It’s holiday time in Dingleville – a smiling family, perfectly behaved dogs, celebratory cherubs….

We are the equivalent of the Whos in Whoville – after the part where the Grinch’s heart grows a lot, of course.

Side note: If some wacko tried to ruin my Christmas by stealing my tree and ornaments and the last log from my fire, I would not let him into my house, let alone sit him at the head of my table and allow him to carve and distribute my roast beast.  I mean, you do what you want to do should you experience your own little Whoville-style crime spree in your neighborhood.  No judgements here. I’m just saying that I’d be more likely to go Home Alone on his green fuzzy ass (complete with tarantulas and blow torches to the head) than reward him after he stood over my kids and watched them sleep, and then went and stole their candy canes. 

But that’s just me.

So, sure, there are many twinkling lights in the house and I do have iTunes playing Christmas music at me right now, but I don’t want to lead you astray.  Sometimes something happens to take the focus off the fun and frivolity of the season.

Even in Dingleville.

And it happened yesterday, when I opened the Tupperware cabinet in the pantry (located exactly 6 cabinet doors away from where the pancake mix cabinet… where a certain powdery baking ingredient should be located, but sometimes isn’t).

You are probably thinking that I opened the Tupperware cabinet and loads of plastic and glass (because it isn’t just Tupperware in there, but all the Pyrex storage stuff too) tumbled out onto the floor, making a big noise and causing all kinds of calamity such that Marshal Dillon Dingle immediately arrived on the scene to see how he could help. And that did happen, and I did curse gleefully (Dingles curse with glee at Christmas), but that wasn’t the issue.

When I was cramming all the containers and tops back into the cabinet, I made sure I had the bigger containers on the bottom and the smaller ones on the top (which, by the way, is exactly the way I keep telling my nearly perfect husband and cherubs to put the containers into the Tupperware cabinet, but somehow this never seems to happen and the cabinet can only take so much before it vomits its contents all over the pantry floor. But I digress.)

So anyway, there was clearly still a problem because my container and lid pile was listing dangerously. But by all laws of physics, it shouldn’t have been.

And then I saw the culprit. There in the back, on the bottom.

The freakin’ egg thing.

I have purchased multiple refrigerators over the course of my nearly perfect husband’s and my marriage. The first was in 1988, when we moved into our condominium. The second was in 1993, when we moved into our first house. The third and forth (we have a little fridge in the basement) were in 2004 when we moved into The Disposable Shack (our current house), and the fifth and sixth (another spare) were in 2005 and 2007 respectively, as we were finishing up the romantic (not) restoration of the old house in Maine. That’s six refrigerators.

And six freaking egg things.

What the hell do you do with these things?! 

Okay, I’m not stupid. I know you are supposed to put eggs in them.

Plus eggs look so much prettier in them than they do in their cardboard or styrofoam containers.

Which I thought was the point.

So the first time I saw a freakin’ egg thing, I was all excited because it represented the opportunity to be one of those people who is awesomely and anally organized.

And I have always wanted to be one of those people.

So when I opened my first brand new refrigerator and saw my very first freakin’ egg thing I was wicked excited because it represented the promise that my refrigerator would always be neat and organized. It would never, ever contain anything expired or rotting. And it would never carry the stain of holding a cardboard or styrofoam egg container from the supermarket.

So, when I got home with my very first dozen eggs after my new refrigerator was installed, I removed each and every white egg from its hovel of a supermarket container and placed it  carefully into the freakin’ egg thing (I got white eggs because they looked bright and clean and way more organized than their brown brethren.  Plus they matched the freakin’ egg thing.)

And the next day, when I made eggs for me and my nearly perfect husband, I joyfully removed five eggs (he wanted three, I wanted two) from the freakin’ egg thing and made eggs and all was well.

Then I needed an egg or two for a recipe, and shortly after I had four eggs left in the freakin’ egg thing.

So John noticed and the next time he went to the store, he got a dozen eggs.

It was egg-triggered Armageddon.

Now what was I supposed to do?

My refrigerator was perfect.

It was all organized and I had a freakin’ egg thing!

Now I had four eggs in the freakin’ egg thing and a dozen additional eggs to deal with.

Disaster.

So I could indeed transfer eight eggs from the carton to the freakin’ egg thing but that would leave four eggs in the carton.

Well that wasn’t neat and clean and didn’t come close to the anal level of organization I was striving for.

I could put the homeless eggs in a bowl or something pretty, but then why not put them all in the bowl…. but then what would I do with the freakin’ egg thing?

Maybe I needed two freakin’ egg things…

So I got another one.

I actually got another one!

But then there was another problem.

Egg expiration.

So unless everyone in the household who ever puts away an egg, knows that they need to rejig the freakin’ egg thing so that the most recent eggs are only drafted into service after the older eggs…gah!

We might all get Ebola.

So it didn’t matter how many you had, because it was nearly impossible to organize the freakin’ egg thing – or things – at all.

So we always had the cardboard or styrofoam super market egg containers anyway.

Fluck it.

So the freakin’ egg things all went away, but yesterday one resurfaced in the rubble of a tragic toppled Tupperware scene.

So I took it out and wondered, what could I do with the freakin’ egg thing?

I had scones! I could put the scones in the freakin’ egg thing!

Naw.

It would be perfect for weebles! Remember weebles? They wobble but they don’t fall down. Do they even make those anymore? What the hell, I used a weeble stand-in for concept testing purposes.

Nope.

So I took it outside to my newly snowed upon front porch and took a picture of it. Photography practice subject might be a nice job for the freakin’ egg thing…

Wait……

Cue Lion King theme (“NAAAAAAAAAANTS INGONYAMA bagithi Baba…” (oh, ya. I totally looked it up.))

The freakin’ egg thing is now Zombie Pig’s Pride Rock.

A place from which he can survey his entire domain. From the plains of the front yard to where the hyenas – er – coyotes dwell.

After years of viewing the freakin’ egg thing as a symbol of my own organizational failure, there has emerged a grand solution.

Good-bye freakin’ egg thing.

Let us all bow down.

To Zombie Pig.

Thanks for readin’.

* As always, you can come on over to Just Ponderin’s facebook page to comment or just hang out.