Binkytowne

It's Cold

They walk with heavy steps, one foot in front of the other. Left then right. Left. Right. Always in step. No one leads, no one follows.

They walk with their arms behind their backs. One mittened hand wrapped around the other wrist.They don't smile. Wrinkled faces brace the cold wind. You can't see them. They are hidden behind fur-trimmed hoods and thick, heavy parkas. They wear boots with zippers in the front. If you try to make eye contact, they avoid your gaze and look right through you. Just another snowflake in a cold gray winter day. The Russians. They walk the streets, seven days a week and they never, ever speak.

I picture Josephine Lubisnki, thirty? Forty years ago? Her hair is in tightly curled rows from her beauty parlor appointment and tucked safely beneath a scarf tied smartly at the chin. Her coat is quilted, her limbs solid. Her gait, slow. Her eyeglasses are silver and curled up a little at the edges like cat's eyes. She's off to Mitchell Street or headed to Southgate. She stands at the bus stop and doesn't notice the cold. Not anymore. It's always been this cold, so you put on another sweater.

I try to pretend it's not freezing and that I am tough enough to brave the winter. I leave my gloves in the house on purpose because I don't want to wear them and curse loudly when my hands hit the sting of the icy steering wheel.

Josephine rolls her eyes at me, mumbles something in Polish under her breath and shoves her gloves into her pocket just to prove how tough she is.

When will I get used to this?

Nap Time

Where Were You Last Night?

I'm thinking of starting a new series here. A series about dreams. Not the lofty, what would you do if you won the lottery dreams, but the nightly and very wacky dreams that happen in my head every night while I try to get a few hours of uninterrupted unconsciousness.

I've read that people who are sleep-deprived go directly into R.E.M sleep and bypass the other stages that one normally cycles through when achieving a deep sleep. The reason is because the body learns that if it doesn't cut the BS and get right down to it, there is a very good chance someone will be standing next to them within minutes or hours tugging on their pajamas or demanding something unreasonable like water and it will lose the chance to dream.

I've also heard that studies show that people who spend too much time in R.E.M. or who are awakened in the middle of it, tend to suffer from mood disorders, as the area of the brain that is responsible for dreaming is also the area that activates and sends neurons into a jitterbug when someone is feeling angry or aggressive.

Boy does this all make perfect sense to me.

I almost never, ever, sleep until I wake up on my own. I am always woken up by someone or something and I am almost always dreaming vividly when it happens. I dream in color, I dream every night and during every catnap. I have dreams that play out like films with sequences that make sense and I have dreams that are disconnected snippets of reality and ridiculous fantasy.

When I first wake I can tell you every detail of what I was just experiencing. As the day unfolds the edges tend to get blurry and the thread begins to unravel, unless the emotions of the dream were particularly intense. Warm and soft love dreams or the ones where I am very angry tend to stay with me for a day, sometimes longer, leaving an imprint somewhere. I am not clear where they linger but I can summon those feelings from the dream long after the minor details have vanished. They float just below the surface. 

I have considered keeping a journal next to my bed or speaking them into my iPhone when I wake simply out of curiosity, but since it so often happens that I get woken up when I really should be and need to be sleeping, I'm afraid that would start my mind turning and I wouldn't be able to fall quickly and easily back to sleep.

I don't know if this will work but in the one I was having when I was so rudely interrupted last night/morning seemed like a good one to share. It had some of your favorite bloggers hanging out. There was also beer, driving over big scary bridges, my mother wearing some six-inch heels, the Dali Lama (he was fast asleep) and shopping at a popular chain store.

Seriously, I couldn't make this stuff up.

Love, Grandma #best09

Grandma D is my husband's grandmother. Like most grandmothers, she has a rich history, not mine to tell. Today in her eighties, she still always shows up; She always has her hair curled, her lipstick on and always has a snazzy broach on her sweater and socks that match her slacks. Once I went to her house for lunch and she made us soup and hot dogs. A + grandma material. 

In the ten years that I have known my husband, she has continued to send cards for birthdays and holidays. The best part of receiving these cards is not the two or three one dollar bills tucked inside, it's the flowy cursive script of her handwriting and the gems she has written over the years, including:

"I'm eighty three years old, I haven't been sick lately, I've had all the germs."

"It's a good thing so-and-so is pregnant, she almost missed the boat!"

She's also written lovely testaments to my beautiful boys and love of family.

As the years have progressed the notes have become more brief. I'm not sure her sight is what it used to be. Our Christmas card this year only included a line or two and it wasn't until I saw it that I realized how much I looked forward to the longhand, sometimes rambling, letters she used to write on the front, back and insides of the cards she picked out, signed and mailed to us.

Always signed,

Love, Grandma  

Today's prompt is stationery.

Love, Grandma #best09

Grandma D is my husband's grandmother. Like most grandmothers, she has a rich history, not mine to tell. Today in her eighties, she still always shows up; She always has her hair curled, her lipstick on and always has a snazzy broach on her sweater and socks that match her slacks. Once I went to her house for lunch and she made us soup and hot dogs. A + grandma material. 

In the ten years that I have known my husband, she has continued to send cards for birthdays and holidays. The best part of receiving these cards is not the two or three one dollar bills tucked inside, it's the flowy cursive script of her handwriting and the gems she has written over the years, including:

"I'm eighty three years old, I haven't been sick lately, I've had all the germs."

"It's a good thing so-and-so is pregnant, she almost missed the boat!"

She's also written lovely testaments to my beautiful boys and love of family.

As the years have progressed the notes have become more brief. I'm not sure her sight is what it used to be. Our Christmas card this year only included a line or two and it wasn't until I saw it that I realized how much I looked forward to the longhand, sometimes rambling, letters she used to write on the front, back and insides of the cards she picked out, signed and mailed to us.

Always signed,

Love, Grandma  

Today's prompt is stationery.

DInk De Dink #best09

I'm sitting up late, messing around on the computer. I bought some patches last year, maybe the year before and I can't remember where I ordered them from. It's Sunday night, almost ten. What the hell?

I open TweetDeck and type:

"Anyone patch the knees on blown out kid's jeans? Need cute patches"

In less time that it takes me to alt-tab back to Amazon, I see I have a mention on Twitter. Clicking back I see it's my old friend @GracieDesigns. She has a suggestion. A couple of minutes later not only do I have a place to look for patches that I hadn't thought of, but I feel lighter, taking a stroll down memory lane to when we used to work together and remembering that I haven't laughed that hard at work since she left.

I know this is no revolutionary moment in social networking and millions of people are experiencing the same thing as I type this, but it doesn't make it any less cool.

Today's prompt: Social Web Moment.

*Dink de dink is what we use to say to each other over email when we were making it look like we were working but were totally goofing off. I can only imagine the hilarity that would have ensued with IM or twitter had we had it back in the day.

For Real Life #best09

This year I was not:

Thinking about getting pregnant, trying to get pregnant, waiting to find out if I were pregnant, counting the weeks waiting to see if the pregnancy would stick, sweating through months hoping the other shoe wouldn't drop, chopping through the post-partum fog and re-learning everything I thought I new about life.

Waiting and pondering and considering doing it again, or,

Doing it all again.

Those days are behind me now, behind us, my round numbered family of four. Baby-making requires a tap of the pause button. Career plans, what you what to do or be seem to get clouded by what you are and that thing you are doing.

This year had clarity. There would be no more dreaming, planning or gestating. I wrapped up those years with a pretty bow and placed them lovingly in the back of the closet, blowing them a kiss as I walked away.

Instead of thinking about what could be, I could really give my full attention to what was. For (my) real life.*

For Real Life is my almost five-year old's current and this year's most uttered and adorable phrase. In order to say it right it must be uttered as two words, as in: fa'real life.

I don't care who knows it #best09

Every day, I order something that requires five minutes of my life just to recite. For the record, its a Grande, non-fat, two pump, iced, green tea latte. It's also magnificent, tastes heavenly, gives me a boost that is not as harsh as coffee and keeps me satiated until lunch time. I have one almost every day. I want to support the local coffee houses, I really do, but I can't find one who makes anything close to this. (Alterra, please? I want to give you my money, just hook me up..)

Today's prompt is best tea. I missed yesterday, which was best packaging. I've got nothing.. wait...nope, still not a clue.

Best Moment At Work #best09

I was at work on January 20, 2009. I was sitting in a giant conference room, my laptop warming my legs. We all brought them down to make it look like we were working, but no one was. I don't know about the rest of them, but I couldn't take my eyes of Barak Obama, larger than the huge floor to ceiling screen he was projected onto, being sworn in as President of the United States.

When it was official, the whole room, actuaries, analysts, supervisors and cafeteria staff erupted into a rousing roar of celebration. I will never forget this, I thought, watching the celebration here and there, looking at the world with fresh eyes.     

(Today's prompt is RUSH)

Starlight #best09

  My home is a lovely summer home. We have lots of windows, lovely cross breezes, flower gardens and a screened-in porch off the back. If this house hadn't had this porch, I might not have given it a second look, but there was something so seductive about having a porch. A porch is something to enjoy all summer long and something to dream about when cooped up inside from October to May.

I hung these lights right before our Fourth of July party. They are just one strand, balls of wicker strung around white lights. As the weather changed I left them up, not seeing the point in removing them only to string them back up again next year. Or because I was too lazy to take them down. Anyway, they make me happy. Even when not lit, I liked the idea of them, so they stay.

Unfortunately, my home is not the coziest winter abode. It is often drafty and dark a lot of the time. But the other night I stepped out onto the cold, dark porch to let the dog out and much to my surprise, I was standing under a shower of my twinkling wicker lights. My husband surprised me by connecting them to a motion sensor.

I now have my own personal canopy of stars to greet me each time I step out of, or in to a winter's night.  Whether taking out the garbage or coming home from a stressful work day, I am reminded of brighter days.