Life has been handing me lemons...

My car went into the shop for the 5th time this year. I hope it enjoyed its stay, because I'm trading it in after this.

My cat has been into the vet once this week already, and has a follow-up on Saturday. He is currently sleeping under the bed, which worries me.

Faced with all this, and the laundry list of things that need to get done before year #4 of teaching starts, I left the apartment around 3 today. Objective: leave the house. Out of habit, I turned down Vermont, feeling the strong California sun as I went. The hum of the city usually cheers me up, and this time was no exception.

I stopped in to Cherry Pick vintage clothing off Franklin and Vermont, and was way disappointed. Almost no selection, and overpriced in my opinion. A very tattered yellow belt would have set me back $25. Nope.

Out into the sunshine again, and once there I decided it was too hot to just amble through the sunlight and traffic with no plan. I stopped at 7-11 for an iced tea, and ambled through the shade instead. Much better.

After a bit of meandering, I decided to make my way home, and turned up Dracena. On the other side of the street was a sight I couldn't resist: a child and her father armed with a table, a sign, lemons and a blender. Now really, who can resist that? I walked a bit up the street, tucked my newly purchased iced tea into my purse, and crossed back over.





While my lovely lemon drink was being prepared, I found out the reason for the lemonade stand: raising money to go see the grandparents in Scotland. With an 11 hour flight to look forward to, they had picked the lemons off their backyard tree and decided to try the concept. It reminded me of the time my brother's friends and I had tried a lemonade stand; we had a folding table set up at the end of a cul-de-sac, and so only had about 6 customers in 3 days. We had big plans to sell lemonade, pop, and various homemade desserts. Since the average age of the group was 9, the idea was abandoned after a few days and a few botched recipes. We spent more time hurriedly cleaning up the kitchen before mom got home than actually vending our creations, which I'm pretty sure no one would have actually eaten.

The girl standing in front of me now had much more mastery over the stand than we did. She squeezed lemons, poured juice, ran the blender, and even gave me my choice of staw color (I decided on purple). It was the perfect way to punctuate my bad day.





If you are in the area, I think you should head over to Dracena and see what I mean.