June 10th, 2003

I’m really not trying to have this turn into my dream journal and nothing else, honest. I know an inordinate number of posts lately have been my dreams. I have had other entries and things to say all worked out in my mind, but they dissipate before I get a chance to post them, and the dreams would go too, except that I force myself to post those as often as I can. I’m kind of afraid if I start another type of entry, a non-dream one, meaning to go into one topic or another I’ll just start rambling and going all over the map since I have so many things stored up to say. A dream entry, however, is finite, and I know I can get it all out and be relatively satisfied with it and post it and then move on to the seventy thousand other things I have to do. I find I don’t really know anymore who is reading the blog. I know some of my friends look here regularly, but there are more hits here than account for the people I know of that read this, which is kind of flattering and confusing at once. Flattering because I assume (falsely, of course) that hits means readers, and confusing because I can’t imagine why anyone not directly in my circle of friends would be interested. So I feel like I ought to post regularly, since people are bothering to check in. Especially about Sophia, since she’s actually the whole raison d’etre for the blog and I can only guess that if people are here it’s to read about her. I have a huge list of things I want to post about her when I get the chance. I’m not exactly sure where the list is, but I have it somewhere! I guess what I’m trying to say is that if the dream thing is a total snorer for you please keep the faith and keep checking back. There will be other types of entries at some point, hopefully soon. I promise. Thank you.

Wow, just discovered something kind of interesting. Words and languages are fascinating to me, and in another life I am a linguist, though in this one I fall short of the polyglot required to be good at such things and so I resort to being just an alert dabbler in languages. I used the term “lagniappe” on someone not from the South moments ago, and they had to look it up. For those of you who may not have heard the term, it’s an extremely commonly used way of saying “a little something extra”. It’s like the thirteenth roll in the baker’s dozen or something. I have used this term all my adult life, since I heard it when I first moved to Louisiana. I used it because it seemed to fit a term I often used in Spanish, growing up. We call that little bonus that you sometimes get when shopping, such as a calendar from the cleaner’s around Christmas “la yapa”. It also means, “a little something extra”. I’m constantly in search of words to represent concepts that I find in other languages and can’t adequately express in translation with less than a paragraph. “Yapa” and “Lagniappe” have always had the same feel for me, bridging the concept perfectly and easily between languages. This is a treasured rarity. Well, it turns out that the reason for these two words dovetailing so nicely in my grey matter is because I’m using the same word! When my friend looked up the etymology of “lagniappe” on dictionary.com he found that both words have the same source and that one derived from the other:Lagniappe derives from New World Spanish la ñapa, “the gift,” and ultimately from Quechua yapay, “to give more.” . I’d always foolishly assumed that “lagniappe” was French derived, of Cajun origin, when in fact it was just adopted from Spanish by Creoles and given a French spelling. Fascinating! I’ll also mention here that I’d love to learn Quechua some day. I’ve been reading up on it so I could steal some words (and maybe some names) for Cualcotel, and it’s a very interesting and rich language.

By the way, New Jersey won the Stanley Cup and I’m so happy about that! I have to admit the Ducks kind of pulled my heartstrings with their Cinderella story and I really do think Giguere was just amazing, but I had to stay faithful to my pick since the Red Wings got knocked out, and that was the Devils. Besides, Brodeur was on my fantasy hockey team and he was practically the best player I had all season. Congratulations to the New Jersey Devils!

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Sophia had nightmares last night. We aren’t sure why, but we think the ending to The Fox and the Hound which she saw last night, might have been a little too scary for her. She talked about the bear being scary. Then, at night, she woke up several times crying intensely. Poor thing. Kurt had to rock her to sleep. It’s been months and months and months since she had to be rocked to sleep. I had no idea the movie would scare her (of course) and I’m not sure what exactly she’s scared of. I guess she’s not used to bears being scary, since to her they are always friendly and loving animals. Even the pictures out of the nature magazines with the bears tearing into fish that I have pasted in the bathroom seem to interest her rather than intimidate her. I hope this is a transitory fear. Still, it’s unlikely to be the last time she wakes in the night frightened, and I guess we need to come up with a strategy and some things to say to her when this happens. Poor girl.

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Wow, what a dream last night! I hope I can remember it all or enough of it to make it make sense. I went over it several times in my head. Topics : theatre, balconies, my ever-faithful vampire companions, interesting dreamscapes. Nothing I think anyone could find offensive or salacious. As usual, I’m not going to bother explaining who in this dream is a real life person I know, who is a made up on the spot appearance and who is an imaginary character of the venerated folk who have been with me for decades. These retellings are primarily for my own convenience, and I know the difference.

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