sleepy head

I stroke his hair and try to wake him gently.

'Chyba tak,' he mumbles.

'Tak?' I probe.

'Można go remontować.' I wonder what on earth he is dreaming about. We can do it up? What can we do up?

'Co można remontować?' I ask, hoping for an intelligible answer.

'Samochód!' he says in a way that implies he's already said this to me a thousand times.

Oh, the car. Powerful dreams buddy.

cryptic whisperings

I have a history of sleepwalking. Well, I mainly have a history of crashing my parents' dinner parties and demanding food, as well as the more standard nonsense talking nighttime wandering. That's my thing though, sleepwalking.

Marek, on the other hand, is into sleeptalking.

When I first came to Poland it was very frustrating, because I'd be woken up by some incomprehensible mutterings and, unable to remember the Polish until the morning, never know what weird and wonderful things he was dreaming about.

A couple of years later, the situation has evolved, and now I can understand the nonsense he spouts in the middle of the night.

When he's sick, when the line between reality and delirium is less defined, Marek sleeptalks even more.

The latest example was when he fell asleep in front of the tv...

him: (low throaty chuckle) uh-oh!

me: (thinking he was concerned about the fate of the animal about to get savaged in the nature programme on tv) yep

him: who's he going to be next?

me: (realising he is asleep) who?

him: (incredulous) a woman??!

me: (lost) huh?

him: (waking up) nevermind.

Understanding all this Polish may reveal some fascinating things.

Outdone again

Although I've mainly done jobs of the bad-pay-but-good-on-the-cv variety, bonuses and work-related awards are not familiar territories. A long time ago I worked for the best bank in the world, and got a couple of bottles of wine when customers said nice things about me, but that was really where my corporate career ended.

For my latest project (come on it's been soooo long since I last plugged, er, mentioned it) I have a certain amount of interviewing to do, so my project's budget (which doesn't run to a salary for me) stretched to a very nice little creative zen, with enough room to record various interviews and oh! look! I might just put a couple of songs on there to listen to on my way to refugee centres... ahem.

Anyway, so I was feeling a little guilty at the loveliness of my little zen, when Marek came back from work last night, grinning from ear to ear.

As he made his company the most money from the contracts he wrote them last year, they gave him a present. What kind of present? Funny you should ask... a creative zen! But before you start worrying that we may get our zens mixed up, don't!

Mine is like this...
whereas Marek's is like theeeeees...

Seriously. It's a motha. It's memory is 60 times the size of mine. No exaggeration.

So, I've decided to stop feeling guilty about not buying a crackly cassette dictaphone instead of the zen. Turns out it wasn't so extravagant after all.

Oh, aaand he got 1000 zl travel voucher... where shall we go? Hmmm.