Sleepless at Someday: Baba Pickles edition

I've written about being sleepless at Someday before, but last night was an epic no-sleeper. And I can't blame the stuff that used to keep me awake, like bad dreams or anxiety or heartburn or false labour. Nope, last night was my own damned fault: I allowed myself to fall asleep in Dylan's bed and though D (allegedly) tried to rouse me a couple of times, I didn't stumble out of the kids' room until 11:30 p.m. And then I was wide. Frigging. Awake. Argh.

D tried to coax me to come to bed, but I knew it would be hopeless. I pointedly took a bottle of wine and a pint of blueberries out of the fridge, which is when he gave up and went to bed and fell asleep in thirty seconds flat, like he always does.

I drank a small glass of wine and ate the wine-soaked blueberries at the bottom of the glass. Then I played online scrabble for a while. Then I did what any country woman would do when faced with a long night of wakeful alone-ness: I made pickles.

These pickles are just like the ones my Russian grandma, my Baba, used to make, with cold water and cold vinegar and kosher salt and about a dump truck full of garlic. Instead of boiling them, you just tighten the lids, give them a shake and leave them alone for four or five days to ferment themselves into fizzy, crispy goodness. The cucumbers and garlic and dill are from local Mennonite farmers, which Baba would approve of. She always admired the "Mennoniteskies," as she called them. She probably wouldn't have been horrified to learn that I made them at 1 in the morning either, as we sometimes caught her outside raking her lawn in the middle of the night when she was having one of those sleepless spells that afflicted her occasionally.

I'm so tired today that all I can offer you is a photo essay of my Baba pickles. I hope you like them. I think they're rather beautiful. But maybe that's just the sleep deprivation talking.