a blur of a week

The last few weeks have been sort of a blur, with one family emergency (or tragedy) after another.
 First, a cousin of my mother's who was only 47 died very suddenly, then a half a week later my step grandfather died. So, we've been traveling a lot to go be with family and I haven't had much time to blog...
  I just read that last paragraph and realized that I sounded very much like I was searching for sympathy (which I am most certainly not!), so ignore the sadness and stop feeling bad for me...

[Random but nice photograph]

Anyhow, I still don't really have much time to blog, but I just wanted to quickly put a post up explaining (and apologizing for) my absence, thank you, my wonderful readers, for putting up with me and my blog!



Passover (yikes!)

Note: I am writing this post assuming that you have some knowledge about Passover, if you don't, click on the links that I posted, or look it up, but be careful: I am writing about the Jewish holiday of Passover (not the christian version), so if you find some information about a christian version of Passover, this post may not make much sense!
For the last few weeks I haven't been able to blog much, and it's all Passover's fault! (and no, I'm not just blaming Passover for my inattention to the blog...this is seriously true!) For the past few weeks I have been preparing for passover, not only have i been loading up on the carbs (basically all of which are not okay to eat during passover), but I have also been helping my mom change our kitchen from a bready cooking space to a passover friendly cooking space. This process included vacuuming about 5 times, mopping the floor, washing everything, and exchanging our normal everyday dishes for our special passover ones.
  We also spent two days cooking for our 19 guests who were attending the Seder (which includes a meal, not just Jewish rituals). One major part of prepping for passover (besides koshering the kitchen--getting it fit for passover) is what most people call 'SPRING CLEANING'. As you know, spring cleaning consists of vacuuming every corner of the house (which took over a week to do.) One of the highlights of this custom we call spring cleaning, was when my dad pulled out 100 year old dust from a little nook between the stairs (which evidently hadn't been cleaned since the house was built- I'm talking petrified dust!)
  Anyhow, after all that work, we had a wonderful Seder with some friends and family, we sang songs, the food was delicious, everybody had a good time...then they all went home, and I stayed up till 10:50 washing dishes. Then the next day (yesterday) we went to some other family for the second night's Seder. This family had just flown home from the Midwest...as my aunt put it: 20 minutes after she got home they were cooking for a Seder. All I can say is: impressive!
 Anyhow, I apologize for not blogging and for the somewhat all over the place post (I'm reeeeaaaally tired), but I feel that I have good reason!
[Quick Fact: Some (more traditional) women actually go crazy because of passover preparations...they have to go to the psychiatrist...'nuff said!]