It is Brown Bag season.
Not lunch brown bags.. I suppose that would start in fall, when school resumes.
But, it is related.
Distantly related.
Yes, you know the seasons : winter, spring , summer and fall.
If you are Jewish, there is also brown bag season.
All I have to do is say it, and the Jew next to me groans.
All I have to do is say it, and the Jew next to me groans.
Purim was last week.
The end of Purim marks the beginning of brown bag season.
From Purim to the start of Passover is four weeks.
Four weeks to frantically prepare for Passover.
Frantically, especially if you waste a couple of those weeks thinking you will “soon” get around to starting your Passover cleaning.
Really frantic if you wait until that last week.
Suicidally frantic if you wait until 3 days before Passover.
I am not organized.
Stop laughing!
Look, I can’t spell, I can’t find my car keys, I can’t remember what day of the week it is.
Sometimes, I lie in bed, and think, “did I take my bedtime arthritis medications, or was that yesterday evening and I am confused ?”
Okay, regardless of the issue of the medication, I am confused. And that is on a good day.
Do you expect some other part of my life is going to look any better?
Do you expect some other part of my life is going to look any better?
So, the start of Brown Bag season always used to mean a season of great dread for me.
Forgotten things that hit me in the face at the last moment- did I put a candy bar in the glove compartment?
Years ago. Less that 15, more than 5 ( please don’t expect me to remember)
I realized that since I have to do the exact same thing, every year, it was a waste of time and fear to have to reinvent the wheel each year.
So I made a list.
What to clean, which week.
Now, I have less fear of forgetting about forgetting to check the glove compartment for forbidden foods- and an organized schedule.
And the first thing on my list is filling the brown bags.
From the pantry.
All the opened boxes of cereal and crackers. All of the boxes of pancake mix and powdered sugar. Things that can’t be sold or donated to Gleaners( the local food bank).
And these things fill brown bags that are set on the floor of the breakfast room.
And then I have to issue the rule.
It is the same rule that parents all throughout the Jewish world are issuing to their families, right now, “Don’t open anything unless the things in these bags are checked, first! And don’t open anything without getting an okay from me , first!”
If you have never lived through brown bag season, you cannot imagine the viciousness with which this rule is pronounced, each year.
And we say this while we are wondering why we have three opened packages of the same crackers. And two opened boxes of Cheerios, or the generic Cheerios.
And our kids and husbands forget, and then we yell at them for opening another box of those same crackers……
So, welcome to Brown Bag season.
2 comments:
since when do you give our stuff to gleaners? and why are you guys starting this so early? what will you eat?
sheesh, u have been goen for 3 years and u forget what life is like at teh Margolis/Greenbaum abode!
We do it teh same way veery year- teher is tongs of food in the fridge ad teh freezer that we are noshing on. HAVE U EVER STARVED in our house? Other than Yom Kippur and Tish B'Av, I mean.
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