Bonus

A few weeks ago, my husband came home from his job site with a bonus gift. Mind you, neither of us work in fields where monetary bonuses come our way. My bonuses often come in the form of chocolate bars and coffee shop gift cards from my students. Much appreciated, indeed! My husband's bonuses tend to come in the form of homeowner surpluses. Jars of fresh honey, bags of sweet corn and loaves of banana bread have been enjoyed by us throughout the years. Our recent gift came in the form of farm fresh eggs, two and a half dozen to be precise. I love eggs but also know that there are only so many egg bakes one can make before interest wanes.

Suddenly, I had a flashback from my youth. We grew up with eggs, lots and lots of them. The upper level of our barn was designated to the laying hens. Woe be it to the child who had to face that bunch of cackling, pecking and irritable chickens for removal of the eggs. Fortunately, I escaped the egg gathering assignment for the most part but rarely missed the chore of casing all the eggs for pick up by the creamery guy. We learned to pick up several eggs at a time and gingerly deposit them in the slots of large cases. Dropping an egg was a disaster, not so much for the loss of monetary value, but the nasty clean up process. Broken eggs are slippery little devils.

In the summer we added another level of egg collection to our duties. The baby chicks were now old enough to be called pullets and the females were laying small eggs all around the farm. My mother paid us for the eggs we brought to her. She rarely paid us for farm duties so it must have been worth it to her to get the eggs cleaned up and removed from the property. We would sneak around looking for egg jackpots. If we found a nest, we went to great lengths to hide the location from our siblings. I am sure we weren't paid more than a dime or two per dozen, but that was big bucks to us.

Needless, to say we had a lot of eggs in the summertime. A favorite way to use the eggs was to make cake. We had a recipe for Butter Sponge Cake that used one dozen egg yolks and a recipe for Angel Food Cake needed one dozen egg whites. And there was no problem getting rid of two cakes in a family of nine.

So, when my husband presented me with the egg surplus, I decided to take a step back in time and make the two cakes of my youth. Fortunately, I had saved both recipes (the cards were in good shape, imagine that). The Butter Sponge Cake turned out just as I remembered and the taste immediately brought me back to the farm. The Angel Food Cake did not rise to all its fluffy glory (in defense of myself, I used a loaf pan rather than a tube pan), but the taste was still there. We are not a family of nine, but somehow we had no problem finishing off the cakes, with a little help from a few friends.

The moral of this post is: If life gives you eggs, make cake.

Monsters

I suspect many of us have monsters under our beds. I am not referring to the ginormous dust bunnies residing under my bed or the stack of unread magazines awaiting a proper burial. The monsters I am referring to take the form of long-held fears, rational or otherwise. Recently, my 21-year-old niece shared her monster story with me. Mind you, she is a courageous young lady who has lived and worked in third world countries so her monster surprised me a bit. She has always been afraid of a bee's sting. She was sure she was going to have an allergic reaction and it would go down badly. A few weeks ago, her monster crawled out from under her bed and she was stung by a bee. To her great relief, she reacted with just the usual swelling and stinging sensation. She has now released the bee monster.

Truth be told, my monsters could probably populate an entire bed and mattress store. I am a bit of a nervous Nelly and struggle with keeping the ogres at bay. One monster reared its ugly head recently when the doctor told me I needed a brain MRI, with and without the dye injection. There are so many levels of anxiety with that simple statement. Small missile-like tube, lying still for an hour, dye injections, loud popping noises, PANIC! Yes, one can choose sedation, but my last round of sedation ended with a great deal of unpleasantness so I decided to face this truck head on, literally.

After a sleepless night, I dutifully crawled onto the missile slab, jammed a couple of earplugs into my ears and watched the technicians lower the football like helmet over my head. Their parting words were "Try to lie still and squeeze the ball if you need help." The smell of metal filled the air as the slab rolled its way into the mole passageway. The pops, bangs, snaps and vibrations began in earnest as I clutched my panic ball and willed myself not to have an anxiety attack. Lying still usually means an itchy nose, a tickle in the throat or a muscle spasm. Fortunately, I was spared any such movement-inducing events. I started singing every Sunday School song in my head that I could remember. A reminder that "Jesus loves the children of the world" and it is not good to "hide your light under a bushel, NO!"

After an eternity, the technician came into the room and started the dye injection. Another monster reminded me that I would surely have a reaction. I did not. But, I was disappointed when I was told that I was only half way through the testing process. One more time in the mole hole and a few more stanzas of "Jesus Loves Me, This I Know" and "He Owns the Cattle on a Thousand Hills." It also helped to remind myself that lying still isn't the worst job in the world. I imagined a nasty cleaning job and felt a new sense of relaxation in my muscles.

Finally, I heard the sweetest words ever. "You're done." Just in a nick of time as I felt my the cramp in my neck scream for relief. I carefully sat up in my fashionable tie-in-the-back gown and white harem pants. I wobbled my way past the next victim in the queue and congratulated myself for facing a couple of really big monsters.

And the really good news is:

1) I have a brain.
2) I do not have a tumor.
3) I have some empty real estate available under my bed.

Cheers to our monsters!