It's a snow day. Well, not officially. But it did snow a bit last night, and everything about this Monday feels like a snow day. The walk remains unshoveled; the sky's white matches the ground. I've been burying my nose in a book, and I caught Himal and Babs the cat gazing out the window together in companionable quiet.
Although it feels like the only thing in season here is the Packers, January is the height of lemon season in CA and AZ. So when winter gives you lemons, make...lemonade? Lemonade hardly sounds appealing at the moment. A cup of tea, a dark beer, a towering mug of hot chocolate, anything but...lemonade. So what to do with lemons when it's not lemonade season?
I'm currently on sabbatical from facebook. I need time to focus on other things, and I need to remember what life was like without it. I have too much that I want to do, and catch up on, and something had to give. I also cut out the volunteer activities I was doing for now. We need to focus inward for a precious bit--it is, after all, what winter is about. It feels good. It feels darn good. Yet there is still so much to catch up on, and being without facebook has caused me to reconsider its usefulness. When I go back to it, I'll have to appoach it in a different way. I'll have to pare down my "friends" list. I'll have to not let it be so much of a substitute for real interaction.
Lemons! What makes me happy? Little things make me happy. I've always been the type of person to savor the small pleasures life has to offer versus the big and gaudy. What makes me happy in winter? Food makes me happy. Drink makes me happy. Books make me happy. I gazed at my new coffee calendar this morning. It is a work of art. It's classy. The book in my hand is a gem that very few readers have discovered. I finally sat down and ordered a boatload of tropical chai and Thai spice from Cathy's Botanicals, the talented tea maker we met in last year in the Naples Farmer's Market. And then there are the lemons that were on sale at the local grocery store in a giant, exuberant citrus display.
My little suns. The lemon is versatile. I can, and will, use them to clean my cutting boards and kitchen sink. I will shave curls off their peels and use them to flavor cups of espresso. I will make lemon-mustard cod on a bed of lemon spinach. I will add them to my tea, and to the new juicer I got for my birthday in the quest for the perfect orange-lemon juice.
Keep the lemonade. When winter hands you lemons, make your sunshine.
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