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Putting up stories

Snow painting

I’ve got it down now. I crack the egg into the small stainless steel frying pan that’s been warming up over low heat. It takes a bit longer to cook this way but it makes for a superior over-easy egg. There’s nobody else here so I have the time.

Funny how after shunning breakfast for nearly my entire adult life, here I am making a sacred ritual out of frying an egg in the morning. It’s also kind of funny to have the house to myself most mornings after seven years of having small children under foot almost all the time. But I do, every morning for about two hours, barring illness which has been nearly constant around here for the past couple of weeks. And then, once my two hours are up, I’m back to juggling emails, lunches, potty training accidents, homework, housework, and assorted other never-ending tasks.

I looked at that egg this morning, egg whites nearly firm, quite ready to flip. I nudged an edge loose with the spatula and watched it slide around effortlessly. It would be the easiest thing to ease it over with the spatula and slide it onto a piece of toast a minute later, the perfect just-barely-oozing egg. Instead, I put down the spatula and picked up the frying pan. One, two, three, I moved the pan in small circles getting the egg to turn so the yolk was closest to me.  Then I jerked it forward, the egg flipping up ever so slightly and landing in a mangled mess in the pan.

“Oh for fuck’s sake.”