Purim Madness

Despite my unwellness, Purim follows immediately on the heels of the fast. Normally I wouldn't have eaten until the services were over that night, meaning in effect the fast continues into Purim, but as we have seen that didn't work out this year.

Off to services to hear the Megillat Esther (what you all know as the Book of Esther.) It's incumbent on every adult Jew to hear the entire Megillah every year on Purim, once at night and once in the morning. Since the kids usually can't sit still for the 35-40 minutes it takes, we usually leave them with Mrs. and I go, then she goes to the late reading. This year oldest begged to go, so I agreed to take her if she promised to really sit nicely & not bother me during the reading. You're obliged to hear each & every word, so a whiny, noisy child defeats the purpose.

She agreed, and she was pretty good on the whole. Noodging her friend sitting next to her, and asking to go out & play in the hall with other friends for part of the time, but she mostly behaved. Home, oldest to sleep, Mrs. went to the 9PM reading.

The next day I got up for the 5:30 AM service, on the theory that Mrs. could then get to one of the later services that wasn't terribly full of other people's noisy children. All would have been fine, since I was asleep by 9:15, except I woke up at 1AM and couldn't get back to sleep. Despite that I went to the 5:30, which was pretty crowded, then home. Mrs. went off to the 8AM, which turned out a bit noisier than she wanted, but OK. A friend dropped his kids off so he could go to services undisturbed, since his wife was out of town on business.

I'm not sure I could handle four kids all the time.

He picks his kids up, promises to come back later & help me get the sink fixed (more on that later). I took youngest to a late reading at her request, but she seemed overwhelmed and we left after twenty minutes. We completed our assembly on the Mishloach Manot we plan to give out. These are food packages that can go from the polite, to the fancy, to the outstanding, to the way overboard. One's reguirement is met by delivering two food items to one person. Somehow this has exploded into giving every human on the planet 40 pounds of assorted baked goods and processed sugar crap.

It also often involves themes, sometimes mighty clever ones. We had a great idea, but Mrs. illness last week killed our momentum. We'll save it for next year. My brother's are beyond insane. They're hugely complicated, always very funny, and often make you wonder how he has time for all this silliness. This year his theme was St. Patrick's day, complete with small plastic leprechaun and homemade CD containing a mixture of Irish & Jewish music. And my mom said he made 48 of them. And to think I have too much free time.

For our part, I made gingersnaps and choclate chip cookies, we added a piece of fruit, some hershey's miniatures, mini twix bars, and a sprinkling of candy corn. We made twelve, and people just kept showing up all day. We recycled a lot of the bags we got, subsituting our food in other people's bags to make up the shortfall. All this despite participating in two separate synagogue group baskets.

We closed out the day at a potluck festive meal, which was a blast. Now our house is filled to the brim with all the junkfood we could ever want, and more besides. I think I'll bring the leftovers to work.

After I pick out the good stuff, naturally.