All Roads Lead to Rome

I decided to take a short break from the pre-Pesach madness and wanted just a few hours where no one would mention making Pesach. The easiest way, of course, was to banish all P words temporarily. No Pesach, no polishing, no purchasing. Then someone mentioned shopping. Okay, now the S words had to be banished. No shopping, shlepping or scrubbing allowed. But then someone asked what was for dinner. Well, dinner leads to cooking and cooking leads to planning, and there is that dreaded P word. So I had to banish the D words and the C words as well.

A words? Apple leads to charoses and then back to Pesach, so no more A words. Not even Q words are safe, since they lead to "quick, peel me 6 more potatoes" and potatoes lead to Pesach, and there is that P word coming up again.

I tried, really tried to find some words that would not refer back to Pesach. In the end I had to banish all the letters of the alphabet except for Z. And then I got a phone call. And the caller started off with "zug mir, how much potato starch should I buy?" and even Z was off the allowed list.

Somehow, this time of year all roads lead to Rome, everything refers back to Pesach. I finally solved my problem by banishing talking for an hour. It was blessedly quiet in the house. I sat down with a cup of coffee and looked out the sliding doors at the spring greenery that is starting to unfurl and preparing to blossom. And then a dratted pigeon flew into the yard. And pigeon starts with P and that leads to Pesach and there went the peace and quiet.

It's so not fair when even the language we speak conspires against us.