Passover

We held the first night of Pesach last night, using a new Haggadah, a slightly xenophobic one (if anyone knows a really good Haggadah, could you let me know? We've been looking for years: one year we wrote our own, but that feels like cheating) that went into detail about how cool it was that God slaughtered all those Egyptian babies for us.

But otherwise a good seder -- I mean, as good as seders can be. It's all about affliction and remembering we were slaves in Egypt, after all, as I kept reminding the kid when she had to eat the bitter herbs and the matzoh and the parsley dipped in salt water (to remind you of the tears you shed, I tell her, when you were a slave in Egypt). We invited our liberal friends, as we always do, even if they weren't slaves in Egypt, including the kid's intended, Miles, who by the time we were a quarter of a way into the seder was insisting he had been a slave in Egypt too.

The kid and I had dipped matzoh in melted chocolate for dessert. It didn't help much. They were still matzoh. The bread of affliction.

They also were not kosher for passover matzoh. Can't get those in Fort Smith. If we had planned ahead and ordered them on line...but we were bad Jews. We did have three bottles of kosher for passover wine, one of blackberry wine, one of cherry wine, and one of grape, fetched down from Fayetteville by one of our liberal friends. Mmmm.

The wine of affliction.

So today I have a thumping headache.

Oh, well. Better than being a slave in Egypt.