Lonely Eggs

There is a certain library book that hardly ever seems to find its way back into the library book bin. Mostly it fills its time by following Rachel around throughout the day. She's been dragging it, and her favorite blankey, onto my lap at every opportunity she spies. I have a hunch she'd take this book to bed with her, if I'd let her.

It's called Whose Chick are You? and she absolutely loves it. We've already read it 4 or 5 times this morning.

She loves the voices that mommy does. And she loves the voices that daddy does. We both do different voices and read it different ways. It doesn't really matter how you read it, as long as it's read.

Rachel loves the pictures. And (Bonnie will like this) she's starting to like ducks! We have a stuffed duck and Rachel went and dug that out of the toy box yesterday and brought it, and the book, and her blankey into the kitchen. She dropped the duck and the blankey, got up on her knees, and started banging my legs with the book. If that's not a hint, I don't know what is.

So I stopped making cookies to cuddle Rachel on my lap, of course reading Whose Chick are You?, while she cuddled her little duckie. When we were finished, we read it again. And then again. She gets really into the story, even getting a little emotional when the little chick doesn't know who he belongs to. She calls out, "Mama, mama!" with me and then will clap her hands when the mommy swan finds her little chick.

After reading it that many times, it was high time to get back to my cookies. I'm in the middle of making another cake like the one I made for Andrew's graduation, so I needed to bake more mountain cookies.

This particular cookie recipe calls for only one egg. I opened the fridge and pulled out the carton. There were four eggs nestled together on one side of the carton, ostracizing a lone egg on the opposite end. I opted to save the lone egg from his woeful state of isolation. I knew full well he wouldn't find his mommy. So I picked him up and banged him on the counter. As usual, I lifted him up over the bowl, stuck my thumbs in the crack, and tried to pull his shell apart.

It wouldn't budge.

I pulled harder while trying to force my thumbs through.

Still no action.

I remembered that Andrew had previously had trouble breaking through the membrane of an egg from this carton. He poked through it with a fork.

I grabbed a knife and poked through what I thought was the membrane. It was hard the whole way through. I had grabbed a hard boiled egg.

"That's why he was all alone in there," explained Andrew.

In my family we write "HB" on the side of the carton that harbors the hard boiled eggs. How was I supposed to know the egg was hardboiled just because it was sitting alone.

I used a different egg, which cracked open just fine, and was able to get two batches of cookies in and out of the oven unburned. Things did not bode well for the last batch of cookies because I was so busy reading and re-reading Whose Egg are You? that I forgot to check on them until I smelled smoke...

Rachel was not pleased when I interrupted her story to save my cookies!