When Life Hands You Lemons….well, Make Lemon Drops of course!
“I believe when life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade…and try to find someone whose life has given them vodka, and have a party.” Ron White
As January 2020 rolled around, I was actively packing and making every attempt to sort through 50 years of collecting STUFF! I have to say, I come by my “collecting” or hoarding if you ask my children; honestly. I come from a long line of collectors. My mother collected china and crystal. My father collected metal things….and my grandmother; well, she collected EVERYTHING!!! When all of these collectors in my life passed away, guess who inherited their collections?
So, there I am sorting through a lifetime; actually several lifetimes worth of stuff. I was doing my level best to set all emotion and most sentiment aside while deciding what would make the move with us and what would have to go. This was no small feat as I have always been a very sentimental person.
We had been planning our escape from the hot desert climate of the Inland Empire to the “perfect weather year around” of San Clemente, CA. for almost 10 years. Our children were graduating from High School in May of 2020, and the plan was to move in June. Ambitious, I know, but it seemed like a doable plan at the time. In order to make it doable, I started packing about 18 months before we actually moved.
We were just humming along, getting 4 teenage girls launched, while working full time and packing part time….and then the “Pandemic” hit. Well, you know what they say about the best laid plans….
Determined not to be derailed, by this world wide phenomenon I forged ahead. My natural Pollyanna attitude had me looking at this pandemic as a gift from above. All, I could think about was how much time I was saving for packing, not having to drive to and from work, and how much help my husband could be, having been furloughed. The “Covid” money, I surmised was like getting paid to move…I mean, how much better could things have worked out? Of course I don’t want to diminish the suffering that people experienced as a result of a world wide pandemic and shut down; I know that our story is very different than so many others.
Now there was the matter of downsizing and getting rid of beautiful, perfectly wonderful things like furniture and clothes at a time when people were afraid to touch anything that wasn’t theirs. I knew people who would not take in their Instacart orders until they had sat outside for a while in the sun, so as to disinfect them. Given that rationale imagine trying to off load whole bedroom and living room sets….even Goodwill and Salvation Army were not taking donations. We threw away what we could, we gave away what we could and the rest we brought with us thinking we would deal with it on the other end.
I think my husband would have liked to kill me at least a dozen times over. I am certain he even took it on himself to throw away things I never would have in an effort to make room on the moving trucks. Connie (my neighbor) said she thought we must be crazy when she saw all of our giant moving trucks arrive. How were we going to get all of our stuff in that little house? The simple answer was, we weren’t!
As the house and garage began to fill up and many, many boxes remained, the movers asked me where I would like to place the mountain of stuff that did not fit in the house. It was summer in Southern California; I thought, time, summer and great weather were on my side. We had just left the scorching heat of the Inland Empire where it was over 100 degrees when the movers picked us up. When we arrived in Orange County it was a beautiful 68 degrees, sunny but not hot… so, “just put it in the backyard, was my clearly uniformed response. I will sort through it outside and put it away in a timely and orderly manner, I thought. HA!
I woke up the next morning to the familiar sound of rain dripping from the roof our new home. To my horror it was pouring! Rain, in California THAT NEVER HAPPENS!!! Unless of course half of everything you own is piled up in the driveway.
Technically it wasn’t raining, it was a very heavy, foggy drizzle that is common, as I have come to learn, on the coast in June. I wanted to cry. I won’t bother you with all of the gory details of how we managed to mitigate the damage and save what we could, while protecting it from the continued assault of June gloom. Suffice it to say the whole thing kicked our asses and it was Ray and his famous Lemon Drops that saved the day.
I will forever be grateful for a couple of amazing Lemon Drops! Never underestimate the power of a well crafted cocktail! This coupled with a sunset like no other, and some new friends and neighbors, who, we have come to love and adore; our worries began to slip away as we stepped out, on to the next leg of our journey in our new home.
Rays Famous Lemon Drops:
2 Cups Vodka
2 1/2 Cups of On The House Sweet and Sour
2 Shots of Triple Sec
The juice of one Large Lemon or 2 Small Lemons/ about 1/4 cup
Stir and drink….sip, not gulp!
