"Sometimes life hands you lemons, but then you can make lemonade. Of course, sometimes life pulls down your pants, runs a power sander across your naked butt and pours lemon juice on your raw, abraded buttocks. In that case, a cool citrus drink woudn't really help but, darn it.. you've got to hang in there anyway!"
This was in card that my Aunt Tricia sent me a few days ago. When I first read it, I was kinda "haha funny" and wrote it off. But the next day was a terrible day, and as I read it again, I started dying laughing. In my life right now, lemon juice on a raw ass is a day in the park. In fact, if you gave me the option to continue living the way I am now, or voluntarily powersand my own butt and then dip in a vat of acidic salty lemon juice, I would ask you where the nearest Home Depot and Farmers Market were... no lie.
Unfortunately- no amount of torturous butt exfoliation is ever going to get me out of the mess I am in right now. You know how you look at other people and their circumstances and you are saying to yourself "I am so glad thats not me?" Well, in a short time, I became that other person. I went from a happy -go -lucky girl with a great marriage, a good family, living in a great town- to a depressed woman with a marriage in shambles, a family comprised of constant crisis, and living in a place that puts a GPS location on depression. Yep- life didn't hand me lemons. It uprooted an entire lemon tree patch and beat me over the head senseless until I had enough lemons in my life to fund a million lemonade stands for eternity.
So now is the part where I talk about how I took those lemons and whipped lovely creations of lemon merengue pie, and scrumptous lemon coolers and even the occasional lemon drop martini right??? Hell no. A lemon is a lemon people. Sure you can make some pretty sweet things from it but you have to add hella sugar and I'm so tired of the sugar coating. Truth is, to get anything good from a lemon, you have to squeeze the crap out of like 100, pick out the seeds, and then MAYBE you will have enough to start some tasty creations. And somewhere in that process of cutting up all those lemons, you probably cut yourself and now you have lemon juice in a fresh wound, and then you accidentally squirt some in your eye...do you see where I am going with this? Lemons suck. Why life couldn't just hand us grapes, I don't know. But I do know this. Over the past year, I began to pick up the lemons in my life, and as I did, I found out that I wasn't the only one contemplating what a bitch the lemon was. It is only just now that I am able to see that as sour as the lemons thrown in my life have been, I have gotten some of the sweetest people who have helped me realize that I am in control of my life...people who have even taken a basket and taken some of the lemons out of my life for me....reminding me that someday, somehow, all these lemons will be made into something worthwhile... And that's what this whole blog is about. It's encouragement for all of those people out there who are trying to figure out what do with all the lemons in their life. Whether it be lemonade or a vodka martini with a sugared lemon rim, take your lemons and squeeze the hell out of them...
Life isn't just about making lemonade out of lemons--it's about squeezing every last drop out of that little yellow bastard and showing yourself and everyone you love that when life gives YOU lemons, you bring out your inner Martha Stewart and make every God given lemon creation from here to the sun.
My journey has just begun----
Jana
