When Life Gives you a Lemon Tree and a Carbonator…

…make carbonated, fresh-squeezed lemonade.

We have a lemon tree. It’s right outside our bedroom window, and it’s really a charming, sturdy feature of the backyard. I’ve watched our meyer lemons come back after a freeze in 2011 when we thought they were gone forever. But here they are, slowing growing ripe and orange (which is weird).

Lemons are not like grapefruit, you can’t just eat them as your daily snack. And there are only so many recipes that call for more than one lemon. I gave some away, yes, but we still had quite an abundance.

So…I made lemonade. It was a full scale operation, involving the KitchenAid, with juicer attachment, my first ever attempt at simple syrup (which, it turns out, lives up to it’s name. Thank goodness), and the carbonator that Lewis got for Christmas from my parents.

This is not a recipe blog, so I’m not going to go step by step through how we did it. That’s what the rest of the internet is for. And really…if you need too much instruction on how to make lemonade…there’s a sweet little girl down the street that can probably help you out.

So the other obvious way to blog about turning lemons into lemonade is to talk about trying times and how I made the most of it.

But I don’t want to do that either. You know what I did when life handed me lemons last time? I drank tequila and watched Mad Men. That’s not making lemonade. That’s making your husband worry.

But that got me thinking about some other life axioms that I have altered to fit my life. Which is how I will blog about lemons and lemonade.

It’s no use crying over spilled milk. Unless it is spilled all over your computer or phone. In which case, you should cry, because the next few days are going to be dominated by trips to the Apple Store in an endless state of Genius Bar purgatory.

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Especially if the gift horse is free furniture. Which means, don’t ask: “Will it fit in that room?” “What’s that stain?” or “Do you think white linen is the best choice for a house with two giant black dogs?”

Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched. Also, don’t assume that they will be killer, monster, rabid chickens until you’ve met them and given them a chance.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Which means that sometimes you’re at the mercy of a bunch of pimply, short, 7th grade boys and brace-faced girls who think that Doc Martens are the height of cool. And you will wear them with EVERYTHING even though your mother tells you that you look like a club footed lesbian.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Which essentially means: its worth cleaning up your own mess in the living room if it keeps your husband from wondering what other messy drawers/cabinets/closets might be in need of attention.