I Am Just Not Cut Out For This

Two weeks ago my kids and I were invited to go to a pumpkin farm with a single mom friend, her three kids, and her parents. I'm all for pumpkin farms, I enjoy the seasonal festivities as much as the next girl, but I will admit, I have a slightly ulterior motive; A big part of me is in it for the quest of the perfect fall photo. So I dressed the kids up in their photo clothes (you mom's understand what I'm talking about, right?) and off we went to the farm.

For most of that day I would like to extend a gracious “thank you” to my friend and her family for their generosity. For the last thirty minutes of that day I would like to kindly extend a resounding “THANKS A LOT.”

The competition by my house is fierce when it comes to pumpkin farms. There is a farm on every corner and since they are seasonal attractions and only have a few weeks to draw in the crowds, each one tries to top the other. The one my friend’s parents took us to is what I would refer to as the "Cadillac of Pumpkin Farms." With everything from haunted houses to zombie rides, there is enough to keep you busy for an entire solid day.

We spent the day watching the kids climb on a fifteen foot spider web, clunk heads in the bounce houses, almost lose a tooth in the batting cage, ride a train until even the adults felt nauseous, pet some questionable looking farm animals, and stand in line for over 40 minutes to meet Elsa and Olaf. Why were Disney's "Frozen" characters at the farm? I don't know, seriously, I'm asking, why were the "Frozen" characters at the farm? (Now that's what you call rural competition. "So what if the farm next door has the world's largest pumpkin, we have ELSA.")

Anyways, everything was great until we got to the corn maze. By “corn maze” I am referring to the over five miles of corn that has been plowed into something that resembles a mouse maze in a science lab. The thing is so intense that not only do they make you sign in so that they can account for how many people go in and how many come out, they make you sign in with emergency contact numbers. That way if you disappear in there they can easily let your next of kin know where to find your dehydrated body come spring. They even ask that you have your phone fully charged and then they tell you how to find their emergency phone points where you can call and be like ‘I’M AT MILE TWO, SEND THE HELICOPTER!”

Absolutely zero part of any of that sounded fun to me. “Hey kids, let’s go walk around for several hours (or possibly days) in corn and hope we can find our way out before they declare us dead!”

Who the hell comes up with this stuff and furthermore, who the hell agrees?

So I’m all “yea, that sounds fun…or not…but why don’t you guys just go, it looks like it’s going to rain anyways.”

Unfortunately my friend’s parents paid our farm admission and my friend’s oldest daughter really wanted to do the corn maze, which left me feeling guilty. Despite my observation of the darkening skies and my pleads of “there’s no way my boy child is going to make it five miles,” I somehow was coerced agreed to walk fifteen minutes in and then turn around and head back.

The Boy Child and my friend's daughter

Famous last words.

We get about ten minutes in and it starts raining. Now it’s not just raining mind you, it’s like a freaking tsunami right out of a scene from "Jumanji". It is raining so hard that we can barely see two feet in front of us.

Do you know what sucks more than being lost in a corn maze in the rain?

Being lost in a corn maze where you can’t see further than two feet in front of you.

There was almost no way to see if an aisle was a dead end or not without walking down it. Also, do you know what corn grows in? Here, I’ll give ya a little hint. It grows in dirt. Do you know what happens when you take a corn maze and simply add tsunami water? It becomes a freaking mud pit in about two seconds flat. "Corn maze; just add water and wha la, you have your very own mudslide ride!"

Now, not only could we not see, but we could not walk. Like I literally mean we could not walk. The boy child lost both his shoes. He stepped in the mud and out came a bare foot. Now you know me, I am poor and frugal and even I was all “ABANDON THE SHOES WE NEED TO SAVE OUR LIVES!” The girl child slipped and fell face first in the mud, which meant she spent the rest of our adventure looking like swamp thing. I luckily was able to keep my shoes on and if given a little bit more time I might have even been able to see over the top of the corn, because my shoes were collecting mud in a fashion that meant I was pretty much wearing an earthy version of a moon shoes what with the extra six or so inches the mud added to the bottom.

Really, it was fantastic.

We were finally saved when the pumpkin farm sent in rescue vehicles to pick up everyone fighting for their lives lost in the corn maze. When we got to the parking lot I peeled off the kid’s fifty pound, soaking wet, covered in mud photo clothes, hoping that there would be enough oxyclean in the world to save them. I then threw away the remaining shoes before we got in the car.

Hey, it wasn't the experience that I was looking for but it was definitely one that will go down in the books! I'm not sure that any of us will be forgetting that day anytime soon. I didn't get the fall photo that I was looking for, but I did get one of the Girl Child looking like swamp thing, a few with all the kids crying in the corn maze, and one of the boy child near naked in the backseat of the car.

Since I'm not one to be deterred, when the next weekend rolled around another friend whome I lovingly refer to as my Platonic Husband) and I made plans to do something a little more low-key in the pumpkin farm department. We chose a farm down the street from our houses that offers several low key activities and better yet, has no entry fee. We figured that we would let the kids run around and I would have the opportunity to capture the previously botched fall photo.

Good times all around, am I right?

Unfortunately the farm was more crowded than I had ever seen it and the kids quickly got tired of us telling them to “stay together, don’t go anywhere, and get back here.” At one point in an attempt to escape the crowd, we walked behind the barn. To our surprise not only was the rest of the farmland vacant, but it sprawled as far as we could see. We promptly turned the kids loose and began wandering aimlessly across the grounds, looking for the perfect place to take pictures of the kids.

As they ran, we walked along chatting while simultaneously foraging for genitalia structured acorns, and all was well.

All was well until we noticed what we were standing in.

“Is this poison ivy?” I asked my friend.

She bent over to get a closer look at the leaves that were all around us. “I dunno, what was it the tour guide from last year’s field trip told us?" she asked. "Leaves of three let it be?”

“How many leaves are there on this stuff?” I asked her.

“Um….I can’t tell” she said. “Let’s just get the kids out of here, it would totally be our luck to get Poison Ivy.”

We surveyed the scene and quickly decided that we couldn’t tell what we were standing in anymore.

“Uh, kids, kids, GET OUT OF THERE” was what came out of our mouths.

In our effort to save the children from blistering skin boils the girl child tripped over a stick and landed on a pile of burrs. Do you know what burrs are? Burrs are those prickly things that get stuck to your clothes like unwanted organic Velcro.

Without thinking my friend pulled her fleece sweater over her hands and started pulling burrs off my daughter. Burrs that immediately adhered themselves to her.

I watched her for a minute as she was trying to step on her sleeves and use her shoes the peel the burrs off, before I exclaimed “I don’t think they stick to skin, here let me get them.” Actually, I only got half of that sentence out because I grabbed a handful of the burrs on her sleeve with my bare hands and realized mid sentence that yes, they do in fact, stick to skin.

I’m freaking out as I'm trying to peel those bite size cactus fuckers off my fingers when I look up to to see my friend stuck in the purgatory that lies between "frozen in fear" and "running for her life."

“There is a bee. A bee. A bee is in my hair!!!” she was whispering forcefully at me while holding her hair out in front of her. Sure enough, the bee is not on her hair, it is actually entangled in her hair.

“Uh...ok…DON’T MOVE! I’m going to find a stick” I tell her while trying to convince myself that sacrificing my friend and running for my own life would be the wrong thing to do.

I found a stick and while shielding my face I somehow managed to get the bee onto the stick, where I then threw it like a freaking boomerang in the other direction, all the while screaming “RUN!!” to the now terrified children.

Run we did, straight into the path of a horse.

I couldn’t make this shit up it I tried.

Note to readers; if you are going to run for your lives at a pumpkin farm that offers hayrides, be aware of your surroundings less you run directly into the path of a horse drawn wagon.

We somehow managed to avoid being trampled by a horse drawn hayride, my friend took a minute to breathe through the trauma, and we subsequently decided that it was probably time to stop tempting fate, preserve our lives, and call it a day.

It is every best friends job to take a picture of you when you are having a moment, so that they can immortalize that moment forever.

That seals it, pumpkin farms are not for me.

When another friend asked me if I wanted to go to a pumpkin patch with her a few days later, I thought about it long and hard.

Was there a full farm? No.

Were there animals? No.

Was there a corn maze? No.

It was apparently just a short tractor drawn hayride out to get the pumpkins and that was it.

Pumpkins, no farm, no animals, no corn maze = easy fall photo!

I should have read the fine print because this pumpkin patch, it was an actual freaking pumpkin PATCH. Like a dig in the dirt, bring your own vine cutters, weeds as far as the eye can see, pumpkin patch. 

I have to say, I always envisioned a pumpkin patch as a cute little 4x6 square with cute little orange pumpkins all ready for picking. Yea, reality has now ruined that festive image for me.

The wagon pulls to a stop at the patch, the farmer says “get off” and I’m like “uh uh, no way, I am not rural enough for this.”

The farmer tells me to get off and I begrudgingly do so, careful not to trip over any snakes, tomato harvesters, or Charlie Brown. As I watch the wagon drive away I feel as though I have fallen overboard a cruise ship and am watching my lifeline sail away into the distance.

I spent the next thirty minutes waiting for the farmer to return, praying that we didn't get some sort of crop parasite, and watching my children get dirty harvest pumpkins.

While they were doing disgusting things that kids do, I shuffled around like a Kardashian in Walmart; totally out of my element and mostly horrified. Eventually I found a pumpkin that I was willing to touch seemed decent enough for the family photo I felt I deserved at this point wanted to get.

Not exactly what I had in mind.

Hi, I’m Eden and I’m indoorsy.

Pumpkin Farms?

I am just not cut out for that shit.

Who says you need a pumpkin in a fall photo anyways?

From our house to yours, 

Happy Halloween Everyone!!