When you’re talking in your sleep

In which our Hero hears the secrets that you keep, when you’re rolling in the deep

Despite the ongoing stress-induced exhaustion, I still manage to be awake just enough more than Nocturne. Which is why, as I wound down my own awake with a book, I heard my lady stir, ask me very clearly: “Is it yesterday yet?” and roll over back to sleep.

Here’s hoping when she discovers this conversation she finds it as funny as I did.

Canadian Thanksgiving was the weekend before this past, and I’m sure the beavers who survived the culinary carnage are grateful to be able to mind their dams in peace. (Beaver meat is tryptophan-free, btw) Even though it’s not really a big holiday like it is in the US, we still end up doing the family thing, with plenty of food, but we’re not locked into a beaver rut like the US does turkey. Still, it was an odd day for conversations.

Like my cousins Mouse and Moonbeam know Dallandrah, and they always ask how she’s doing. So I told them about the cute costumes she was putting together for her kids and I mentioned that the Princess was going to be dressing up as a Dragon-tamer. And Moonbeam started thinking very hard about what that would look like. “I wonder where you get a whip. The only place I can think of is one of *those* shops” and with that my sweet little baby girl who used to censor herself because she was still months from being old enough to watch a PG movie referenced an “adult novelty” store and I laughed in my suddenly felt old age.

Moonbeam wasn’t done, though. Later, as more of the cousins arrived, we got to talking, which got to odd names and nicknames because of what one of the kids called another, and then Moonbeam explained how to figure out your stripper name. (You know that meme? Your stripper first name would be the name of your first pet, and your stripper lastname would be your first street. Or something like that, I don’t care enough to fact check this one).

So. Strippers. Whips. It’s going to be an odd evening.

(Ha, that’s a funny sentence. Ahem. Sorry, moving on.)

But the moment of truth, quite honestly, came when another cousin arrived, with his kids. They’re honestly both sweet girls, but we’re not close, at least not yet, despite the time they’ve been here. Still, they’re pretty friendly, and so my strangeness to them is something that doesn’t much stop them. I asked the 9-year-old how she was doing, in front of the group.

“I really don’t like my life right now,” she answered, heavily.

Most every kid I’ve met has been thrilled to be out and about, so frankly I was shocked. Hell, the whole room was shocked, so it wasn’t me overreacting. And she may be new to this side of the family, but she clearly had the support of everybody in the room.

As we talked to her, it developed that (as I was hoping) this was melodrama, not crisis. She had a math test coming. But the poor sweetheart was very seriously drained. She fell asleep twice in the middle of a noisy room, kind of drooped over herself in a limp heap of little girl.

I don’t know what to do for her. Except to watch and see how she looks the next time I see her. If it’s the same way, I may ask my mom to go visit and get her some attention.

The littlest one was momma’s girl for the evening. Till well after dinner, when the 4-year-old, came out and started playing on the couches, grabbing cushions from everybody, as little kids are wont to do. My other cousins were trying to stop her and I told her to go ahead. Which was fine till she started thumping Willow’s brother, whereupon I told her that she couldn’t do that or I’d take the pillows away.

And she stopped.

And looked at me.

And mashed up her face into a glare.

And pointed two fingers at her eyes, twice.

And then pointed them at me, twice.

And then went back to playing. (Without thumping anybody) I’m not sure how much more startled I’d have been if her head started spinning on her neck. I’m watching you. I’m not sure if she knows what it means.

Speaking of diabolical, I was in my dad’s email, setting up a new address for him, and I noticed that Gmail has a transliteration option. And I was curious about it, so I hit the help page, and saw that among the languages that it supports was my parents’ tongue. So I head to my email, turn on the setting and…

Oh. There’s a dropdown to pick the language you want to use for transliteration. And the languages are listed in their own alphabets. And I can’t read.

Hmm.

Well, out of all of them, these squiggles look the closest, so I picked one. And then I did my best to sound out what I was hoping would say, “I saw something new. Can you read this?” and emailed it to my dad. And then headed to his desk to make him check his email. He was certainly surprised to see that text.

“So can you read anything?” I asked him.

He peered again, and told me it didn’t make any sense. I explained what I’d written and he looked again. And then he turned to me with the expression before he smiles and said, “You know this word means Satan?”

And then we both started laughing.

In fairness, I don’t know the language. I’ve learned it from hearing it, which means that I don’t hear things like silent letters and too-brief syllables. (As an extreme example, like how Worcestershire is pronounced Whir-stir-shir). So I can kind of speak a little of the language, because if I say the word close enough people kind of hear what they need to in context. But when I say just a word, it frequently makes my mother start to laugh at me.

And if I take my mumbled, overheard understanding of the words, and use my tenuous grasp of the language to create the sounds that I then map into my best guess about English phonemes, that Google then statistically maps into the glyphs, you get some potential for mistranslation. And I can’t read the output to know if things have gone awry.

So much technology, so little actual information. Anyway, gotta go.