πάσχειν γάρ τι τὸ μανθάνειν ἀτεχνῶς ἐστι

Middle Stepchild has proclaimed himself the prophet for birds, something I had jokingly suggested after he kept telling me about all these dreams he had where he spoke with our birds. Now he's running with the idea and can even communicate with birds in his dreams, he says.

His current interests include blind people, dogs for blind people, and sticks for blind people.

I dreamed that I was in yeshiva listening to one of my teachers give a lecture on killing witches. In the dream I recognised the techniques as having been pioneered in the small town in Northern Ireland where I was born. I was very excited to have my hometown mentioned by this teacher. "You have to throw the stone right at the heart of the witch," he was saying.

However, as I was listening, I felt my tefillin shel rosh loosen. The longer the lesson went on, the looser it got, until I had to hold it in place with my hand and there was an entire tefach of loose strap (the measurement in my dream was very precise). I took it off and tried to ease the knot to see if I could adjust it, but the knot fell apart right away, and I couldn't remember how to put it back together again.

I pulled out my phone and started looking up how to tie the knot, but the teacher shouted "What are you doing with your phone in class?"

When I explained to him, his demeanor changed right away, and he came over and took me into another room to show me how to tie the knot. He tied it exactly the right tightness, then sat me down and gave me a big hug. I was very small in size, like a child, and it felt like I was being completely forgiven for having done something wrong.

It's been a very long time since we've been able to see the kids.

Last night I dreamed that they were living with us in a huge, three-story old house (unheard of in Israel). In the attic, we had a little kitchen, and I was making food. The kids were downstairs watching a movie. Suddenly the oldest came up and asked "Is that really what a naked man looks like?" Just then we realised that they had been watching an R-rated movie, starring Jamie Foxx.

I went to the second floor and prepared each of them a bubble bath in a separate marble and gold tub.

Then I went down to the first floor, which was a huge library at midnight. I got a call from my mom. "What's the matter with your bank account?" she demanded.

"Nothing," I said.

"Check on the internet," she advised.

When I did so at a dark library computer terminal, I found out that, inexplicably, I was heavily in debt. This freaked me out - why did the bank let me keep withdrawing money I didn't have? After a lot of crying, my mom gave me just enough money to bring the balance up to zero.

I picked up my tefillin, walked out of the library, and got on a rattly Jerusalem bus, where two chareidi frat boys called me a fat whore.

OK, so I went home, and asked to borrow some black pants and a black hat. The black pants turned out to be magic in some undisclosed way. I put them on, and a tallit katan with Rambam-style techeilet*, and a white shirt, and went out looking exactly like a young chareidi man. I wanted to see how it would feel.

It felt awesome.



*This is what I always use but for some reason in the dream it seemed to be significant.