PineSol and a Couple of Other Things

My husband and I moved to Los Angeles 2 months after getting married in the Virgin Islands. We met in college while I was dating another boy and 2 years later began seeing each other. Then 2 years after that became engaged and 2 years after that were married. We lived in Los Angeles for 2 years before moving back to Wrightsville Beach, NC where we stayed until I became pregnant with our little angel, who is now 2 years old.
We had a blast in LA, it was like a really long vacation where there were no consequences, no dead lines, and no one to answer to but each other. We saw amazing concerts, drank incredible wine, met people famous and non who still influence our lives today. We hiked up beautiful mountains, skied down giant ones, ate superior sushi, drove to Mexico, and learned valuable life lessons. We initially had driven across country to continue our acting careers but that certainly took a turn for the different when we got immersed in the food and wine business. We worked in great restaurants while on our ‘vacation’ and got to work with some amazing chefs and sommeliers. We loved food and wine prior to moving to California but it wasn’t until we were there that we really fell in love with it. We were introduced to wines that weren’t available in North Carolina and produce that we had never heard of before. It was fantastic.
It was LA that made us decide we would love to start our own business one day. We would stay up late at night dreaming and sketching our dream restaurant or wine bar and couldn’t wait to get back ‘home’ to start. But like all vacations, this one had to end when reality soon set in. It took us 2 years to decide we would rather live in the place we were running away from so many years ago. We wanted a family and both agreed that it wouldn’t happen the way we wanted it to in LA.
But when we first planned on moving to the Pacific coast we were so excited about the weather, the no-smoking laws in restaurants, and the produce. After our first couple of months in our beautiful, little apartment we decided we wanted to grow our own. Everywhere you walked in LA had citrus trees growing, so we didn’t think it would be that hard. We decided we wanted to grow avocados and limes because we’re suckers for margaritas and guacamole and…

I did not inherit my mother’s green thumb so I let G do all the work. Well, it wasn’t really work… I mean, we planted the plants, watered them some and stood back and waited. And waited. And waited. The avocado plant just sat there, shed a little, got uglier and uglier and just became a nuisance. The lime tree, however, started to flower and produce the cutest, tiniest little limes. It took us a couple of weeks before we realized that our cat was eating all these cute, tiny little limes so we banished her from the terrace and really focused on our one, remaining lime. Weeks passed and it got bigger and bigger. More weeks passed and when it seemed like it had finished growing we planned our ceremony. Margaritas!! Only, we needed more than one lime for a margarita so we decided the proper thing to do was to cut ours, taste it first to really appreciate it, then blend it with other ones to make our drinks. This lime was a thing of beauty. The skin was kelly green and very firm, we were so excited! We sliced into that firm, green skin and it was even more beautiful inside. We each took our halves, clinked them together and licked them.