My husband has been trying to poison us.
Okay. That isn't true. He hasn't been trying. On Purpose.
But he has been feeding us a steady died of dissolved toxins or whatever it is that is in black plastic.
On Shabbat and Yom Tov ( Sabbaths and holidays) we have a hot water tank- a coffee urn in which we have a lot of hot water to use for making cups of coffee, or tea, or instant oatmeal.
During the summer months, it is not such a big deal, but Indiana has cold, wet winters, when the sun isn't around and that cup of coffee starts becoming a bit of necessity.
So, every week, on Friday, or every day before the start of a holiday, my husband drags the hot water urn out of the closet under the stairs and fills it up and sets it out. And after the Sabbath or holiday is over, he empties what is left in it, and puts it away for another week.
Week after week, holiday after holiday.
I clean the bathrooms, and I bake the challahs ( bread) and I do a lot of the other things, but this is his job.
This is his job because the coffee urn holds 42 cups of hot water, and that makes it heavy to lift and move, and I happen to have arthritis in my hands.
So, week after week he does this. And then two weeks ago, for some reason, I was standing there when he emptied it, and I realized that the top of the hot water tank, which is plastic, is not "intact".
By this I mean that whole sections of plastic are missing- and what is there flakes off , if you touch it. And, apparently, it has been in this condition for a while,for months or maybe even a few years; and so, every Shabbat and holiday, while we are drinking our coffee and our tea we also happen to be drinking the plastic from the lid.
Forget about all of those BPA thingies that might be dissolving, unseen by you, from your water bottle, or your soup can and poisoning our family- this is a rather larger bit of plastic that we have been steadily imbibing for....
"Why in the fuck didn't' you tell me!" I said as I grabbed the now empty ( and therefore light in weight) urn from his hands and carried it to the back door, to be tossed.
Okay, he didn't notice.
Maybe.
And I spent much of the week, two weeks ago checking ads and reviews for hot water tanks.
And, last Friday, he set the damn thing up again.
"What are you doing?"
Well, he just couldn't' make it through Shabbat without that plastic poison-laced coffee....and I thought I was addicted to the stuff.
After Shabbat, I again took it and stuck it by the back door.
And I located a coffee urn that was a less than a 100 cup size and that did not have a plastic lid... but it was out of stock in all 4 of the stores that I called.
So, I kept looking.
On Thursday, I went to a store that had them in stock... but , not by the time I got into the store....... So, last week, come Shabbat,my husband filed up the canister of poison and...oh, no, he actually did listen to me, and left it by the back door, and had cold coffee on Saturday morning.
Meanwhile, my hunt for a stainless steel poison-less urn continued, until, at last, I realized that Sam's Club had them. In town, local.
Only , there was one problem, we don't belong to Sam's club.
But we have friends that do!
I sent an email to one, and she offered to have her husband pick it up for me, since he is the frequent Sam's Club shopper in their family.
And, today, at 3:20 PM, he dropped off a magnificent, new-in-the-box coffee urn that does not had a carcinogenic top, I mean a plastic top.
But it was, in another way, dangerous.
You see, he had gone to Sam's Club on 86th street to shop, and he had walked down the aisle where the coffee urns are. All the way down the aisle.
And there on the aisle was one last coffee urn in its nice new box.
He took the box and put it into his shopping cart and started to take to the check out.
Only, before he even got halfway down the aisle, he was accosted by an enraged shopper who must still be on her Black Friday high ,or maybe low, since, apparently, she had not yet had an opportunity to use her pepper spray .
"What are you doing taking my coffee urn?"
Just because you got to it before I did does not mean it was yours!"
Luckily, he was bigger and stronger than she was, although not heavier, and he won the tussle.
Well, actually, the tussle was only verbal and it was one sided, as in she was the one tussling.
As I explained to his daughter, "Her daughter must have forgotten to sprinkle the woman's prozac on her breakfast cereal , this morning!"
And, this coming Shabbat, I can be grateful that we will be drinking coffee that was made with hot water and not plastic and is therefore not shortening our lifespans.
And I will also be grateful that the lady left both her pepper spray and her handgun at home and didn't' shoot my friend.
Ah, so many things to be grateful for!
My friend added that, at least," I wasn't worried about her having a gun because, thank God, I had mine. "
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