Passover Is Killing Me

I’m starting to think that Passover has it in for me. Not religiously, of course. And not because it forces me to cook from scratch three meals per day to please the picky eaters in my family while still following the laws of the holiday, although I have to admit to really disliking that part.

No, the reason I think Passover has it in for me is because major breakdowns occur around it on a regular enough basis that I’m going to have to start to prepare for them.

One year, my oven broke the night before the seder. The seder that was being held at my house. The seder for which I needed. The seder for which I needed my oven. I was lucky that year. The appliance repair person I called heard the desperation in my voice, sent someone over immediately, and fixed the oven for me so I could use it.

The utility people were not as helpful. Another year the power went out at 4:45 the evening of the second night of Passover, an hour before people were arriving at my house. I called the power company and because it was before most people in my neighborhood had arrived home from work, they didn’t have enough power outages reported for them to consider it an emergency or to send out a truck to fix it. My mother suggested flashlights. Those would have been fine to read the Haggadot, but not since using my friend’s Easy Bake Oven have I tried cooking anything by light bulb and I’m pretty sure nowhere in the seder does it talk about Moses and the Israelites getting salmonella. Luckily, my friends agreed to host and I packed up everything, including the tray of raw chicken and brought it over to their house. Have seder will travel.

This year, we did not host any seders. We were away on spring break right before the holiday and my family and friends were kind enough to play host. So one would think we’d be safe.

One would be wrong.

Our water heater broke. I found out because when I went into the basement to get a few bottles of wine to bring for the first seder, I found liquid on the floor. For a moment, I thought the wine had leaked, but we don’t own that much wine. I quickly realized it was the water heater and the plumbing company instructed me how to turn it off while waiting for them to arrive today, three days after I found the leak.

Cold water, lots of cooking and constantly cleaning up matzah crumbs. Either Passover has it in for me or we really have gone back to Pioneer days.