Making Lemonade...er...uh...rock candy

What do you do when life hands you lemons?  Why, you make lemonade!  

That being the case: what do you do when life hands you an emergency light on your dashboard that turns out to mean that there is a nail in one of your tires causing a slow leak, which needs to be removed (and you tire patched), when what you had planned to do that day was drive to Zuma Beach with your friends?  You make rock candy.

At least, that's what we do.

I think.

To be honest, this hasn't come up much.  Really just the once so far.

Let me walk you through it our day:

This morning, Kaia and I got up and headed straight out to the orthodontist's office for her monthly check-up/adjustment.  The plan was to have her appointment, grab a baguette on the way home, pick up her sisters, our swimsuits, sunblock, towels, hats, boogie boards, snacks, etc., meet up with our friends, Priya, Maya and Nadia and caravan over to spend a day at Zuma Beach.  Unfortunately, on the way to the orthodontist, a light I had never seen before lit up on my dashboard.  As soon as we were situated at the office, I took out my manual and looked it up.

After a brief investigation, I dicovered the answer.  The mystery light was my tire pressure light.  According to the manual, if it illuminates and remains lit, it could indicate a slow leak or a flat tire.  Since we had already checked in ~ and since trying to get an appointment at the orthodontist's office is like pulling teeth (pardon the pun) ~ I decided to stay until Kaia was done, then check my tires.  In the meantime, I called the service department at my Mazda dealership* and asked if I could stop by and have them check it out, since I was right down the street.  They agreed.

Kaia's appointment went quickly, once she was in (they finally took her back about 40 minutes after her appointment time), and we headed off to the dealership.  The car was taken in right away, but Danny told me there would probably be about a 1-hour wait.  I called Priya, and we decided it would be best, at this point, to postpone our beach trip until tomorrow.  That's okay.  I think I'll have it more together by tomorrow, anyway.  Kaia, however, was very disappointed.  

Because there would be a long, boring wait  (and because coffee ~ or, in Kaia's case, chocolate milk ~ makes everything better), we decided to walk across the street to the Starbucks inside the Jaguar dealership.  I guess that says a lot about Jaguar dealerships vs. Mazda dealerships.  At the Mazda dealership, they have a pot of coffee and some little plastic pots of creamer.  At the Jaguar dealership, they have a Starbucks.

As soon as we had placed our order, Danny from the service department called to inform me that the problem was, in fact, a nail in my left rear tire that would need to be removed.  The tire would have to be patched, and, since I was overdue for scheduled maintenance, they could just go ahead and do it all. Sure, what the heck, I said.  I mean, at this point, why not, right?

For the next hour, Kaia and I sat in the waiting room, watching the Olympics, leafing through Audubon magazine and chatting with a 72-year old woman who told us all about how, when she was in 4th grade, she missed the entire school year because she was in the hospital with Rheumatic Fever.  She told Kaia all about how she was quarantined and had to attend a special school inside the hospital.  As the children got better, they were allowed to do more around the hospital (like go to the playroom), but when she first got there, she had to stay and have her classes in her hospital bed.  Doctors told her that she would probably not live past her twenties.  Then, they told her that she could only have three children.  She had four.  I told her that, at 72, with four children, I guess she showed them.

Too soon, it seemed, the car was ready.  We picked out a cute little turtle to adorn our rearview mirror, paid our bill and headed home.

Although she enjoyed her milk, her visit, the Olympics and the magazine, it just wasn't a trip to the beach with her best friend.  Kaia knew we would go tomorrow, but...well, you remember what it was like when you were a kid and you were all geared up to do something fun and exciting, and then the rug got pulled right out from under you.  No fun :(  She was very sad.

So, we decided to make some fun of our own.  I had been promising to make rock candy with the kids. I've never made it before, but I thought it might be the perfect combination of sugary candy and science to satisfy my girls.  I found this some time ago, and have been planning to do it for months, but we never seemed to have time.  Today, as it happened, we suddenly had nothing but time.

Each girl made her own solution, flavouring it with a drop or two of extract and colouring it with food colouring.  It is sitting on the counter right now, and, hopefully, it is beginning to form crystals.  Justice tried adding coconut flavouring, which we later realized contains oil, and her mixture kind of seized up, so she gave up on the rock candy and put tiny portions of the stuff onto waxed paper to cool, making "green coconut globs" instead.  Luckily, the other girls made enough that there will be some rock candy for Justice.  

I love that she didn't let it get her down when hes didn't work.  After all, that's what scientific experimentation is all about.  Science or not, that's really what I want them to take away from this experience.  I think it is vitally important to be able to look on the bright side, roll with the punches, not let little set backs and disappointments throw you for a loop.  To learn from mistakes, and to make their own happiness is probably the most important thing I can teach my kids.

But that stuff about super saturated solutions is pretty awesome, too.  In this case, it's even yummy.  And, in about a week, as Kaia said, "I'm going to eat science."


*It's not really my Mazda dealership.  I don't own it or anything.  It just happens to be the dealership at which I bought my car, so I feel sort of personally involved with it.