Supplemental Prelude

And here it is: a little more intimate glimpse into my world and the people (or critters) that my world revolves around.

Rowan
That’s me. I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and lived some of my years there with my great-grandmother and my great-aunt in a house that was so close to the Audubon Zoo that you could hear the lions roaring in the morning. I don’t remember a whole lot about that house in New Orleans, except that I fell down a spiral staircase and broke my collar bone and that my great-aunt had a nickel slot machine that I thought was just the greatest thing ever. I would spend many hours sitting on the bar stool and playing on it. I guess one could say I started ‘gambling’ early in life, if they really wanted to. The rest of my childhood was lived out in a small town called Walker, Louisiana, which is near Baton Rouge.

“Rowanilainen” would be somewhat hard to explain to someone who doesn’t know any Finnish, but here goes (but do keep in mind I am not a native speaker, and if any Finn would like to give their input, it’s welcomed). The suffix –lainen/läinen in Finnish is given to describe an inhabitant of something/somewhere and adjectives. So “English” in Finnish is “englantilainen”. So, “Rowanilainen” would be “Rowan-ish” in English, or something along those lines. This blog contains all rights rowanilainen or Rowan-ish, etc.

The Finn
The Finn is my soon-to-be ex-husband. I won’t speak too poorly of him here, since even snakes need to keep some dignity about them and he is not here to defend himself, but I will say that after almost 5 years of being together—two of which we were married—things simply didn’t work out. That is life.

Seamus
Seamus is my Shetland Sheepdog. Who knows how much of a role he’ll play in my blog? He tends to stay behind the scenes. Seamus only has two nicknames and they are “Turd” and “Turdie-bird”.

Gerona and Galina
My two girls. I raised them from one-week-old kittens in Louisiana and they moved to Finland with me in 2004. Galina is my baby girl and loves me to bits and pieces, whereas Gerona couldn’t give a whit about me and adores The Finn instead.

Nicknames for them include:

Gerona

• Schmoo
• Moby Schmoo
• Don Schmoo
• Schmoolie

Galina

• Baby Tuff
• Tuffus
• Grump
• Grumpling
• Grumpus

Henry
My gentleman kitty. Henry was adopted from an animal shelter in Lahti, Finland in 2005.

His nicknames include:

• Henry-boy
• Henny-penny
• Monsieur Henri
• Hen