When Life Gives You Lemons...

This is my lemon-face!

 Hiya, Friends!  You know that saying about what to do when life gives you lemons?  Well, I guess you're supposed to make lemonade with them, but you know what?  I say, when life gives you lemons, you should give them to me!  I LOVE 'em!

The first time I ever had a lemon, I was at a place in St. Marys called Merlin's.  I was there, meeting a college friend of Mommy's, and it was a hot summer day.  Hot, hot, HOT!  I'd been riding in our red sassy car, and I remember I was just parched, and my water just wasn't doing the trick.

And then I saw it, all yellow and citrusy and inviting, right there in Mommy's iced tea: a wedge of lemon!  Now, I'm a girl who knows what she wants, and has no problem letting anybody know it, so when I saw that lemon, I made sure Mommy knew I wanted it.  I was willing to trade.  If Mommy gave me her lemon wedge, in return, I would let her and Daddy and their friend Ann, and everybody else in Merlin's eat their meals with me in silence.  I call this sort of deal-making "Citrus Diplomacy."  It worked, because I got the lemon wedge, and was so overwhelmed by the flavor, bursting in my mouth, that I couldn't have kicked up a fuss if I'd wanted to!

This water needs some lemon. It's boring right now.

Now, I know that lemons get a bad rap.  I've heard that if you buy a car or something, and it always has something wrong with it, then it's called a lemon.  Lemons are sour and they make you pucker your face up.  If you eat too many lemons, it can ruin the white part of your teeth.


But I want to focus on all the good things lemons can do, to make you understand why I love them so much!  First of all, a lemon can pick up the taste of plain old boring old water.  And besides tasting great, lemons have lots of Vitamin C, to keep you from getting a cold!  And if you DO get a cold, you can put some lemon juice and honey in some hot water, and it'll soothe your throat.  How about that?!  And you can take a peeler, and just peel off the very yellow part of the lemon skin - it's called the zest- and mince it up super-fine, and then put it in spaghetti with some butter, and it makes a nice, snappy pasta dish!  And then of course, there's squeezing a little lemon over fish or seafood to brighten up the taste!

Not everybody likes lemons? I don't believe it!

And then, did you know that you don't even have to EAT lemons in order to get their awesome lemony powers?  It's TRUE!  Most easily, if you just buy a buncha lemons and put 'em on the counter in a bowl, they're like a decorator item!  If you've been eating seafood with your hands, and your fingers smell gross, and they didn't bring you out a wet-wipe, and you don't carry a package of them in your purse like Mommy does, then you can take the lemon and squeeze it on your fingers, and rub it into your hands, and it makes the smell go away!  And you can use salt and lemon juice to clean things!  How about that?  I even read on the World Wide Web that if you have a garbage disposal, and it has bad breath, you can send your lemon peels down the disposal, or if you really want to say good-bye to half a lemon, you can send down half a lemon, right down the disposal, and it's like giving your disposal a lemony breath-mint!  Except it's just lemon, and not mint!  I probably should have used a different analogy, other than the mint.  That might confuse people.

That's not even thinking about the color.  I think lemons have a nice color to them!  On the inside, they're a nice, smiley-face yellow, and the outside is a yellow that just makes you think about summertime, you know!  I think I even have an outfit still, that's the color of lemons!

It's okay to LOVE lemons, Friends!  I sure do!

And of course, you can make all kinds of delicious things out of lemons, if you don't like to just eat them, the way I do.  I mean, Daddy did say it's bad for your teeth if you eat too many lemons.  I guess they have a lot of citric acid in them, and someday I'm going to look up all about citric acid and teeth, but in the meantime, I'll focus on all the ways I can show my appreciation for lemons, without assaulting my teeth with all that acid.  As soon as I'm able to, I'd like to try a bite of lemon meringue pie- I already like coconut creme pie, remember?  And a lemon drop.  I've heard all about lemon drops.  And of course, there's the classic lemonade that you're supposed to make when life gives you lemons.

I don't think lemons deserve the bad rap they get, Friends!  I love lemons!  Come to think of it, I might start a petition to change the name of cars that have something wrong with them all the time from 'lemon' to 'cockroach' or something that nobody likes, for real.  Because I think lemons are pretty fantastic fruits, Big People!  And it's high time we told 'em how much we appreciate them,  don't you agree?  I sure hope so!

All right, Friends!  I'll see ya tomorrow!  Until then, always remember that Zoe loves you!  Muah!