Fun With Play-Dough

My husband, on average, drinks two beers a week. Our recycle people don’t pick up glass (don’t ask…) so we save it; twice a year he drives to the collection site and drops off the empty beer bottles, wine bottles, pickle jars, and light bulbs.  Saving your glass that long means that right now, I feel like a lush; even at the pathetic rate at which we drink, the evidence grows to mythological proportions.

However, I can’t have empty beer bottles during Passover, so this morning I collected four large bags and two boxes worth of glass, which my husband is now driving to the recycle place. I also (yes, yes) sorted through all my children’s toys, and I am happy to say that so far all I found was a handful of stale popcorn that my son was apparently saving for later.

While we save bottles, he saves Chametz: unless you see him eating it, you can never be sure whether the cookie you gave him ended up in his stomach, or is hiding somewhere in a drawer. I guess he wants to make sure I really pay attention while I clean.

Before I start cleaning the fridge, I’ll have to check my list. Every year, there are things I need to be reminded of; usually, when I’m in doubt, the answer is no. Every once in a while, I’m pleasantly surprised. I get to keep my mustard in the fridge, because it’s Kitnyot: you can’t eat it during Passover, because it looks too much like Chametz, so you could get confused; however, you can still have it in your possession. That’s good, because the cabinets where I’m locking things up are getting too full. All the Chametz that’s left needs to be eaten or given away. Luckily, there’s not much.

I leave the dining room for last, so the kids have at least one spot in the house where they can eat without me watching them like I’m the Passover police.

That, of course, is the big danger during these last hectic days, and I have to ask myself: am I making this punitive by whining so much about all the cleaning? Am I making too many jokes about wanting to get out of Egypt? What message am I sending my children; that Passover is a pain in the neck and we are crazy for following all these rules? How can I make this more rewarding for myself, and more fun for my children?  Maybe my lesson this year is that I need to watch my tongue, because my kids are young enough that every word out of my mouth has an impact. So, before they get home from school today, I’m going to pump myself up and pretend that I’m having the time of my life getting this house into shape. Yay.

Even though I don’t think I’ll really feel the joy of Passover until, Saturday night, I’ll be reclining at the Seder, safe in the knowledge everything is done. Still, my children don’t need to know everything.

There are three days left ‘til Passover, and I haven’t accomplished anything today. For weeks, I have been anxiously watching the calendar, making lists in my head of what I need to do.  Now it is almost here, and I haven’t made much progress. I have to be honest; I’m not fond of all this preparation. Cleaning my house from top to bottom, getting every single breadcrumb out of every corner? Cleaning behind the couch? I feel like playing dark, Gothic music in the background. I despise cleaning!

Still, what has to be done, has to be done.

I take a deep breath and make up the balance. So far, I have located and set aside all the Chametz in my kitchen. With the crackers, pasta, granola bars and the like sitting on my kitchen counter, I have a visual reminder of what I want to get rid off. My kids don’t complain even though they’ve eaten macaroni and cheese three nights out of the past five. They know what’s coming; my six-year-old can identify every item in our house that contains Chametz. She even includes the chocolate syrup in her list. Good girl.

I have located the tape with which I will close the cabinets that we shouldn’t have access to, and reminded my husband he needs to finish eating his tortilla wraps.  The form to sell the remaining Chametz, as well as my dishes has been filled out and turned in, and I’ve meticulously scrubbed my Kitchenaid stand mixer before putting it away.

Tomorrow, I plan to tackle the fridge. I will take everything out, scrub until my hands are red, and cover the shelves with aluminum foil.

I don’t really mind cleaning out my kitchen; it means I can temporarily stop thinking about the fact that I still have to do my living room. For some really strange reason, I allow my children to eat dinner in there. In addition, my son eats his breakfast cereal in front of Sesame Street every morning. This means that, in spite of much vacuuming, there are crumbs everywhere; I’ll have to sort through all the toys, and move all the furniture.  Sorting through the toys is my Achilles heel. Toy boxes are strange things. Over the years they get filled with what I have come to think of as “plastic trash”. Little pieces of toys that have broken, Barbie limbs, little balls from who-knows-where, broken crayons, stuff that is unidentifiable, yet will nonetheless be missed by my children if I throw it away. It is simpler to just dump it back into the box, until you really have to clean it out. That moment, I’m sad to say, is now.

Tomorrow morning, my son and daughter are both in school, and thus it’s the perfect time to tackle this particular task.

But I don’t want to.

Which is probably why I’m planning to clean out my fridge. 

Say the word Chametz out loud and you’ll see me roll my eyes. Oh, no; is it that time again? Although I absolutely love Passover, I dread the weeks beforehand the way a dope dealer fears the cops. How much stuff is there in my kitchen that I need to get rid off? And why do I always seem to buy extra cookies and macaroni and cheesy puffs during the weeks before it’s time to clean up? I’m a chicken brain, that’s why, and I don’t keep track of the calendar the way I should.

I can’t count on any help from my kids, except for the fact that they will gladly gorge themselves on cookies and crackers; I guess that, in a way, is helping out, although it also reminds me that they’ll be fussing over not having cookies during Pesach. I won’t buy the ‘kosher for Passover’ kind; they’re expensive and I’m cheap.

The easiest part is the shopping beforehand, but alas, my kids don’t feel like it. I have to bribe them by promising chocolate Matzos, which I subsequently ‘forget’ to purchase. Oops. I do buy chocolate paste, which will convince kids as well as adults that you can still enjoy a Matzo on day 8.  I suffer my second panic attack of the day as I look at all the prices for Passover food, but luckily, the gefillte fish is on sale. “Look, honey,” I say to my daughter, “gefillte fish!” She looks at me as if I have eight legs and just came crawling out from under a rock.  “I still don’t like that,” she says (we try to force feed it to her practically every Saturday) and I shrug. Fine. More for me.

I have to admit, Kosher for Passover at our house is a work in progress. Back in the day, when we were first married, Passover meant no beer, bagels, or Subway; that was about it. We’d go to a makeshift Seder at the University and drink too much wine. Thanks to the wonderful people at Chabad, we’ve come a long way since then. Also, we have kids; this makes matters more urgent because we want to set a good example. Now, we have separate dishes. I am not entirely sure where the silverware is, but that’s okay: I have another week and a half to find it. I’m tempted to just use plastic, but then I’d be adding to the landfill, and that seems like bad luck during a holiday when we should be celebrating the opposite.

This year, we’ll be taping up the kitchen cabinets; the little form I’m supposed to fill out and give to the Rabbi is already waiting for our signatures. I feel like we almost have something that resembles a clue.

Then, we hit a snag: we have two cats. Cats eat Chametz. One of them has a tender stomach (don’t ask) so feeding them tuna fish or meat for eight days seems like a very bad idea. Plus, we’re vegetarians; I’m not feeding the cats something that I won’t buy for myself, and those cans of cat food stink up to high heaven. Now what?

Boarding them is not in the budget; lending them to friends isn’t an option; finally, we decide to not freak out about this exactly now. We’ll come up with a solution later. Maybe we’ll feed them tuna the first day and see what happens. Worst-case scenario; we’ll only be sort of Kosher for Passover. Which is not exactly great, but it’s a heck of a step up from where we were ten years ago. And, it will serve as a reminder that no matter how hard we try, we always have room for improvement, which is a great thing to tell one’s self. It’ll be like the one imperfection that makes everything else seem more fabulous.

Happy Passover, everybody.