Lemons or lemonade?

I began to post this last Friday afternoon and, lo and behold, I saw Dotti's post that was scheduled to post  the day before mine and which was titled "Raindrops - Falling on My Head."  Hmmm, I thought, I'm writing about rain too.  I wonder what she's saying about it.  So I let curiosity get the best of me and read her post (the day before it was scheduled). Well, as you will see when you read mine today, our minds were following along the same lines (you know what they say about great minds thinking alike!)  Rather than rewrite my post, I thought you might enjoy hearing another side of the same subject.

Living in the desert, we don't get a lot of rain.  The city where I live is nicknamed "the Valley of the Sun", and for good reason. We have about 360 days a year of sunshine.  This time of year is called "monsoon season" where we have evening thunderstorms and I do love sitting by a window and watching the flashes of lightning or lying in bed listening to the thunder. But if we get rain during the daylight hours, I'm not a happy girl.

So when I woke up this morning to rain, I wasn't surprised that it put me in a bad mood.  Rain?  In the daytime?  What's up with that?  If I could stay inside and just curl up with a good book, it wouldn't be so bad, but I hate driving in it, I suppose mainly because I'm not used to it.  And after one day of cloudy skies, I'm ready to see the sun again.

But then I remembered Judy's post a little over a week ago about shooting in the rain.  I went back and reread it and decided I was going to try to make the most of this rainy day.  Lately it has been so hot that going out to play with my camera has held no appeal and I'm suffering from withdrawal big time.  I didn't try Judy's suggestion about protecting your camera and actually shooting in the rain but I waited until the rain finally stopped and out I went, camera in hand.  The temperature was 82!  A far cry from the 113 of a couple of days ago.  Something to be thankful for right off the bat.  And  as I opened my eyes to the beauty around me, I forgot about my bad mood and began capturing all of the good things left by the rain -- jewels dripping off of flowers and the ripening fruit on my pomegranate tree, a seed pod cupping a glistening droplet of water -- things I never would have seen on an ordinary sunny summer day.  And the overcast sky gave everything such a rich, saturated color.

I was reminded of the quote by Ludwig Wittgenstein, "Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have."

The bigger picture here, I think, is how we choose to respond when life throws us a curveball.  Like the old saying, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade", do we grumble and complain that things aren't going as we  planned (the lemons) or do we take a different look at it and find the good that might be hiding there (and make lemonade)?  You can be sure that the next time it rains, I won't be moping around the house in a bad mood, I'll be grabbing my camera and making the most of it! 

I hope you have taken the time to look in our Flickr pool at all the amazing images that have been posted so far this month relating to our "water" theme.  Make sure to get yours uploaded and marked with the tag "water".  Who knows, you might just be our In Focus selection this week!