Naked Apple Trees, Empty Petting Zoos, and Mountain Meltdowns

Choice A: Stay trapped in the house all day and clean. Choice B: Take both girls to an apple orchard in Ellijay using the Groupon coupon that I bought several weeks ago. Duh! I took choice B!

Here's how it all worked out. Annie got up around 5:15 because she was hungry and had decided that daddy was going to take her to the beach today. ??? I don't know where in the world she came up with that plan but she was quite determined no matter how I tried to reason with her. Not today, honey, it's too cold. No, daddy's not here right now, maybe later. Maybe he can take you when it's gets hot again. Nope. Nada. She didn't buy any of those excuses. She just kept on. So, by 7:00, I was already about to scream. She'd even dumped her entire dresser to find a bathing suit and started frantically looking for her "floaties." Not the kind of morning I had been dreaming of.

So, I decided to load up the girls and make the hour drive to Ellijay to go pick apples. As any good teacher / mom would do, we talked about how apples grow on trees and then the farmers or machines pick them and take them to the store so we can buy them. This was the discussion that dominated the drive (also interspersed with music from Cinderella, Enchanted, and Mary Poppins).

As I discussed the logistics of the farmers getting the apples to stores with Dasha, I kind of lost track of watching the GPS. You know, those things are great IF you have a signal! I'd chosen to use the app on my phone instead of plugging in the TomTom. However, I didn't realize that I lost cell service at some point so the pretty blue dot on the map (me) stopped moving while the van full of crazies kept barreling down the highway. When I hit Blue Ridge, I realized that something was wrong. Duh! I plugged in the real GPS and then had to back track almost 20 minutes! By this point, the girls were getting hungry and tired of being in the car. I was seeing dollar signs as I had just wasted quite a bit of gas and now I was going to have to make an unplanned stop for food. (I'd packed pretzels and water bottles but the girls destroyed those before we ever left Woodstock)! Oh well.

We did manage to find the orchard which was actually not even correctly routed on MapQuest! Argh! However, the place was swarming with people. I'm convinced that every person there had at least ten kids and out of those ten kids, at least four of them were screaming! If you don't know me well, you might not know that I HATE crowded places! But, after driving that far, by golly, we were getting our 1/2 peck of apples and a hayride!

We had to wait in quite a line to even get to the ticket booth to trade our coupon in for the goods. However, when we got to the cashier, she said in a cute little southern drawl, "All our apple trees are empteeeeeee. I'm gonna give you a bag and you can just go over there and pick you some apples out of them there bins that they got filled with different kinds of apples." What? I just spend 90 freaking minutes telling the girls about picking apples from trees and now this. Nice.

The trees were indeed bare. However, tons of rotting apples littered the ground. Annie insisted on trying to pick some up. Of course, she picked up the most rotten and squishy apple in the entire orchard which popped open and oozed nastiness all over her hands. Do you think I had any wipes with me? Nope. Of course not! So, as she whined about being yucky with apple guts, we walked toward the other big draw of this orchard - the petting farm. Uh um. The petting farm consisted of a couple of goats, a baby cow that some young 4H students were showcasing, a turkey or two, and two little puppies. Yeah. Not what I really had in mind.

Ok. I tried to keep it all positive. At least I wasn't at home scrubbing toilets or mopping floors. So, we headed off to the next attraction, an apple cannon. I admit that the views were spectacular despite the naked trees and shabby petting zoo. I love the fall and I especially love the mountains at this time of year. I'll admit that I did have quite a time trying to fight off the memory monsters that kept trying to creep in and bring back so many trips from years past. But, the girls and I enjoyed the hike across the orchard and discussed the different kinds of trees and the horrific smell of rotting apples.

So, we reached the apple cannon (that would be singular - not plural) to find a massive line. By this point, both girls were tired of walking and hungry. They were more amused with the thought of sitting down than hurling apples into the valley with a weapon.

So, we decided to hand off our tickets for the apple cannon to a group of kissy faced newlyweds and head back down the hill to the hayride. Did I mention that both girls were already exhausted? Yeah. I didn't take the stroller out of the van because Annie never wants to ride and it just becomes a piece of luggage for me to drag around. However, today, she sat down and started crying for her stroller. Nice. Stranded at the top of a mountain-like gravel paved hill with one child having a tantrum, one constantly falling over her own feet from sheer exhaustion, and me wishing I'd taken the opportunity to pee before we'd ever started out on this journey.

By the time we got to the bottom of the hill, I'd carried Dasha on my back for part of the journey and had Annie clinging to my front. I felt like one of those weird sloths that carry their babies in every possible manner from tree to tree. At one point, I started getting pissed off that no one around had even offered to help but what would they do? And, honestly, what would I have said? Sure, why don't you carry this 90 pound child down the hill like Heidi for me? Uh, no. After making it back to level ground, Annie had stopped crying finally, Dasha has reestablished her footing, and I was dreaming of being at home elbow deep in a toilet bowl scrubbing it clean.

We picked our apples from the bin with Annie wanting to know (for the millionth time) why the apples were in boxes and not on the trees like we'd talked about. I'll admit that an ugly little voice in my head just kept thinking, "Just get the dang apples, kid, and let's get this over with!" Did you know that 1/2 peck of apples equates to about 8 apples? And, if you choose ginormous apples like Annie did, you'll only get about 5 apples in 1/2 peck! Oh well. She settled down and then..... Crap. I'd lost Dasha. She was just standing right there picking her own apples from the boxes. I mean, in less than ten seconds, she vanished. Remember who you're dealing with here. I'm a completely paranoid mama and I'd still tether each child to my belt loops if I didn't think they all bolt in different directions and pull my jeans to my ankles or just rip them right off of me! So, I picked Annie up (who, of course, started protesting by screaming) and went looking for Dasha. She had walked inside the building talking with another girl about her age. I spotted her pretty quickly but that surge of adrenaline that propelled me through those 120 seconds completely zapped my energy and patience levels. We took our 1/2 peck of apples and went to the van. No hayride. No apples pies. No apple cider. No nothing. It was just too much.

All I wanted was a fun outing to the orchard. That's it. I wasn't expecting anyone to stay clean or even keep to a specific schedule. I just wanted to go and have fun. Fail. It was a fail for me, at least. I think the girls can look back on it as a fun thing but Annie is still ticked about not getting pick the apple from the tree and Dasha may never roam more than about 3 inches from my side after the leveling I gave her once we were in the van (with doors and windows shut tight to avoid any strangers hearing my insanity)!

And this, my friends, brings us to the end of our fun-filled day at the orchard.

Tomorrow, I'll scrub the toilets, floors, and even the windows before taking another "fun" journey. I know that I can't rely on Grant to fill in the gaps of helping me with the girls all of the time but for outings like this, I'm just going to have to admit that I can't do it by myself. Physically trying to help Dasha maneuver in crowed areas is tough when it's just the two of us. But, when you add Annie into the mix, it's just too scary.

Now, I still have a Groupon left that I bought to a pumpkin farm in Oxford, GA. Anyone want it? It expires on 10/31 and there's just no way that I'm going to do this again next weekend. There are plenty of other little pumpkin patches I can take the kids to in this area without risking completely losing my sanity (or one of the kids).

I'm not even going to begin to address the whole event of Dasha wandering off. She still doesn't see the problem and didn't even consider it wandering off since she could technically still see me. Scary is about the only thing I can say. It's days like this when I completely understand why single moms run into the arms of the first living, breathing (even if it's on life-support or oxygen) thing that crosses their path. It's simply a matter of someone to help carry the load (or child). Never mind all of the mushy gushy romantic stuff like love. I can completely see where it becomes more about survival. No, I'm not uploading a profile to some dating service or anything. I have no heart or mind for that kind of journey at this point. I'm just saying... The burden is very heavy and on days like today when I literally and figuratively falter under the load, help would be nice.

I'm off to finish up the laundry before Grant comes charging back in tomorrow with a pack full of nastiness from his camping excursion. He's probably still wearing the same outfit he left in (including underwear) but absolutely everything will have to be washed from the sheer stench of being in his vicinity. I wonder if I have enough Clorox left? Hmmmm....

Good night, all.