Give me your hand�erm�not literally!

According to my daughter, who for some reason has started keeping track of these things, tomorrow is a fast day marking the mourning of Jews for their imminent fate at the hand of Haman prior to the holiday of Purim, a Jewish secular holiday that I don�t really pay any attention to because, well, I just don�t. However, Little Princess got all excited and asked me to help her in the making of hamantashen, the traditional three-cornered pastries that represent Haman�s pockets, or his ears (oznai haman in Hebrew) or his hat. We�re not quite sure, and in every language they seem to have a different name. They are basically a sweet dough rolled and cut out into circles filled with some kind of filling (I made a date paste) and folded in with three pinched corners, then baked. Traditional fillings are poppy seed, prune and cream cheese. I�m not a traditionalist.

Hubby and I watched The C0rpse Bride on pay-per-view last night. Neither of us had seen it before. I thought it was very endearing, but it did spawn a very strange dream afterwards. Actually, there were two dreams, but this one first. I kept developing a deeper and deeper conviction that I had been involved in some kind of horrible crime involving death and dismemberment and that there were human body parts buried in the backyard. What was especially disconcerting was that little by little my dream self remembered that it was true, piecing memories together until I was actually afraid of being caught by the police for crimes commissioned. I woke up with my heart racing and couldn�t get back to sleep properly, just dozing and hearing the clock every hour until I finally got up.

The second dream was a pleasant one, but still disconcerting. After the movie, I was chatting in the DiaryIand chatroom with a friend, someone I have never met and likely never will even though I keep asking him when he�s going to take a train out here and come visit me, but whom I like a great deal because he is a good person. In my dream, he and I were lying on a bed together, fully clothed, and we had been talking, not engaging in any kind of erotic activity. I asked him, now that he had met me in person, if he liked me, and he answered by giving me one of those long, lingering kisses that just takes your breath away. I was so aroused by the kiss that I woke up, immediately feeling guilty as though I had been cheating on my husband, lying asleep beside me.

Speaking of dreams, Hubby told me this morning that he had dreamt of monsters last night. It must have been the Tim Burt0n film that did it. At 4:25 a.m. the doorbell woke me from the body-parts dream. Little Princess had gone to see the play last night and then went to a party and had forgotten her key. I was not amused. The lack of amusement probably contributed to my not being able to sleep properly after that also.

This evening is my annoying student�s clarinet recital. I am rooting for her.

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