another passover mystery solved

just to keep you all in the loop, my sister-in-law found the missing haggadahs from passover. turns out they were in her house the whole time. so i apologize if any family members think i may have accused them of shamelessly stealing our haggadahs. (but know that i'm watching you! i haven't seen my menorah in a while ....)

proud aunt

here is my beloved niece in the "i want candy" tee shirt i bought her. don't you just love her punk rock snarl? she gets that from me.

passover weekend day 4: the cleansing of the hands and the cleaning of the car

there are certain parts of the seder we skip every year. we like to have a thorough, but compact seder. no need to waste time with an inefficient seder. so one thing we never do is the cleansing of the hands. and since we've never done it i can't even tell you what it's all about. but you're supposed to wash your hands.
the night of my mom's seder i stayed over my brother and sister-in-law's house and my brother informed me that in the morning he would be washing his car. this sounded awesome and i asked if i could wash the fancy mobile. so in the morning i went out to the driveway and i was just blown away by all the fabulous gadgets and accessories that my brother owns for the purposes of washing cars. first he has this high-pressure hose that runs on what appears to be a lawnmower engine. you get to hold this gun type thing, it's almost like an uzi of cleanliness. so i take it, very excited to be using such high tech tools, and he warns me to be careful. man, that thing has some kickback. you really have to hold onto it. so i am power blasting the fancy mobile and i am suddenly realizing that my car is filthy, you have no idea, she's hardly fancy at all. even with the uzi of cleanliness there are still several layers of dirt on that thing. then i vacuumed it using a shop vac (who owns a shop vac? crazy!) and now the fancy mobile is all shiny and sparkly and looks like a new car. it looks nothing like my car at all.
oh yeah and then later i went to another seder, with REAL haggadahs.

passover weekend day 3: the case of the missing haggadahs

the day of my mother's seder i drive over to my brother's house to pick up our seder plate and our set of haggadahs. we have these really nice haggadahs with pretty watercolor illustrations and excerpts from anne frank's diary and blurbs about civil rights and justice and all this other good stuff. i love our haggadahs. so it was very upsetting when i went to my brother's house and he confessed that he had searched far and wide and could not find our haggadahs. then, like a super sleauth, i tried to figure out where the haggadahs might be. were they still at my mom's ex-boyfriend's house, never to be seen again? did we leave them at my mom's cousin's house after last year's seder? at this point i realized i had completely forgotten all the details of last year's passover celebration. so after several phone calls, a few family interrogations, and many vain attempts to retrace my steps, i realized that there was no way we were getting our haggadahs any time soon.

at this time my mother informed me that if i went to king kullen they have these "free" haggadahs from maxwell house. so i went to king kullen and indeed there was a display of haggadahs put out by maxwell house. in reality they were more like pamphlets than haggadahs. and they were not free, you were supposed to buy coffee and then take ONE complimentary haggadah. i bought no coffee, and took 5 haggadahs. here is how i rationalize that one:
stealing = sin
reading from the haggadah = mitzvah

sin + mitzvah = okay

ahhhh, reformed judaism ... how i love your ethical relativism!

so i went back to my mother's house with my stolen maxwell house haggadahs, and finally the seder could begin.

turns out, maxwell house haggadahs suck. none of the stuff we usually talk about was in there. so we were all shouting out stuff that we were supposed to have discussed, asking things like "mom, what about the part with the egg?" or "mom don't we need to bless the wine?"

the whole thing was kind of a mess. but it was kind of funny. and the food was awesome (i made this excellent cauliflower leek casserole). so in the end, i think everything was fine. but damned, we really need our old haggadahs for next year.

5 day passover weekend: day 2

that's right ... i made myself a FIVE day passover weekend! and where am i spending it? tropical lawn guyland. yesterday i spent the day sipping tea in the park with my bff, catching up on the state of the world. then i drove out to long island where i sat in a record breaking THREE HOURS of traffic. yay! but i made it here.

this morning i woke up ridiculously early for no reason whatsoever. i read books about iceland. did you know that they are unable to grow fruits and vegetables in iceland? true story.

every year my mother and i spend hours upon hours in the kitchen getting ready for passover. it is one of my favorite things ever. there is much joking around and many jewish hijinks ensue.

first, we always consult our special passover cookbook. this happens to be the smallest passover cookbook in the world. we bought this cookbook together about 20 years ago when i was "refurbishing" my dollhouse. we found all these little jewish dollhouse accesories: passover cookbook, menorah, etc. but the best part of this cookbook is that there are REAL recipes inside. so every year my mom will turn to me and say, "can you read me the harosset recipe?" and i will dutifully turn to this miniscule book and find the recipe. ahhhhh, passover hijinks.



then i decided it would be best to take some pics of my mom for her match.com profile. we took some pictures of her with a kugel, but they didn't turn out so great. but i like this picture i took of her holding a defective box of matzoh. this box actually came as part of a 6 pack, and although it is completely sealed it is EMPTY! there is NO matzoh in there! wtf?! somewhere i heard that streit's is leaving nyc. well, good riddance! your empty matzoh boxes aren't welcome here!

but anyway, for some reason the pictures of my mom holding a basketball are always the most flattering. i don't know if it's because of her prowess on the basketball court that just puts her at ease or what. but you don't want to play a round of horse with her. she will kick your ass.

Ruthe B. Cowl, 1912 - 2008

most of you probably don't know that i come from a long line of extremely strong and independent women. dare i say that i come from a line of strong bad ass women. and if i had to pick one woman who was the epitome of this it would be my great great aunt Ruthe Cowl, who sadly passed away monday at the age of 96.
my aunt was a truly remarkable woman. she devoted her life to making the world a better place. i don't think you can say that about many people and really mean it. i cannot begin to try to list her accomplishments. i wouldn't do her justice. i think this obituary from the Laredo Morning Times gets the idea across well.
Not only was she the dedicated executive director of laredo's first rehabilitation center (which she founded), but she was also a major benefactor to the national yiddish book center, always striving to preserve jewish culture.
i wish i knew her better. i remember looking forward to her visits when i was a child. sadly i never got to spend much time with her as an adult. but i like to think that we were kindred spirits.
she was completely fabulous, with a bold sense of style (as seen in this picture). she collected art and jewelry and antiques from her travels all over the world. it was not uncommon for her to be written up in the society pages just for having lunch.
i really only knew her through the grand tales my mom would tell me about her. like the time she single-handedly integrated a "white only" country club. or the time when as a young woman she decided she would spend 6 months in guadalajara.
i guess it's hard to eulogize someone you never really knew. but through stories i did know her. and i always looked up to her as the ideal of what a woman could be.