Winking should not be done. Period. It’s awkward. The occasions that call for an appropriate wink are probably less than 50 per year, worldwide. Yeah. I’m standing behind those numbers.

If you have ever winked at someone or been winked at, I’m talking to you. Take a step back and think about it. Let’s think about when it works (besides never).

• Person catching the eye of a friend to signal inside information or a private joke of some sort. Like, hey, WE GET THIS and no one else does. You look like a jerk to everyone else, but to that one person, you’re a hero. So go for it, I guess.
• Person winks at younger person to acknowledge some sort of achievement, like on the sports field or at a performance. It’s a little patronizing, though, even in this case, don’t you think? You think you are saying “good job” to them, but it really translates to “good job, if you’re medicated and have a concussion” because of the wink.
• Person winks at potential dating material. It can work, but it’s creepy. And outdated. You really want to date an old person?  No. Then don’t wink. Cuz that’s what you’re gonna end up with.
• Little kid winking at anyone and everyone, but they have no control over their eye muscles, so it just comes out as a violent double blink. It’s cute if you are 3 or under.

I went through a winky phase, which lasted way too long. If the phase had lasted an hour, it would have been too long, but I think it actually lasted about 2 weeks. There are people all over Florida that are probably still creeped out by what I was doing with my face. Sorry about that.

But then something new happened. People decided that since winking was so successful in person, they would invent a way to do it online. People turned to emojis. Some Japanese guy invented it. The world embraced it.

I rejected it.

For a long, long time, I rejected this technology out of sheer stupidity. But the craze didn’t end. It got bigger, and fancier, and more colorful. Before it was over, there were smiling hershey kisses representing whatever you might suspect. And there were country flags and holidays and broken hearts and ghosts wearing eye patches. But there were also faces. Lots and lots of teeny, tiny faces. Where I had once rejected the practice out of principle, I was now forced to reject it due to my failing old person eyesight. Emojis are not for the ancient folk. Honestly, I have friends who are just a few years younger who send them to me and I have no idea what they are saying. I can’t see it. Not one bit. Can’t see the eyes, the mouth, anything.

If you want to offend me and get away with it, do it through Emojis. I won’t know. But if you try to say something nice through emojis, i still won’t know.

Sometimes I try to rise above the challenges and use them. That is the biggest mistake of all. What do they mean? What is the message behind them? This first guy…is he angry about a sinus problem? Allergy season? Why are his eyes closed? Are they swollen shut?

And this guy. What is the HUGE drop of water coming from where his nose should be? I have NO IDEA what this means. I can’t even venture a guess as to the mood he’s in. Confused? Sleepy? Afraid of books?

This guy. This guy appears on my phone with the same smile and many different types of eyes. What do closed eyes convey over open ones? Guy who has made a serious error but is still smiling and is afraid of impending pepper spray. It has to be that. Otherwise his eyes would be open.

While I was typing this post, my daughter sat down across from me at a table in a skating rink and asked me a question. I answered her question and then winked at her. I didn’t do it to prove a point or make a statement. I did it out of misguided instinct. Old habit.

She didn’t recognize my gesture as a wink. So I grabbed my phone and texted her this guy as if to say…?

Well.
Good thing I never set up unnaturally high expectations for things. That way I’m never disappointed.
Oh wait. I do and I am.
But it’s all good because it’s summer. A summer without schedules. With swimming. With laughing and frolicking and playing.

That’s what I thought. But then I called about football tryouts for my oldest boy’s high school. I thought I was actually being proactive and calling a tad ridiculously early. That’s when I was informed they’d already been practicing for 3 days and I needed to get off my summer-lazy hiney, get the boy’s physical, get his medical pack notarized, and get him to conditioning by Monday at 4. Oh good. Today is Monday. And you know when 4 o’clock is.

So Summer ended before it began.

But that’s a glass half empty approach.

I’ll try for glass half full.

YAY. I get to take a kid to football practice from 4-6:30 and then somehow get him showered and fed before skating begins at 7! Still glass half empty, isn’t it?

My glass is half empty. Whatever.

So, the Informinator heard I had taken a day off blogging last Friday and said, “Oh, there we go…see you in 6 months.” Her glass is all the WAY empty. Sheesh. I took a day off because everyone was as sick of reading the blog as I was of writing it. Sometimes we all just need to walk away.

My youngest, snuggilest daughter came to me in the dead of night Saturday. It was 2:15 a.m. Sunday morning. I always hear my door open and see the stream of light attacking my eyeballs from the hall bathroom. The stories are always similar. I can’t sleep. I had a nightmare. There are 100 spiders in my room. Blah blah.

“I had a bad dream,” she said.

Wanting the wakefulness to end as quickly as possible, I invited her up to my bed for a quick snuggle. I didn’t ask questions because I didn’t want either one of us to become more awake than we already were. Then I sent her back to bed.

Two and a half frustrating hours later, I think I fell back asleep. It was a restless, exhausting night. I go to sleep fine. But if you wake me in the middle, I don’t resume sleep very easily. Having lost so much sleep over her bad dream, I needed to ask what it was about. Over breakfast on Sunday, I asked her. Was it a scary clown? A storm? A bogeyman? Serial kidnapper? 

“No, it was about Flash,” she answered. Flash is Brady’s neglected hamster. “I took him down to the deck by the river. It started to rain so I ran in the house and left him out there. I guess he fell in, because I never saw him again.” So you don’t even know that he fell in the river? It’s just a hamster wandering off? That was the bad dream?

It’s time to have a talk about what the mother can be awakened for. It isn’t for hamster dreams. I will schedule this talk today between the notarization and the football practice.

Bam.