Passover et al

Well, once again, I find that so much time has passed without updating this blog. Geez...life just keeps getting in the way. So, here goes.

Mom kept asking when Passover was so I took that as gentle hint (as is her wont) that she was missing Passover so a seder we would make. Now, when I was growing up, Dad always did the seder (meaning he read the Haggadah - the Passover book, to you gentiles in the audience). Dear Joe, well, had his own style which obviously stuck as he was sitting right at that table with us.

Let me set the stage:

Our 'congregation' was Bobbi, John, Gert and me (and 5 dogs and 1 cat).
The Passover plate was filled with 1 egg, horseradish, basil (our 'bitter herb' as I didn't have any parsley), 1 chicken bone (no lamb shank either) and various other substitutions which might be too embarrassing to dwell upon.

So, we sit down to the table and I start in on reading the Haggadah...

I think I might have made it to page 6 and the paragraph that starts in on 'Rabbi Ebenezer' (or whichever that rabbi is), and, honest, I could hear Dad saying...

'And....we'll skip....'

So, off Joe would tool to, oh, maybe page 12 or so but he would never tell anyone where he was so we would all furiously thumb through the book until Steph (the little suckup) would usually whisper 'He's on page 12, 3rd paragraph). We'd all head there, only to find that dear Joe had skipped somewhere else. Ah, the good old days.

So, it wasn't without surprise that the congregation couldn't follow me. We had our own version of 'seder-lite' but a fabulous time was had by all. And, egg soup and Manischewitz wine are fabulous once a year....

The weather lately has been wonderful so I've been able to get Mom out more. We met up with Linda (sis-in-law) and had a great lunch over in Olney last week.I think we all loved the break from normal routine. I took Mom through The Home Place (site of all those wonderful trays we now own - sigh). I should have known better. I spent the whole time prying things out of her arthritic hands (they hang onto stuff pretty good...). Much to her chagrin, there were no more trays, cups, or plates coming home with us this time. We stopped at a nursery also to start working on the garden and nabbed some lettuce which is, sadly, still sitting on my deck out back. The garden is READY to go though so will start planting very soon.

Mom and I headed over to Ron's gang last night for a wonderful dinner for Easter - although we don't celebrate this holiday, we're not about to turn down a free (and good!) meal. So, off we tooled. I had put Mom in the sun yesterday while I did some stuff to the deck and, although I kept an eye on if she was tanning, I wanted her to get a little color. Well, she ended up with some giant raccoon eyes! Note to self: suntan lotion or that huge umbrella would be a good future plan.