Hunger

When I went to do the grocery shopping this morning, I handed a dollar to the man who collects for some homeless shelter.  He's often there and I'm happy that we are blessed with enough that we can share a bit.

This morning he asked me a question that surprised me.  He asked me if I knew anyone who was hungry.  He had a flyer with a map for the park where they are going to be serving meals.  When he asked me, my first thought was, "what kind of person does he think I am, that I would know someone hungry and not feed them," but when I thought about it more, I wondered if I do know someone who isn't getting enough to eat.  I wonder how many people are going without who don't want to admit it.  I hope that I don't know anyone who isn't getting enough to eat.  And if I do come across someone who is hungry, I hope that I can figure it out in a way that they wouldn't lose face.

Heat Wave

Yesterday I went to do some errands.  Everyplace I went at least one person complained about how hot it was outside.  I checked the car thermometer after one of those encounters.  The temperature was 75 degrees Fahrenheit.  You know how people will often say, "Well, I can't complain"?  Obviously we can.

Good luck to you in other parts of the world where there actually is a heat problem.

Cookie of the Day: Coconut Almond Fudge Cups

These coconut almond fudge cups are so delicious that men were asking our guest baker to abandon her husband and stay here and make cookies for us forever.  It helps that our guest baker is a total hotty, even if she is six months pregnant.

Made into little mini cupcakes, these are a perfect two bite dessert, although, so far, everyone who has had one has quickly come back for more.  Even Momo, who usually hates anything with nuts in it, adores these decadent cups.  If you are following along on the cookie quest, I highly recommend that you bake up a batch of these.  Everyone around will be so happy if you do.

Legalize It

When I moved back to California a few years ago, I was regularly taking pain pills (hydrocodone) for my fibromyalgia pain.  Before I left Utah I asked every health care person I could find if it would be better for me physically to be on pain pills or be a pot head.  Without exception, every doctor, pharmacist and nurse that I asked said marijuana would be healthier for me.  Keep in mind that Utah is a pretty conservative state.

So when I got here, I went and got a medical marijuana card.  I didn't want to smoke, so I bought marijuana brownies.  There's a very nice dispensary (Belmont Shore Natural Care) on 2nd Street.  Because it is in a nice shopping district, right by the fire station and public library, I am not made to feel like a criminal when I go to buy, what for me, is medicine.  The people who work there spent a lot of time explaining what would work best for my problems.

In fairness, just moving away from a cold place and to a lower altitude, have made my fibro much more manageable. But, with the help of the marijuana, I was able to get over my dependency the pain pills that were wreaking havoc on my body.  The nice part is that marijuana is not physically addictive.  If I'm not in pain, I have no feeling at all that I need more.  (I say physically addictive because people can become emotionally addicted to anything... chocolate comes to mind.)

As for  marijuana being a "gateway" drug, I can tell  you that I haven't had the slightest inclination to become a heroine addict.

The medical marijuana laws have created a way for recreational stoners to buy bud while pretending to have medical problems.  But as a sometime user, I can now honestly tell you that I would rather have kids have access to ganja than alcohol.  Or to pain pills.  Or tobacco.  Or cough syrup.  You get my point.

It breaks my heart that our prisons are full of young people, who if they hadn't been caught, would be sitting on a couch somewhere staring at their hand.  It also distresses me to no end that kids who can't catch a break from society, are the main group we ship off to the big house.  This doesn't seem to me like a helpful answer to a problem.

What about the crime rate!?  Don't you realize that people are battling a war in Mexico right this minute over the lucrative drug trade!?  Yes, I do realize this.  Legalize marijuana and that takes a big chunk of the incentive to become an outlaw.

Marijuana isn't called "weed" for nothing.  It's pretty easy to grow.  (It's kind of smelly to grow, but if you were free to do it outside, that problem would go away.)

The President of the United States has proven that smoking pot isn't going to ruin your chances in life.  You have to ruin them on your own.

Just legalize it already.

Cookie of the Day: Honey Lemon

We have a guest baker for today's cookie.  Megan has come from Utah for a week to help out with grandpa  and she is totally into the cookie project.

Today's cookie is the Honey Lemon Cookie from the Taste of Home Cookie magazine.  It just occurred to me that they probably have the recipe on line (and they do) so now you can click on the cookie name to see the recipe and what the cookie looks like.

This cookie is spectacular.  Meg used fresh lemon from the tree in our front yard and I can't imagine a better use for lemons.  They melt in your mouth and all of our taste testers raved about them.  The Ninja even invited Megan to live here, but I think that she's rather return to her husband than stay here as the cookie maker for the Lost Boys.

Religion and Global Warming

There seems to be a disagreement between science and G-d in the minds of some people when it comes to global warming.  It appears that some people "dismiss" the idea of global warming on religious grounds and think that it is just a political issue.  I wonder if we could come up with a sentence that could reconcile religion and science (I think science is the part that they feel is over politicized) for these folks.  Here's my attempt:

We were poor stewards over our dominion of the earth and G-d is letting us know this through the observation of scientists, who are also blessed with ideas of how we can begin to repair the damage that we have done.

What do you think?  Think they would buy it?

Getting Organized

I've been slowly but surely getting my life more organized.  It isn't as simple as getting one person's stuff organized, because my mother left me her organizational mess too.  She saved a lot of stuff, not just for her and dad but for each of her six kids.  We were going to organize it together someday, but we had a cup of tea instead.  Actually, I'm happy that we made that choice.  I have to admit that in all of her clutter and all of my clutter, I'm not sure what we were thinking when we decided to save it.

The most interesting thing to me about organizing my life is what mattered before and what matters now.  I have gotten rid of tons of files of failed business ideas.  In their place I have a neat file drawer with a folder for each Torah portion.  Now it is easy for me to pull a dvar (a sermon? an explanation? I don't know what it would be called in English... it's a piece written about a particular section of the Torah) to review when I'm studying the weekly portion.  I'll admit that my business ability never really worked out for me, but the Torah study thing really is my cup of tea.  But you can't eat Torah.  There's a saying: "No bread, no Torah."  Fortunately I'm at a place in my life where I can enjoy studying and wait until late at night to worry about my future.

It's also very interesting that, since we moved back to California because I was very ill, people here don't know me for my ability to cook for 40 people, or organize 20 little kids, or do mountains of laundry, or be on another board.  Those things that defined me in Utah are totally non issues here.  The thing for which I'm most recognized here is being knowledgeable about Torah.  So maybe it's a good thing that I got sick and had a chance to quit doing everything for everybody else.

He's Feeling Better

Yesterday it was all over the news that Hosni Mubarak was "clinically dead".  Not to worry, he's feeling better today.  It seems that the miracle occurred after he was transferred from a prison hospital to a much nicer military hospital.  It seems a bit Monte Python-ish.

It does kind of remind me of what's going on with Papa.  After his hip surgery we were very strongly advised to check him into a full care facility (you know... a nursing home).  He had been in one years ago when he broke his other hip and it was heartbreaking for him and for us.  At the time Hamad and I told him that, if we could help it, he would never have to go into another one.  So we thanked the people at the hospital for their advice and then made arrangements to take care of him here.  He's healing in his own room where he can watch the Dodgers on TV and eat when he's hungry, and not when the food cart is making its rounds.

A physical therapist has come to help him get walking again.  The first time he got dad up and walking he told me that it was nothing short of a miracle.  He said that in 30 years he'd never had an Alzheimers patient take a step.  My friend Cara points out that of course the others didn't walk... they sent them to nursing homes and the patients just gave up.  We are very blessed that we are in a situation where dad can be home and we can take care of him.  I realize that that isn't a reality for many people.  What an agonizing choice that must be.  I'm so glad that we have him home where he belongs.

Color

As soon as little kids start to talk, we start to teach them their colors.  This seems very strange to me because the idea of color is so abstract.  How is it that the color of a lemon and the color of butter can both be yellow?  How is it that navy blue and sky blue are both blue?  What is it that makes up blue-ness in our minds?

And why do most of us have a favorite color?  What constitutes an awful color?  Is it our associations with things that are those colors?

If you go to a doctor of Chinese medicine they might ask you what color your pain is.  Pain has color?

What about auras?  And in all fairness we need to acknowledge that auras are not an invention of new age hippies.  How many religious paintings have images of light (halos) emanating from certain characters?  Is our favorite color the color of our aura?  Is a hideous color the color of our pain? Here's a color wheel showing the supposed meanings of auras:

In English if we are depressed, we are "feeling blue".  Blue also happens to be the favorite color of a majority of Americans.  Russians are very fond of red, but in English we say that a person is "seeing red" when they are really really angry.

We know that all colors of light together are a white light.  Black is the absence of color/light.  When we "black out" does it mean that we are momentarily disconnected from all these forms of light?  People who have had near death experiences talk about going toward a bright white light.

Here's a different color chart.  This one is an image of sefirot used by the Kabbalists (Jewish mystics) to try to help understand the unknowable.  G-d is at the top in the white circle while we are at the bottom in the murky circle.  (That's a huge over simplification, but it takes a long long time to explain it in detail.)

I couldn't find a pain color chart, but you get the idea.  Where we were born and the language that we speak must hugely shape our views on color.  It seems like it might be an infinite field of study.  Anyway, it's something to think about.

Getting Old

When I turned 29, my Aunt Denese sent me a card saying that I should stop there.  She was 29 for most of my life.  When she had grandchildren she moved it up to 39.  A lot of people don't like the idea of getting old.  I can remember, as a kid, seeing my mother and aunties comparing the skin on the backs of their hands in dismay.  Mom even scheduled a face lift once, but when they showed her the video of how they do it, she sneaked out of the office while nobody was looking.

I kind of like the idea of getting old.  I have a few gray hairs and I've decided that they are just fine being gray.  I like the grandma role.  I know that I don't have any grandchildren yet, but my nieces and nephews have obligingly had babies that I can practice on.  I'm perfectly happy to adopt the grandmothering attitude that my mother embodied....  you have two hands?  Then you must need two cookies.

It's unrealistic to think that I will be able to find a life partner.  I am past my prime as far as things like that go.  But I happen to be entering into prime years for spoiling little kids.  I don't a have a need to feel glamorous anymore.  I'm happy giving hugs and wiping tears and lending an understanding ear.   It's like I've come to an understanding of who I am, and I'm okay with it.

Egypt's Revolution

How about that Egyptian revolution?  Okay, it didn't work out exactly like the revolutionaries hoped it would.  They got rid of Mubarak, but now the military has just rearranged itself.  The LA Times this morning says it looks like Egypt will have a "shadow democracy".  It kind of sounds like a reality TV show, the people get to pick the winner, but the military will run business as usual.  Kind of like American Idol.  At least they get to vote on something.  Not that it matters.

Let's look at the long hot summer that follows the Arab Spring.  Things aren't so great in Egypt.  Things aren't so great in Libya.  It looks like things turned out okay for the Tunisians.  Syria is a disaster, but they aren't done yet.  They might never be done for all we know.  The problem is that we don't know.  We don't know what's best for everyone else in the world.  Revolutions are exciting, but they don't always solve the problems that created the need for revolution.

Please think about what comes next before you revolt, or before you support a revolution.  I'm not saying that things didn't need to change in the countries mentioned above, I'm just saying that people should plan ahead a little better before they start killing each other.

Prayer and Dreaming

I took Rabbi Moskowitz's class about things that Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel had written on prayer.  One of the things that really touched me is in the following paragraph from Heschel's book Man's Quest for G-d:

"At the beginning of all action is an inner vision in which things to be are experienced as real.  Prayer, too, is frequently an inner vision, an intense dreaming for G-d -- the reflection of the Divine intentions in the soul of humankind.  We dream of a time 'when the world will be perfected under the Sovereignty of G-d, and all the children of flesh will call upon Your name, when You will turn unto Yourself all the wicked of the earth.'  We anticipate the fulfillment of the hope shared by both G-d and humankind.  To pray is to dream in league with G-d, to envision G-d's holy visions."

I really like the last sentence.  I also like to think of it as flipped and saying that to dream in league with G-d is a form of prayer.  What are the things that we dream of?  Are our waking dreams something that G-d would want a part of?  Do we listen to the dreams of our sleep to see what clues could put us on the right path?

Another thing to think about is from what part of us do our dreams come?  Do we say we dream of world peace because that is the noble thing, when, in reality, we are itching for a zombie apocalypse?  [Wow, I just used zombies and Rabbi Heschel in the same piece.]  I think that maybe it's okay to be honest about our dreams.    Fooling ourselves about our desires doesn't translate into fooling G-d.  If we aren't busy keeping up our politically correct facade,  if we let ourselves be open about what we want, I think there is a much better chance that we can evolve into the person we would truly like to be.

Why Do We Have Schools?

In the LA Times this morning there was an article about the LA School District going to an even shorter school year next year.  They are cutting five more academic days per year.  The year gets progressively shorter and, surprise, the children suffer.

I'm beginning to wonder if one of the main proponents of public education is to make children suffer more anyway.  With the pace that our society is evolving, and the types of jobs that are being created, maybe we need to take a look at the system as a whole and request a do over.

What do people need to know in order to be a viable part of a democracy?  They need to know how to read.  There is no way that it takes a normal human being 12 years to learn to read.  (Also they are cutting adult education, a place where no one thinks it takes 12 years to teach reading.)  They need to know how to do basic math.  (We do live in a society where calculators are ubiquitous, so that doesn't seem like it needs to be dragged out forever either.)  And they need an understanding of our political system so that they can be informed voters.  I admit that that does take forever, but that most of it doesn't happen in school anyway.

In the America of the future we need innovators.  We like to think that we're smart enough to somehow stay near the top of the food chain.  Yet we are dumb enough to cut art, music and recess out of our basic educational system.  Locking kids up for 12 years and making them memorize stuff so they can pass reading and math tests sucks the innovation right out of them.

Maybe we should think of school in an entirely different light.  Yeah, teach them the alphabet and their numbers but then let them major in building forts, or planting gardens, or cooking (which is where I came to understand fractions), or painting, putting on shows.  Make sure the libraries are open and stocked with whatever the current version of Harry Potter is.  If kids are reading for fun, you can bet that it won't take them 12 years to catch on.  Teach them to learn from everything instead of boxing them into a system.

This will probably be one of my least popular posts, so I hope that it doesn't take my three loyal readers too long to get over it.  I'd defend myself further, but I need to go outside to play.

Sleep and the ER

A couple of days ago Papa quit sleeping.  For the last couple of years Pops has kind of been the champion of sleep.  He sleeps at night and then takes a morning nap and an afternoon nap.  We all get in on the afternoon nap.  Even guys who just drop by the house at nap time will flop down on the couch and obediently go to sleep.  It kind of makes me wonder why we are not a napping society as a whole.  Other than six year-olds, everyone seems to think it's a good idea.

But, back to our problem.  This was getting to be a huge problem for us.  He'd been awake so long that he was starting to hallucinate.  He's been awake for two and a half days.  So I called the Kaiser home health line for advice.  Their advice?  Take him to the emergency room.  Really?  The emergency room?  I thought that maybe they didn't understand the problem, because as anyone who has been to an emergency room knows, it isn't a place that's conducive to sleep.  But no, that was the only advice they would give.

I couldn't bring myself to take this advice.  It sounded way too counter intuitive.  When he was in ER a week ago, they kept him awake all night and then put him in the hospital where they continued to wake him up every little while during the day.  It seems like the last place on earth that you'd want to take someone who needs to sleep.

We ended up talking to a pharmacist who told us to try Benedryl.  That worked and he went to sleep.  He's still sleeping now and it's almost noon.  It's too bad that there isn't a mom line to call, she would have known better than to hand out crappy advice like "take him to the ER".

The One Dollar What If Game

My mother and I played the Lottery together for  years.  For one dollar you can get a ticket to play the what if game.  A lot of people like to wait until the prize is up to a half a billion, but mom and I could see the possibilities for a measly 12 million.  I still like to play, and in a way it's still a game between me and mom.

So far if you take all of our winnings and average them out they equal about..... nothing.  We never win.  We always liked to say that we weren't worried because we were saving up our luck.  Mostly what we liked was planning how to spend these imaginary winnings.

Nobody was surprised when I came in and announced that I'd found the home that I want to buy if I win the lottery.  When I told them that it was a block from where we live now, the Ninja just shook his head.  He explained that I'm supposed to buy a house in Palos Verdes, overlooking the ocean.  But I like our neighborhood and I pointed out that we'd be closer to the synagogue.  At that point he gave up on my lack of imagination.  I guess he thinks that since we already only live two blocks away from the shul now, that I'm a hopeless case if I think that's a selling point.

When I Was a Kid

Summertime when I was a child was glorious.  No soccer practice, no day camps, and almost no supervision.  You could just get up in the morning, pull on some shorts and a t shirt and leave.  There were rules, like, "Don't slam the door on your way out," and "Be home in time for dinner."  Other than that, we were mostly on our own.  I guess we could've stayed home to watch TV, but there really wasn't anything on during the day.  You just found out what the neighborhood gang of children was up to for the day, and then decided if you were in or if you and your friends would think of something different to do.  Our parents didn't think they were being neglectful, it was the same way they were raised.  The beauty of summer was the lack of structure, or rather the ability to form your own structure.

Wall Scrawlers

Katie left a comment on the Imagination is Funny piece.  She said, "Everything everyone is thinking is streaming real-time on Facebook. There's nothing left to jot in notebooks at diners."   Yes, I suppose that's true.  Let's pick this modern reality apart a little.  


My first problem with this is that everything that everyone is thinking is not that interesting.  The idea behind the phrase, "a penny for your thoughts," is that we aren't actually being subjected to all of your thoughts.  There's still a bit of mystery about you.  If you want to publish every detail of your life, go ahead.  It may be very therapeutic.  But it will probably also be monstrously boring.  Even your closest friends will be skimming it, hoping beyond hope, to come to a punch line.  

The advantages of being a wall scrawler are that you must look at the space of your canvas and plan accordingly.  You have to know what you want to say going in, as it is mostly illegal to write on walls, and therefore you have to act before you have time to get caught.  

When I see something written on a wall I pay attention.  You know, the whole, "the writing was on the wall," thing.  Someone, whom I most likely don't know, was standing right here and felt inclined to leave a message to whoever else might pass this way.  It's kind of a time traveling thingee.  Put an idea out that is static in space and then see what happens.  Except, of course, that you don't see what happens because you have already moved on in time and you don't know what impact you idea will have on others.  Exciting, isn't it?  

Physically writing something on something gives you an entirely different kind of readership.  Let's say that I write something on a wall in the bathroom at the pier (I didn't do this, so don't send the graffiti police after me... at least not just yet) about organization of revolutions.  Now people who don't even have computers can think about what I said.  Homeless people can think about it.  Unemployed people who decided to spend the day fishing can see it.  People who are crazily addicted to Facebook, but not on my friends list (mostly because I don't Facebook), can see it.  The people who are actually in some kind of proximity to me, but do not know me or my ideas, can be impacted by my ideas.  

When I see something written in a public space (like a notebook in a cafe) I am touched by ideas that come from people with whom I share some physical proximity, and who have ideas that I didn't know to seek out.  In a very real way the Sharpie is mightier than the Tweet.

Old People and Drugs

I am often vastly amused by the things that come out of the mouths of our elders.  Yesterday, for example, my father told his nurse that he needed more heroin.  When that didn't work, he asked for marijuana.  He's never had either, but apparently he's heard good things.  They gave him morphine instead.

My all time favorite was when I went with my mother and aunt to see their Aunt Esther.  Aunt Esther was so glad to see us.  She explained that she had had eye surgery and her kids were too damn cheap to hire a real doctor, so the quack had just scotch taped her eyes back in.  Denese reached over and adjusted Esther's bifocals so she could see out of the top half.  Luckily my Aunt Denese was good at figuring out miracle cures.

Papa's coming home today and a hoist was delivered to our house last night.  We are just renting it, but the boys have already decided that every house should have one.  We took turns hoisting each other and going on Mr. Toad rides around the house.  All the cool equipment is wasted on the old who don't even like Mr. Toad rides.

Speaking in Tongues

Last night I was sitting in the waiting room at Kaiser waiting for dad to come out of surgery.  There was a large group of family and friends sitting and visiting with each other as they waited for news of their loved one who was in surgery.  They were chatting and laughing and just being there for each other.

By that time, I was bone tired.  I had been up with dad in the emergency room for most of the previous night and I had been at the hospital about 12 hours already that day.  (Later when the surgeon came out to tell me the results of the surgery, he sent me home to sleep.)  I was reading a book, so I didn't notice at first that this group had formed a large circle.  It wasn't until they got pretty loud that I looked up to see what was going on.  It seems like they were all praying out loud as fast as they could.  Some people were just repeating a single phrase (like, "Thank you Jesus") over and over.  Others were obviously working on something more complicated.  In the midst of all this human sound and emotion, I could hear that one of the ladies had started "speaking in tongues".

This is something that, it seems to me, has fallen out of style.  Maybe this is because I no longer live in the Deep South.  Some Christian sects believe that it is a sign of piety, or the spirit being with a person that they start saying words that aren't from any discernible language.  Sometimes when they are speaking in tongues their voices change and they sound like someone else.  As a child I had seen this a couple of times and was singularly unimpressed.  It seemed to me like the person doing it was putting on a show to make people think that they were somehow more blessed than anyone else there.

But last night it was different.  (Maybe I was too tired to be unimpressed.)  In the midst of all this chanting of thanksgiving there was one voice that seemed so open to what was going on, that the person felt free enough to just let the sound out of her, however it was going to come out.  It sounded like release.  I don't know that it sounded like someone talking through her, as much as something coming from inside her that she didn't have the words for.

New Parts

As of last night, Papa has a new and improved hip.  Everything went okay, but we are both really tired at this point.  I observed some interesting things in hospital waiting rooms and will write about them when I'm not sleep deprived.

Cookie of the Day: Chocolate Raspberry

Sigh.  The name of this cookie is so full of promise.  While I was baking I was excited about my prospects of cookie perfection.  It's basically the Toll House recipe that's been tweaked to incorporate melted semi-sweet chocolate and fresh raspberry puree.  Unfortunately, the elegance of these ingredients did not shine in the final product.  Neither flavor really sings hidden in the plain cookie-ness of this cookie.  Sure, the cookie is tasty and they go great with a glass of cold milk.

The average score of this cookie was a seven out of ten.  Good, but not good enough to be anybody's favorite.    It's unlikely that anyone will ask me to bake them again.

Tips: 1/2 cup of pureed raspberries is equal to one of those six ounce containers of berries that you get at the grocery store.  If you have raspberries in your yard, just use a scant cup.

I think that this recipe may be improved if you add in another cup of semi-sweet chips when you add in the white chocolate.  Your tongue will be looking for more chocolate if you don't.

The Great Cookie Caper

While I was in line at the grocery store the other day, this magazine caught my eye...

Ahhh... cookies.  So I bought the magazine and brought it home.  Last night as Zach was flipping through it, I mentioned that I was thinking about working my way through the magazine.  Needless to say, this idea was met with enthusiasm by the boys.  Ninja said, "Did I ever mention that I really like being a part of this family?"  Isn't that sweet?

In addition to my regular blog entries on the miscellany of life, I will now also endeavor to update you with the cookie of the day (if I actually make cookies that day) and how it was rated by my live in panel of cookie experts.   

Food for the Dead

As I was walking down the street yesterday, I passed a salon that had a little ancestor alter set up in a corner by the front window.  It had a very nice food spread... a pretty bunch of bananas and some small dishes.  It reminded me of something my mother said in one of my dreams once.

My mother and I were very close all of my life.  We shared many a great adventure and she was my closest confidant.  Since she died, I often see her in my dreams (if not every night, close to it).  Even for people without a mystical bone in their body, this shouldn't sound too strange.  Of course she continues to exist in my psyche.  It isn't unusual for me, because there's a tradition in my family of the women dreaming of the dead.  It can be of great interest to other members of the family.  Mom and I knew it would happen because I occasionally had visited with her sister Denese and my brother-in-law 'Ali.  Before she died, I did ask her to limit it to non-spooky things like dreams because that other stuff freaks me out.

For a while after she died we would meet in tea houses or restaurants, which was something we enjoyed while she was alive.  After a bit I noticed that we never got around to ordering any food... we were just sitting around talking.  So one night I asked her why she didn't ever eat.  She laughed and said, "You do remember that I'm dead, right?  I don't actually eat anymore."  Oh yeah.  No point in my setting out bananas then.

Sometimes when I go to bed at night, I think about what I'm going to write in the morning.  So last night I was thinking about the "you do remember I'm dead" story when I went to sleep.  Mom showed up in my dreams three times last night, which is always an important number for me for dreams.  Three is kind of like the asterisks that tells me to pay attention.  So here is a brief peek into the weird mind of your Auntie Helsie:

1) Mom and I talked about this month's American Express bill.  (Don't be disappointed.  Many of the dreams I have about mom are purely practical.  All of the dreams I have about Aunt Denese are practical.)

2) We were riding in the car and talking to each other and there were two people in the back seat.  I turned to ask Hamad a question about the conversation mom and I were having and he just looked at me like I was crazy.  Mom very sadly reminded me that they couldn't see or hear her.  "Remember, I'm dead," she said.  It was so sad.  Even Hamad? Her partner in crime?

3) This was the saddest dream of all.  I was at a party.  The party was going on for a long time so I finally slipped out and started walking home.  I heard mom calling me and I turned around to find her in tears.  She had been looking for me for a long time but I hadn't heard her call because I was in the noisy party. When I looked into her eyes, I saw that they were veiled and that she couldn't see.  She was exhausted because she had been wandering blindly, looking for me for so long.  I took her home and put her to bed.

Don't feel bad.  She's usually perfectly happy.  Usually we are just hanging out and messing around like we always did.  For the non-mystical of you, just think of it as my mental defense so I don't have to miss my mother so much.  Whatever the reason is that I see her in my dreams, it is a great comfort to me.