Diary
Author: Jane
Disclaimer: This has never happened. It is all lies. No harm intended.

Perttu's Diary

Saturday 9.30 AM
Why ohh why?

I need to learn to keep my big fat mouth shut. I should know better than making bets with Antero – and lose. And I should know better than… Damn, do you know what I have to do? I have to make him a dinner. A dinner in my typhoon-stroked apartment.

I hate it. I hate cooking and cleaning and shopping and everything else coming with the particular sentence ‘Dinner at Perttu's.'

But I will show him! I will show Antero that I am not such a hopeless case – all I need is a magic clock that moves tonight's dinner a couple of weeks into the future, a cleaning team, and a cook.

Okay, I have to start somewhere. Making a list works for a lot of people, so here we go:

1) Clean apartment
2) Buy food
3) Take a bath
4) Make dinner (+ clean kitchen afterwards)

Only four (and a half) points – that shouldn't be so hard.

9.45 AM
Okay, first thing first – time for cleaning.

10.16 AM
Okay, not as easy as I thought. Music is needed!

10.48 AM
Somehow the cleaning is happening much faster when I can sing my heart out during the process. And the girls on the forum are right. Head banging is the perfect dust-cleaner. Especially to songs by ABBA. Gimme! (head down) Gimme! (head down) Gimme! (head down) A Man After Midnight (head round and round and round) à TV is clean. And “Waaaaaaterlooooooo” while stuffing playstation games into the vegetable drawer in the fridge.

11. 12 AM
This might not be the cheapest way to clean up – but it surely is effective: Everything not clean goes down in a large black plastic bag and 1, 2, 3 OUT!

Cello is out of the case, meaning a whole lot of space inside for sheets and other important messy looking things.

Everything on the floor goes into the laundry basket – washable or not. And I can always find the not so dirty clothes there tomorrow again.

Wonder if he will notice if I don't vacuum clean…

11.15 AM
He will!

11.18 AM
I don't care, really.

I will do it if I have the time for it in the end, really.

11.20 AM
One down, three to go – shopping.

I need to find something to serve that I simply can't mess up – yup, I am aware of my klutzy soul! – something that doesn't need cooking.

11.25 AM
…

11.28 AM
SUSHI!!!

11.30 AM
Need list:
Cod – perfect fish must be perfect for sushi too
Seaweed
Rice – wonder if I can use normal ones
Was… (green sticky stuff)
Ginger – do the Japs have a different kind?
Avocado – rabbit food, but Ana loves it
Cucumber – yeah yeah
Soy
Chopsticks – and maybe some napkins for safety reasons
Sake

Hmm what more?

I have pillows to sit on on the floor, but no low table.

I'll come up with something smart soon. I can feel it.

14.12 PM
They actually use a different kind of rice for sushi – it looks almost the same as the normal kind, but costs much more.

And I did – of course – come up with something smart for the table.
Hi hi hi. He will be shocked by my inventiveness.
Long live IKEA. They didn't have a Japanese table, but they did have a cheap normal table and a saw…
And best of all; they bring out. Not just to the door but all the way up to the 5 th floor. They didn't want to saw it for me though.

But I managed well, I think. I only got a few scratches, which were easily covered with plasters.

14.17 PM
Third – bath.

Why do these small apartments not come with a bathtub?

14.19 PM
Ahh, no one shall ever again comment any lack of brain on my account. I am Mr. Smart, Mr. Inventor, I should have a price for being this brilliant.

15.22 PM
Okay. That wasn't such a good idea after all.

I picked up a nice little tub down at the kid's playground and took it into the shower, where I filled it with hot water and lots of synthetic smelling soap (it said lavender on the bottle, but…). The tub didn't look THAT little until I had screwed my 60 kg long slim body down and was pacified in an upright foetal position with only 40% of the body under water.

I cleverly decided that the project wasn't going as planned and got up – well I tried to get up, but the body wouldn't follow me. I WAS STUCK! In some weird way I had managed to create a partial vacuum. I decided not to panic. Instead I needed to think creative.

I thought about something Paavo had mentioned about those breathing exercises he and his wife had practised when she was pregnant. He had actually done it over the phone while we were on tour. Weirdo. I tried pretending being a pregnant woman in labour – breathe in and out, in and out.

It didn't work. I panicked.

After moving around like a…well, like a long limbed hot (because of the sweating, unfortunately) Perttu caught in a kid's bathtub – POP! I landed on the bath room floor, glided (why did I use that amount of soap?) like a curling stone (with a professional-like aim) right into the corner of the laundry basket. Why had I just filled it with all the clothes that used to be on the floor? Finally - bullet-proof evidence that cleaning is definitely no good.

So I ended up taking a normal shower and cleaning up the water and blood from the floor. It was almost tidy when I was done. Of course, I had to bind the towel around my head to keep from getting blood all over. Of course, it wouldn't stay on. Of course, Mr. Clever came up with the perfect solution. So right now I look like someone with a toothache with my towel kept on my head with a belt. Not the most comfortable solution, but no blood in my newly cleaned apartment.

15.28 PM
Ready for kitchen duty.

2 cod should be enough, shouldn't it?

16.10 PM
Damn, it all started so well, and then I end up killing a living creature. I have never really thought about cod as a living fish – I mean, they always come in filets…But these two came as whole fish and just when I was about to cut open the first cod it started to twitch, and shortly after I found myself trying to proceed first-aid on the cod. Not an easy task I must say – and those damn scales are very difficult to get out from between the teeth. Then I filled the sink with water and thought it could swim a few rounds, but it just lay there with the white belly upwards. And I even emptied the salt into the water.

Even though I knew it was dead now, I had to start with the other fish. It hadn't shown any signs of life the time it had been in my care. Here we go: Cod no. 1 on carving board, sharp knife in cod…

16.45 PM
Oops

Why is real life never as my dreams?

Actually I didn't know fish contained blood, they never do when I buy filets! Had I known this I would have bought something else – I am not very good with blood, and I do faint a lot, and when I see blood it is almost certain I faint – especially when it is not my own blood (weird actually, but that is the way it is).

I had this wonderful dream while I was visiting the kitchen floor. In this dream I didn't faint, in this dream the kitchen didn't have blood, scales, and other sticky and messy substances covering all surfaces. In this dream everything was perfect:

********

I had made sushi a Japanese would be proud of, hot sake was ready in small bottles, and I had set a table resembling those in the finest restaurants. Everything was ready for Antero to arrive.

When he did, a loud gasp escaped him as I greeted him wearing a beautiful red and white kimono. The inner layer was a deep red colour and the outer, transparent layer was red with white flowers, and on top of it all I was wearing a yellow silk ribbon around my waist. My hair was fixed with a pair of wooden chopsticks and in my bow-hand I had a fan, also in white, red and yellow.

I guided the slightly baffled and very quiet Antero to the table – I like to see him baffled, it happens so rarely, but when it does, the observer will see an otherwise well hidden side of him – at least for a second or two. In this dream he looked baffled for almost a minute.

I watched him eat. He was skilled with the chopsticks (so was I of course – it was my dream!), he easily grabbed the temaki stuffed with salmon, daikon, cucumber, sushi rice, and cress and dipped it in the mixture of soy and wasabi (when I think about it I didn't buy all these ingredients…). Before he took a perfect sized bite he said the first real words:

“Thank you.”

Then he told me how well I had prepared it and how glad he was that he hadn't let me win the bet after all (like he would have ever done that!).

********

But that was just my dream, at the moment my kitchen looked awful, the fish had not turned themselves into nigri, temaki or any other Japanese sushi, I had a headache from hell, and Antero would be here in less than 2 hours.

17.43 PM
Haaaiiiii aaaaaaahh chop chop king kong fu!

I was actually doing well. It might not look exactly as in the books, but the fishes were cut in pieces, and the rice was definitely sticking together.

It was when it was time for the vegetables, I got a bit reckless. I was just about to do the choppety chop thing when I realized that I had forgotten to close the door of the fridge. In the best Bruce Lee style I made a circle kick, missed the door, and planted my foot in the water melon I had planned for dessert. The rest of my body wasn't quite ready for the sudden stop and continued, resulting in me once again looking up from the floor.

18.15 PM
When Antero arrived, a bit early, I was sitting on the kitchen floor, the different ingredients spread out over the entire kitchen table, and pieces of water melon covering the floor. Nothing looked like anything a Japanese would be proud of.

I had failed miserably!

Antero did have the baffled look on his face I had hoped for, but for all the wrong reasons unfortunately. He didn't say anything. He just walked to me, helped me up, dried the tears from my eyes, and started to save the dinner.

The first sound he made was a gasp – when he slipped on the head of the cod that accidentally had escaped my handling and dropped on the floor.

I told him I would just sit still and not try to help, and by then he said the first real words:

“Thank you”

18.45 PM
When Antero came out of the kitchen he was carrying a tray with delicately looking sushi. But he didn't carry it towards the table. When I asked him why he answered:

“I am not going to eat my dinner from a table with a 10 degree slope. I appreciate all your efforts, though.”

And then he pinched my ass and walked towards my normal dinner table.

First I thought he wanted to eat sushi from that – that would destroy everything. But no Mr. Cool turned out to be quite good with a saw too. And ‘vupti' we had a table a Japanese would be proud of.

22.37.14 PM
When Antero left he promised me he wouldn't tell the others about my disastrous attempts to make sushi. He would only tell them about the lovely dinner we had.

And it was indeed a nice dinner. It might not have been exactly as in my dream, but definitely nice. Even though I never got my hair fixed or dressed in silk – which might as well be a good thing…

Now I just hope Eicca, Paavo or Mikko won't want to see proof of Antero's nice words. I am not up for another challenge like this right now.

THE END