In Which She Learns Four Quarters Equal One Loonie

Slept in this morning. Until almost 8:30!! Well okay, I wasn't really asleep all that time. I was wide awake at the increasingly predictable 4:30. Again around 6. And pretty much a constant from about 7:15 on, but I didn't get up. I was sleeping in the living room, on the futon, to get off the floor because the wind chill dipped pretty low in the night. (I so need a boxspring to go with Mom's old bed frame, and get me off the floor in the bedroom.) The sky was amazing this morning. It was so cold in the room. And the sky so pretty. Shades of red, purple, mauve, orange, cotton candy pink, and dark denim blue. I just laid there, watching the changes in light and thinking. It used to be that getting up anytime before 10 was early. My normal biological time for waking happened at 10:30. I don't see this quiet time as a waste. I think it's important.

Many dreams happening. Lots of Asian culture for some unknown reason. Last night a boy, I think Korean, quite handsome. A friend of my Calgary cousin's who visited Grandad's with him when we were kids. (Never happened really . . . though one summer, wasn't there a blonde-headed boy? A friend?) Anyway, returned now, adults. We were all at my Uncle's next to Grandad's. Summer night. Very dark. That smell of horses. The three of us sent into the field to look for rope to tie something. A bit tipsy, me and Stace. Lots of shushing as we tried to laugh less, be quiet, not wake the kids sleeping in tents out there. Me tripping, falling into every hole out there. Then it dawns on me. Grandad's would have rope in a store or shed out back, lit up with fluorescent tubes. Instead of cutting through the field and walking over, there is this elaborate stealing of my parents' car, Korean boy the sober driver, a rolling down the hill, not starting the engine until we hit the pavement, so nobody would know. Driving two feet and then up the hill again to Grandad's. We get out of the car, and scatter. Nobody seems to remember what it is we've been sent to get or where we need to look for it.

And then there he is. Grandad. Standing in the shadows by the side of the house. Looking just as I remember him. Vest, trucker's ball cap, work pants. He's healthy, a big man, before he faded away. That gruff voice, "What are you doing?" And I'm glad to see him, relieved, though part of me understands he's already gone. Stace and I can't speak. It is the Korean boy who explains about the rope. It is the Korean boy he puts his arm around and leads back the field toward what looks like a Co-Op store. And Stace and I exchange knowing looks, shrug and then run to catch up.

Was it my imagination, or did the smell of horses linger in my blankets when I woke up?

Then I laid there and watched the sky. Could you blame me?

So yesterday I tried to do laundry. Couldn't get the coin-operated machine to work. Ended up sending a load of pants to Barnettville. But here's the thing. I went armed with quarters. The last time I used coin-operated laundry . . . it was all about the quarters. Costs a buck and a quarter, the sign says. Two coin slots. Hmm. Maybe it's only 50 cents? Frigged with it for a good 10 minutes before I gave up. Then this morning in the red sky at dawn, it suddenly dawns on me -- a loonie is four quarters! Two slots! A buck and a quarter! Duh! I don't have any loonies though. Need to go out.

Mood: pretty good
Drinking: coffee with cream
Listening To: let's get it started, black eyed peas
Hair: limp