Last weekend we ran around a lot. A whole lot. The Faculty-Student picnic for the Lad’s job, where Sean obliged his antisocial mother by having a I-Need-A-Nap! coremeltdown after less than 90 minutes there, allowing us to leave. Downtown to pick up LPG, where plans to hit the plaza were scuttled by the godawful art fair, and so we went to downtown of our suburb where, unbeknownst to us, there was a fall festival going on. Being bad suburbanites, we were actually unaware of there being a fall festival, until we saw balloons and groups of petulant band geeks in their oh so heinous high school marching band uniforms. We ducked into the coffeehouse for safety, where we were confronted by a vision of a young lady in a nasty nasty skintight short skirted dance outfit of green and gold, looped with swags of gold sequin brocade, and ‘nude dance tights’, which are ‘nude’ only in a universe where ‘nude’ equals ‘blindingly shiny in that highly flammable! kind of way and making a *zzzzzntzzzznt* noise as you walk’. LPG leaned over and hisses in horror, “Daaaaaance Teeeeeeeam!” And then Sunday we drove an hour and a half to a farm with an orchard full of heirloom apples, where the place is so huge, laid out on a slope, that they give you a golf cart to get around.
Too bad Mother Nature decided to put the smack down on Kansas. My husband? Never being allowed to drive a golf cart again. Like, in his whole life. Decades from now, we’ll be retired to some outpost of Del Webb’s retiree havens, and he’ll want to drive a golf cart, and I won’t let him. Problem number one, we have a baby. Securing a baby in a golf cart is not easy. Our solution? Strap the baby to my body with a baby bjorn carrier. Sean now has enough head control that he can face outward in it; however, this was his first time in the damn thing that way, and so to say my child was befuddled would be a great understatement. Every so often he would hear my voice, realize he couldn’t see me, fruitlessly try to crane his head around, and then bleat once, pitifully. Then he would go back to attempting to grab his foot while strapped to my chest. Meanwhile, I’m bracing myself and shrieking like a nancy girl, because it turns out that problem #2 is:
My husband learned to drive a golf cart by playing Grand Theft Auto. I’m not overstating the case here, folks. He was humming “A Flock of Seagulls” while smiling maniacally as we raced up and down rows of trees as fast as our little golf cart could go, which felt, when you’ve got 17 pounds of confused infant strapped to your front, like Mach 2, but was probably more like 11 miles per hour. And while we were, of course, at the top of the hill- and thus the far end of the orchard- it began to rain. Big cold pelty rain, the kind that spluts in on your child. Of course, we had started at the far end of the orchard, at the top of the hill, and the rows are narrow enough that you cannot execute a stylin 3-point turn in a golf cart, you must go down the length of the row and u-turn down into the next row. So it begins to rain, and Sean begins to look more puzzled, and I am trying to keep myself anf the baby 1. dry 2. in the golf cart. And the Lad is trying to pick apples and get us back down the hill at the same time. This was not easy, as:
-Infant strapped to my chest
-Big Pelty Cold Rain and a lack of anoraks or other rain gear
-The elderly couples who had parked their golf cart at the end of a row, and rather than move it so we could get part, began interrogating us to make sure we were keeping that child dry. No, folks, I’m collecting the icy water and pouring it over his head.
-Overripe fruit.
At one point, the Lad miscalculated badly, and nailed several branches of an asian pear tree. This would have been okay, except the branches then whipped back and nailed me with overripe fruit. I looked down and I had baby vomit alll over me, until I realized it was actually rotting pear entrails. Backpack. Shirt. Jeans. Hands. Baby (who was valiantly sticking out his tongue as far as he could in an effort to taste of the forbidden pear viscera). I redoubled my screaming, and the lad responded by driving even more hell bent for leather, prompting the nice old man to come out of the barn at the bottom of the hill and see what all the commotion was, only to see that nice young couple with the baby driving like maniacs and screaming.
I apparently heard the Lad thinking, because before he could even say anything I informed him in no uncertain terms that when we come back at the end of October, with LPG in tow, they are not allowed to each get their own carts and race.
