When Life Sends You a Fruit Basket

We all know what to do with lemons, right?  When life hands us lemons, we make lemonade and add our libation of choice. Common sense, that. When we have only one choice, we make the best of it.
But what to do when life hands you a basket filled with mangoes, kiwi, and all manner of luscious fruits? I’m ridiculously blessed, and perhaps, sometimes, have too many choices. If I fill up on figs and strawberries, I won’t have room for a peach, right? And I love peaches…

Saying yes to one thing always means saying no to something else. Saying no is hard for me. I spent years of my life so over-extended by commitments–okay, yes, I’m no longer talking fruit here, we’re on time management, please stay with the group–that I was in need of an intervention and regular doses of that spiked lemonade.

But the need to make hard choices, embrace them, and not look back applies to so many things. (Leaving time management, on to life choices…it’s all about the fruit…)

A few weeks ago, when I was explaining how Sugar and I are not cut out for subdivision living, I mentioned that we were working on a plot with our old neighbors–the ones we lived next door to for years in the house we loved, before I filled up on pears (decided we should live downtown, within walking distance to restaurants, etc)–to convince the interlopers who bought Barbie’s Dream House that it was in fact haunted, and they must move to satisfy the spirits and whatnot.

Well, I guess it worked. I got a phone call a few days ago from said dear friends next door, who we’ll call Wilson and Sandra, because those are their names. It seems the folks we sold our house to are interested in selling. Now, I have no evidence that Sandra or Wilson either one hid a tape player with a timer in the neighbors’ attic that played “GET OOUUTTT” at 3:15 a.m. every morning, so we’ll say no more about it.

Sugar and I have an appointment to see our old home and discuss details on Saturday morning. Right now, I so long to drive into OUR driveway when we get home from Indiana and be home again. Of course, there’s the detail of selling the subdivision house…

But saying yes to Barbie’s Dream House will mean saying no to some other things we really want to do. It will need new windows soon (two vacations we won’t be able to take). And Sugar wants to replace the paneling in the den with sheet-rock. The master bath needs updating… Already we have a list of projects we’re excitedly considering. The budget for all those projects would eat up a lot of travel.

And the time spent on all these projects could be spent enjoying family, volunteering, or taking up crop circle interpretation.

That house is special to us. We have so many wonderful memories there. It’s home. But saying yes to it will mean making choices. It will mean fewer date nights out, fewer vacations, and less time and money for a long list of things we enjoy.

But I suspect if we can come to an agreement with the very nice folks who bought it, we will buy our home back. We’ll eat the peaches with the juice dripping on our hands, having learned that pears are nice, but you simply can’t eat all the fruit in the basket. You must choose.

And there’s no place like home. (Clicking my heels together…)

Peace, out…

Susan