Twisting ourselves into a pretzel

According to the highly-recommended Our Shiputzim General Theory of Pesach Cleaning, this week calls for:

“Talking and blogging about cleaning in lieu of doing anything constructive.”

And thus, here are a few items of interest or note:

1) Wondering why your darling offspring’s vacation starts this coming Wednesday already? Well, you have the Education Ministry and its Ponzi scheme - aka “robbing Peter to pay Paul” – to thank for that…

2) If you’ve ever had the privilege of seeing the office nook that YZG and I share, this JPost piece will definitely ring a bell…

3) The latest Kosher Cooking Carnival is available here. Special thanks to Batya for including my lemon-glazed apple cake.

4) Rafi G. shares his beautiful insight into the Korban Chatat (the sin-offering in the Beit HaMikdash).

And finally:

5) It seems that every year without fail, we’re always left with too much of one particular chametz product before Pesach.

For instance, there was the year that we were awash in pasta. (As far as I can recall, pasta was on sale right after Chanukah that year, and apparently, we went a bit overboard…)

And then there was the memorable Year of the Shkedei Marak (i.e. the ubiquitous soup nuts seen on Israeli Shabbat tables everywhere), when the younger Shiputzim kids spent the week before Pesach in the playground, generously doling out the little yellow squares to all their friends and acquaintances.

Which brings us to this year, when an initial survey of our pantry revealed that we have an inordinate amount of… drum roll, please… pretzels.

Why pretzels, you ask?

The answer is: I have no idea.

I mean, it’s not like pretzels feature prominently in the Shiputzim family’s regular diet or anything, and I can’t imagine what prompted us to buy so many bags of the salty snack in the first place.

But buy pretzels we obviously did, and therefore, pretzels are certain to play a major role in our menus over the coming week.

So if you’re in the mood for some, um, pretzel chicken, pretzel pizza, pretzel salad, or just plain pretzels, feel free to drop by TRLEOOB*…

What strange assortment of chametz items do YOU still have left?

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*TRLEOOB=the real life equivalent of our blog

Sunday on Tuesday

Shavua tov, Our Shiputzim fans!

In the comment section to the previous post, Jameel provided yet another excellent reason for making aliyah: vacation on Election Day.

Yes, that’s right. Here in Israel, Election Day is a national holiday.

And – most significantly - unlike every other Israeli national holiday, Election Day has no specific religious component.(Other than perhaps praying that one’s party of choice does well, of course…)

Thus, like most Western olim, we here in TRLEOOB (that’s The Real Life Equivalent Of Our Blog, for the newcomers amongst you) like to refer to Election Day as “a Sunday”. In other words, a day where one has absolutely no obligations*.

As some of you may recall, the previous elections (or was it two times ago?) came out a few weeks before Pesach, and Election Day that year was popularly known as “National Pesach Cleaning Day”.

But this coming Tuesday הבעל”ט, we don’t even have to worry about Pesach cleaning. (I do realize that if you’re like certain long-time Our Shiputzim readers who started their Pesach cleaning on Chanukah, YMMV…)

And so, after we stroll over to our local polling station and perform our civic duty, we’ll IY”H have the rest of the day to do whatever we want.

Including doing absolutely nothing…

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* Admittedly, this doesn’t really apply to freelancers like myself, but at least, we don’t have to worry about getting the kids out in the morning, etc.

Stehmp on it

My favorite part about being a freelancer (that is, besides the whole working at home thing… and the whole no commuting thing… and the whole no daycare worries thing… and the whole pick my own hours thing… and… well, you get the idea) is that I have my very own personal stehmp.

What's a stehmp?

Funny you should ask.

Back in the Old Country, we used to refer to such an item as a rubber stamp – i.e. חותמת גומי (literally, rubber stamp) for the Hebraically oriented among you.

But this term doesn’t have the exact same connotation as “stehmp”.

Because stehmp, you see, is what the pakid (clerk) does -with great relish and extreme gusto - to all of your documents in every Israeli governmental office, in general, and to your passport at Ben Gurion Airport, in particular.

Actually, to be perfectly correct, what the pakid does is more like, “stehmp, stehmp.” Apparently – and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong about this! - stehmpim generally come in pairs.

So, imagine how excited I was to learn that I would be getting a real, live, honest-to-goodness stehmp!

And even today – several years and many, many, many stehmpim later – the exhilaration continues. Every time I need to issue an invoice, I’m thrilled that I have yet another opportunity to take out my precious stehmp and get to work. (Unfortunately, I’m only required to stehmp rather than the more authentic stehmp, stehmp, but one takes what one can get.)

In conclusion, a suggestion for our younger readers - are you paying attention, YAT?! – who are still considering their future careers: The first and most important question you need to ask about your chosen profession is, “Do I get to use a stehmp?”