When life gives you lemons

It seems like whenever you least expect it, life decides to hand you a bunch of lemons.

For me, my turn to receive a handful of lemons was on Friday.

The day started out with me waking up with a terrible sinus headache. I just took some Tylenol because I don’t like how regular allergy-sinus medications make me feel.

Despite my smart thinking, I felt as though I had just taken a Benadryl.

I made it to the office and there was a message about the band surprising Green River High School Band Director Jerrid Washburn, who was resigning. I thought that’s a great story and a great thing for them to do, but I had something scheduled for the same time.

I made the choice to cover the band with the hope I could catch the Father’s Day event at the Golden Hour Senior Center later.

I didn’t know much about the band thing. I was just supposed to meet them at Veteran’s Park at 10:50 a.m. When I arrived I Veteran’s Park, I quickly learned I would have to march alongside them to get the photos I needed. I immediately regretted my choice of shoe for the day and was hoping I had left my hiking sandals in the car. No dice.

I powered through like a real trooper. I got all of the photos I needed and I knew I had some very, powerful, heartfelt photos.

After I was done covering the band, I walked as quickly as I could back to the car so I could make it to the next event. It was when I was walking back that I started to realize how bad my feet hurt. I still powered through even though I knew I had the makings of a blister taking place. I was not wrong. I still have a blister on my foot.

Anyway, I made it to the Father’s Day event at the senior center. I conducted my interviews, took photos, had a quick lunch and then left.

When I got back to the office, I pulled my SD card out of the card and carried it along with my notebook and purse back to the office.

Shortly after sitting at my desk, I realized I couldn’t find the SD card. I figured I just left it on top of the car console. I went out and checked. No luck. I went back into the office and started cleaning out my purse. I found a tiny Tic Tac I didn’t know was at the bottom of the purse, and a Box Top I was saving for my sons, but no card.

At this point, I started to panic and talk under my breath. Then, I have a thought. Maybe I dropped it.

I go back outside and slowly retrace the path I think I took to my car carefully looking for the black-and-gray SD card on the asphalt. I was about to give up, when I saw it. The card wasn’t to far away from my car. I picked it up with happiness.

I went back into the office and put the card into the card reader. Nothing happens.

I try again. Still nothing happens. My coworker tries his card reader. Nothing.

I put it back into my camera, but it tells me it is unreadable.

The panic starts to come back. By this time, my coworkers are all aware to the situation and try to help me. We look up websites on how to recover photos from an SD card. We try everything we can think of. We even tried the old Nintendo trick of blowing on the card. Nothing works.

My panic turns to angry and I’m about to cry when I realized all of the photos I took are gone. I try to stay positive, but I can feel the tears ready to pour out. I suck them back in and think about who else was at the band event that took photos. I recall one person and I even have their contact information. I call her and explain to her what had happened. She promises not only to send me the photos she has, but to contact another lady and have her send me some also.

As for the senior center event, no one else was taking photos that I can recall so that was a loss. With all of this on my mind, I decide to leave work early since I was still angry.

After I picked up my kids from daycare, I was driving down the street when I saw a few kids selling lemonade on the corner.

I thought how fitting.

I decide not only to buy my kids lemonade, but take photos and save them on my own SD card. I then interviewed the kids and was glad to have a nice story and photos for a kids page this week. As I drove away from the kids, I felt a since of relief, I was still mad for what I had lost, but I, like these children, made lemonade out of lemons.

On Monday morning, I once again received more lemonade in the form of photos from the two ladies. It just goes to show even when I was about to my breaking point, I still looked for a way to improve the situation.

And that’s how I turned my lemons into lemonade.