A Pesach Acrostic

P is for privation that our children feel before, when there's naught to eat but apples and crumbs found on the floor.

E is exclamations; while cleaning we declare "Just how long has this string cheese been stuck under the chair???!!!"

S is for the sitting that we do not dare attempt, for when we need to rise again it'll make us all fahklempt.

A is for the apples, of which I needed MORE, necessitating yet another trip into the store.

C's for creativity, in our recipes; matzah meal, friedboiledbaked, how would you like it, please?

H is for hametz, Happy Pesach! and haggadah. May you have a peaceful chag and lots of matzah topped with buttah.

There's Always Room for Ramblings

Margarine
Yes, I know it's Bad For You. And in general, I agree that we should not consume things that are bad for us. For example, I almost never make Garlic-Asbestos Chicken anymore. And thanks to my crunchy friends, I now have many margarine-free cookie recipes. But still. When you're baking pareve and you want a cookie with just the right amount of crisp, you really need some artery-clogging, lifespan-shortening margarine. Sigh.

Minister of Fun
"Superland!" "Playdates!" "Ice cream" "Ice cream and pizza!" "Cutie [this gymboree-type place in the mall.]" "A fabulous park!" "All of the above!" This is what's running through Yaakov's mind when he asks me, when I pick him up after gan, what we are doing today. 

"Go home." "Play with our toys." "Eat dinner." "Take a bath [if it's bath night]." "Go to sleep," are, unfortunately for Yaakov, usually the answers. And he is crushed. Every time. Why? Did he mistake me for a fun mother? And how many times do I have to disappoint him before he just gives up, resents me and swears to do things differently for his kids?

Also, clearly I have failed in my mission as a parent. Who are these children, who want to "do" things and "go" places? Haven't I instilled in them, by my own shining example, the value of getting into pjs as soon as possible and hanging out on the couch?

Pesach
I am going to invent a new Facebook app. Every time someone posts a status about their Pesach menu, or how much they've bought, cleaned, or cooked, a tiny little fist will pop out of their "Enter" button and bop them in the nose. In fact, you will only be allowed to post about Pesach if your post also contains the words, "haven't done anything for."

A Failure, Municipally Speaking

Actual things people said to me today:

[With my little petek at the post office. Petek in mailbox means you have a package waiting for you. Or so I thought.]

Post office lady: It isn't here yet. See the date? (March 19, yesterday). You need to come two days after the date on the petek.
Me: So the petek, which clearly states my package has arrived and is waiting for me, is lying? There is no package?
Post office lady: [points again to the date, in case I am calendarically challenged.] Two days later.

Then, I go back to the old apartment to check our old mailbox. See, for some crazy reason, we don't trust the post office to do the whole mail-forwarding thing. We figured we'd just call the companies directly to change our address, and in the meantime, stop at the old place every so often.

Today I received an arnona bill. Arnona = property tax. The arnona bill was for our new place, but sent to our old place. Now, clearly they have our new address. They're taxing us for our new address! So why are they sending it to our old address?

I called the iriyah. I explained my situation and that I had changed my address on my teudat zehut already. They transferred me.

Me: My arnona bill for my new apartment is still coming to my old apartment.
Iriyah lady: You have to go to the arnona office in the mall.
Me: I did that. When I got the first arnona bill for our new place, I went and set up the account and paid. So why is the second bill coming to my old address?
Iriyah lady: AHA! But did you go to the other arnona office and change your address?
Me: Um, no. But it's changed on my teudat zehut already!
Iriyah lady: That doesn't mean anything! You have to go separately to the Arnona Address Change Window and change your address! B'emet!
Me: And what about the other iriyah mail that comes to my old address - absorption department notices, school notices, etc.?
Iriyah lady: You have to call each department separately and change your address, what do you think?

Silly me! Such forehead slapping that ensued! I am still enjoying some hearty chuckles over my backwards thinking.

So I called the arnona office:

Recording: We are busy with other customers. Your call is important. Your place in line is .... 6.
Recording: We are busy with other customers. Your call is important. Your place in line is .... 6.
Recording: We are busy with other customers. Your call is important. Your place in line is .... 6.

Finally, I got tired of being 6. And I was skeptical that my call was actually important to them.

It turns out that the easiest solution might be to show up at the iryah at 8:00 on Thursday and go from window to window, changing my address.

By the time I'm finished with that, my package at the post office should be released from its holding cell. Wish me luck.

Perspectives

• Always wants to be with you
• Sad when you're apart
• Loves to accompany you everywhere
• Has eyes only for you

Wonderful traits in a boyfriend/husband.

In an almost-two-year-old...not so much.

Fun with Hebrew

[In Aroma]

Yaakov: Did they call your name?
Me: Yes
Yaakov: What did they say?
Me: Gila
Yaakov: So they spoke in English?
Me [pausing to digest that]: Well, my name is the same in English and Hebrew.
Yaakov: So is mine. [Pause] Well, in English it's "Yah-kove" and in Hebrew it's "Ya-ah-kohv."

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The Heblish phrase of the moment that's getting my goat (לוקח את הגדי שלי?) is:

"That kid is the lowest kid in my class."

No, they do not mean that this kid cheats on tests, steals other kids' chummus sandwiches or rips up their Supergoal cards (although I would not be surprised if ripping up Supergoal cards was part of the game, since my children hit, blow and spit at them. Oh dear, did all the cards get lost in the move? Shame, that.)

They mean he is short, נמוך. But it sounds so wrong.

Also, has anyone ever noticed problems with Angli-vrit? Not once have my kids said, "הילד הזה קצר מאוד"

Ramb- (because it's too short to qualify as Ramblings)

Gosh. Every time I think I'm going to get back to my Regular Blogging Schedule, something else gets in the way. See-phones (and here is a shout-out to DADZ, for I neglected to mention that he accompanied me on that fateful faucet-finding foray), the 7-day holiday of Purim, making dinner, more see-phones, sniffing hot glue while they install stuff in your apartment...

So I will get away with a Cheater's Post and upload some pictures from Purim.

Yaakov = Yaakov Avinu (hence the green plastic bowl of red lentils)

Ariella = Rivka Imenu (because we have a lot of stuffed camels, on which the costume was based, so naturally on Costume Day at school she forgot the camels at home, necessitating a frantic phone call to Mommy, who had to run back to the apartment, collect the camels and deliver them safely to school)

Nadav = Peter Pan (for about five minutes, until the velcro on the shirt got too itchy, at which point I changed him into a blue polo shirt, so he became Peter Pan Goes to Shul.)

Is "Oy" a word? Discuss.

Nadav, as we may have mentioned before, is verbally limited. Not that he's limited in letting us know what he wants, just that he prefers not to use a commonly recognized language to do so. As Uncle Jonathan and I discussed over Shabbat, perhaps this is because he heard English, he heard Hebrew, he thought about it, and decided "Eh, let's just keep on grunting."

He has a handful of words:

"Addy" = Daddy
"Ode" (not as in a Grecian Urn, but as in "more") = always said in multiples "odeodeodoeodeodeode"
"Die" (not as in Another Day, but as in "enough!")
"Mmmm" (not "Mommy this meal is so tasty," but as the first syllable in "mayim," not Bialik, but water.) Donny thinks he's just turning the "w" from "water" upside down.
"Allah" (not as in God, but as in Ariella and/or Yaakov)
"NNNNN" = everything else

And after he carefully holds his plate, considers it for a moment, then chucks it to the floor, he is absolutely flabbergasted, shocked and distressed that his plate is now on the floor. So he responds to this catastrophic set of circumstances using the words that generations of our people have used to express vexation:

"Oyoyoyoyoyoyoyoy."

So I ask, Does this count as a word?