today's lesson: "don't put all your eggs in one basket"

Check out my family's super rad Easter eggs! Aren't they pretty? Aren't they beautifully pastel? Maybe pastel-ish? Somewhere out there, on a free-range farm or a bucket of KFC (extra crispy, if you please), is a hen strutting around, all cocky with glee that she could sacrifice her non-fertilized efforts for the benefit of my future egg salad sandwiches and/or protein rich, hard boiled egg breakfast.

Did you catch that last part? It's a key element to my story, so tuck it away and follow along.

I left my Tool Man and our little bolts home alone this afternoon to color eggs (after we'd been to our town Easter egg hunt, which, btw, if your kid is 10 years old, fellow Moms and Dads, you do not need to hustle out there with them to get the goods, alright?! Sheesh. The only exception to this rule is as follows: if - and only if - you see a giant Reece's Peanut Butter Egg on the ground and your 10 year old has dashed by it in hopes of snagging that lame stick of Laffy Taffy. Then, by all means, knock out the kid zeroing in on your chocolate and peanut butter, throw your body over the treat, then remind your kid when he comes back with his bucket of crappy bubblegum and assorted jawbreakers that you talked about the good stuff strategy and you damn well expect better out of him next year).

Anyway, after the world's longest parenthetical remark, my husband volunteered to help the kids color eggs while I hopped like a bunny to Target to pick up some Easter goodies (because hello!? my kid was all, "Pffft. Whatever, giant Reece's Peanut Butter Egg that I know my mom would enjoy."). Normally, we do this holiday tradition as a family unit, but because I was running behind, I thanked him, and told him that he'd see the carton of eggs meant for coloring in the fridge, all hard boiled and ready to dye. Mwa ha ha!

When I returned a bit later, my artists in residence were all gathered around the kitchen table, oohing and awing over the magic that a tablet of food coloring and a couple tablespoons of distilled vinegar creates. I joined in, commending them on their use of purples and oranges and the message they were trying to convey with the random swirls of green, then went on my way to hide the bags of Hershey's chocolate eggs I'd picked up so the Tool Man wouldn't eat them all before Sunday mornings.

About an hour later, we gathered in the kitchen again for lunch. As the boys ate their peanut butter sandwiches (Oh, NOW you like peanut butter, eh 10 year old son?!), and my husband concocted whatever weird sandwich he was making out of salami and pickle slices and mustard (oh my!), I peered into the fridge, where my eyes came to rest on the eggs my boys had colored. The ones my husband had returned to their carton so the Easter bunny would have an easy time of finding them Sunday morning.

"Huh. Wonder what those are doing on the second shelf. In the spot where we keep the eggs. The regular eggs. The ones not typically hard boiled and primed for dying," I wondered, as my eyes traveled around the remaining items in the fridge and landed on the other carton of eggs on the bottom shelf. Where we don't normally store eggs. Where we'd store eggs meant for hard boiling and primed for dying.

Lest you think my husband could be so easily confused by the overabundance of eggs in our fridge that his mind would be momentarily scrambled, leaving him confused as to what to do without me nearby to guide him, trust that I thought I had made this job incredibly easy for him. Want to know how? Let me show you. Take a peek over there to the right. Notice the distinct directives? The "Hard Boiled" and "Use These"? Yeah, those notes were written all over the carton.

All over it.

In black Sharpie.

In a penmanship style I believed my husband would easily be able to read, and not my cursive style of writing, which he claims looks like the rambling manifesto of a whacked out Kool Aid drinker waiting for the spaceship to land.

Or like this blog entry is getting to be, if I were writing it freehand and you were all forced to take it in that way.

The Tool Man's excuse for coloring the wrong eggs? "I didn't see the hard boiled ones." Allow me to direct you again to the photograph just above you and to the right.

These boys of mine colored a dozen raw eggs, all the while filling the kitchen with excited chatter about where the Easter Bunny would hide each one for them to find before we go to church Sunday morning. Instead, the Easter Bunny better make me an omelet, because now my kids - not all that interested in collecting 12 plain old white eggs - really can't put all their eggs in one basket.

Or any basket, for that matter.

Next year, apparently, I need to write directions on every damn egg. Additionally, my kid better hook me up with the giant Reece's Peanut Butter Egg at the town egg hunt. The Easter Bunny doesn't take kindly to "I didn't see it" excuses. Seriously.

Happy Easter, though! May all your eggs be hard!