My Mother. The new white witch of the East has accosted me on a daily basis to try to "heal" me with herbs from her collection. She keeps making things up that might be wrong with me so that she can busily concoct an herbal solution. I'm trying to ward her off with my mental powers but thus far she seems impervious.

She got started one day when we went to a booksale. My mother and I being bibliophiles - we love book sales. This particular one was an entire warehouse and you could fill a box for a set price. *Weeeeeee*. She stumbled across some herbal remedy book that caught her eye - and thus began her journey into whitewitchdom.

Our entire greenhouse is filled with various drying plants gathered from hither and yon. She has only nearly poisoned herself once (that she admitted, but only because she wanted me to quickly draft a will...) and she seems to actually benefit from the various teas and such that she self-administers daily. Who'd have thunk it.

Now that she and my father are talking about buying a boat and sailing away - I can only imagine what she will pack for her journey (=one bathing suit and an entire suitcase full of ziplock bags containing dried plants that will likely get her arrested several times before they figure out that they aren't trafficking drugs). Then of course, she will go in search of rare herbs that only grow in one cave somewhere south of the equator - poisonous spiders be darned since she likely has a cure for that too.

Whatever will I do without this woman to entertain me?!