I am a grown woman with what I consider to be a reasonably mature outlook on life. Nonetheless, I was having a pretty childish fit about dying Easter eggs. Nobody was going to be around, there was no reason to do it, but I still wanted to dye Easter eggs. Just a few, maybe a dozen. I didn’t even have to buy Easter egg dye, because I had found an old box, buried under a pile of old Easter decorations. I blew off all the dust and brought it upstairs.
First, though, I needed eggs. Eventually I decided to boil a dozen and a half..to allow for broken ones, and because I like to dye them. I put the eggs on to boil and went into the living room to watch my favorite show…that’s right, I was watching the Rifleman.
When I heard the first mysterious pop, I thought I missed something on the show and they had shot off a gun before the finale. The second pop made me sure that the cat was on the counters in the kitchen, so without taking my eyes off the television, I yelled, “Cat! Get out of the kitchen.”
The third and fourth pops occurred at about the same time that I registered that the cat was relaxing on the deck outside the front window and it was then that I realized that the end music of the Rifleman was playing and I had put the eggs on to boil during the opening music of the program.
I raced out to the kitchen in time for eggs five, six and seven to explode and through a haze of smoke, I snatched the eggs off the stove and ran the scorched mess full of cold water, causing a further smoke and steam mixture.
Choking, coughing, my eyes streaming, I poured the poor, scorched, cracked up messes in the garbage. You would think that would be the end of it, wouldn’t you? Not me. I got another container of eggs from the store…okay, so I got two full 18-count cartons just to be sure. Coming home, I put 18 eggs on the stove and the rest in the fridge. I turned off the television and turned on the timer.
In the end, I came out with 18-count of eggs perfectly boiled, not a one broken. I put them in their carton and put them in the fridge until it was time to dye them.
At last I was ready to dye the eggs. I took out the color tablets and the wax crayon for writing names and I began. Except I could not remember which carton of eggs were the boiled ones…okay, so I was sure I knew, and without question, I grabbed the right carton and started working on names with the wax crayon. Then, I got out the tablets to drop into the vinegar and water. The tablets were a little old, they were extremely crumbly, but when they went into the mixture, they didn’t dissolve at all well.
I put in the first egg which I had written on and if I hadn’t been struggling to write on the next egg, I might have noticed that it sort of floated weirdly. I was writing on the second egg, though and having trouble making the wax stay. I must have pushed pretty hard, because the egg smashed in my hand and the next thing I knew I was holding a handful of raw egg. Okay, so I had the wrong carton.
So I threw away the raw eggs and began working with the ones in the other carton…which were boiled, but which didn’t take the wax writing any better than the raw one. I dumped them in the dye and because the dye tablets didn’t dissolve well, the eggs came out splotchy and freckly… and the wax names did not show at all.
I didn’t give up. I dyed all those eggs and not one single name showed up. What was I going to do? I had a bunch of eggs with no names on them that looked like they had been attacked with a colorful version of the plague. But they were dyed. And in the end, I discovered that I’ve wasted a lot of years with those wax crayons when a nice black sharpie marker will do the job so much better! I hope everyone had a great Easter and that you didn’t all need three dozen (plus 2) eggs to get a decent batch dyed….and that your dye wasn’t old enough to vote! Have a good week!
dropsinthewell 