Fall is in the air

So, Fall has always been my favorite season.  The crisp air, the fragrant bouquet of sharpened #2 pencils, apple cider, jumping in leaves, college football.  It's always been a great time of year... until, for whatever reason, the last few years, when Fall has done nothing but remind me that Winter is on its way.  That bitch.

It's been a particularly wet year around here.  Spring brought about many sleepless nights for my husband, who, with harrowing flashbacks to (as his family affectionately calls it) The Great Flood of 1988, would run to our basement to make sure our sump pump was doing its job.

Fall has been no exception.  It seemed every day has been cold and wet lately.  So much so that I was almost praying for winter because, at the very least, snow is pretty to look at.  From afar.  Far far afar.

Last weekend, we received a reprieve from the rain.  It was the picture of autumn perfection - blue skies, crisp air, the scent of burning something or other (hopefully not someone's house) in the air.  So, we decided to seize the day, do something fallish.  Be proper parents and give the boys good memories of their childhood (although I remember nothing of the fun events my mother planned for us as children - wait what?  I didn't say that.).  Apple picking!  Pumpkin patch!  Corn maze!  Something they can't blame me for later ("You ruined my life!  You didn't take me to the pumpkin patch!"). 

My brother has been working out east and knew of an area that boasted of corn mazes/pumpkin patches/apple pickings.  So, the 4 of us, plus our 4 children, made the hour drive to this blessed area.

Children:  Are we there yet?
Me:  No.
Children:  Arrrrrggghhh.  

Only one child fell asleep on the trip.   

We got to the apple picking farm and found it deserted.  It was open, right?  It was a beautiful fall day, why wasn't this place swarming with apple pickers?

Turns out we missed peak apple picking season.  The place had been hit hard by the rain, and, to add to that, most of the trees had already been picked through.  But, we put on our rain boots and trudged out there anyway.  Got some great pictures of the kids picking from the trees ("See?  We went apple picking when you were little!").  The man told the children not to pull, but to push up and twist (in case you were hoping to gain apple picking instructions from this story - you're welcome).  They listened.  Sort of.  After we filled 2 large plastic bags with, um, not very pretty-looking apples (which my brother ate directly from the tree - they were delicious [and he, luckily, didn't die from any germs]) and grabbed a bag of caramel corn (Love. Fall.), we left for the corn maze.

This place had everything.  Corn maze!  Pumpkin patch!  Hay rides!  Petting zoo!  I was pumped.  I was ready.  Bring on the maze!

Brother:  Short, middle or long maze?
Me (thinking of the child I would, no doubt, be carrying through most of it):  Short.

I was overruled.  Which, fine.  If we were going to do this, let's Do.  This.

It started out well enough.  The brother was elected Map Reader, the sister-in-law chased the children, the children ran, the husband snapped pictures, I posted funny status updates on Facebook ("We're lost."  Heh.).  We were having fun.

But this maze was over 3 miles long.  The fun couldn't last.

About a quarter of the way through, I had a 4-year-old attached to my hip.  I was getting a blister from the boots I had never worn before (had I not learned the "break in shoes before wearing" rule yet?).  I had taken off my fleece jacket.  I was holding 2 other people's jackets.  Along with aforementioned 4-year-old.  One child had stripped himself of almost all his clothes.  (Perhaps it wasn't the crispest fall day of the year.  It was downright balmy.  Who's idea was this?)

Me (dragging whiny 4-year-old):  Are we there yet?
Brother:  No.
Me:  Arrrrrggghhh.

But, it was damfun.  I love this crap.

After the maze, we went on a hay ride up the hill to the petting zoo.  The kids had a great time holding bunnies (on sale for $5!  Or, 5 minutes later, 2 for $5!), petting horses, running atop hay stacks.  We then made our way down the hill and climbed even more haystacks.  A child (not one of ours) pushed another child (one of ours) off the hay.

Other child's mother:  You can't push people like that.  That's not your cousin.
Me:  ?

We took another hay ride to the pumpkin patch and picked our annual pumpkins.  By then, we were all spent.  On our hour-long ride home, I called my mother to make sure she was making us all dinner.

She was.

My faith in fall had been restored!

Until this morning.

Weatherman:  Snow snow snow.
Me:  Is it Spring yet?
Weatherman:  Ha!
Me:  Arrrrrggghhh.

The good ol' days... for a night, anyway

So, we went to a wedding this past weekend for one of my college roommates.  I had been looking forward to it for weeks.  I hardly see my college friends anymore, with life always getting in the way.  Plus, the wedding was out of town and the boys stayed with my parents for the night.  Why, yes.  Yes, I will have another drink!

My college friends are great.  They are just as fun as they were when we were living together.  I am not very good (read:  I SUCK) at keeping in touch with people.  It's safe to say my BFF and I wouldn't be friends at all if she didn't work as hard as she does to keep us together.  (She probably secretly hates me because of that, but I love her for pretending she doesn't.)  I don't always know what's going on with everyone, so this wedding was a good way to play catch-up. 

If I were to ever crazy disciplined enough to write a book, it would revolve around some kind of reunion.  The entire story would take place over an evening or a weekend.  Or a wedding, like this one.  Having the history we do with each other, it's scary interesting to see how we'd interact now with the ones who knew us long ago, saw us at our dumbest, and (shudder) remember the things we'd rather forget.

College was an interesting time for us.  We were young and dumb, and liked to have fun.  We were on our own for the first time in our lives.  We didn't have to go to class if we didn't want.  We could stay out all night.  We could sleep all day.  Lucky for me, I had pretty disciplined roommates.  They went to class, they studied.  They made sure I went to class and studied by making me feel guilty that they went to class and studied - I couldn't very well use "Days of Our Lives" a legitimate excuse to miss class.  In turn, I made sure they were fed.  We had messy, sometimes drunken, arguments about each other or boys or dirty dishes.  I remember, one time, my one roommate refused to clean a pot (or forgot it was hers).  As the cleaner, it killed me to have that pot sitting there.  But, I had to see how long it would take before someone (read: not me) did something about it.  In the end, the pot transformed into something we had to donate to science.

These people know me and I know them.  They remember the time I was pulled over for running a stop sign (and got out of a ticket).  Drunk (and still got out of the ticket).  (This never happened, by the way.)  (Although, I was an excellent drunk driver.)  I remember the months my roommate obsessed about the same boy (whom she, luckily, ended up marrying).  Or the times I wrote papers for my friends because I liked it and could do it in an evening.  And (pat on back) get them an A.  Or that I would rap to 2Pac and Biggie Smalls and not be at all embarrassed about the fact that I was a skinny white girl listening to gangsta rap in my 1989 Mercury Topaz.  Or realize that we know the creator of Silly Bandz.  And remember that our idea of cardio consisted of going out dancing 3 nights a week.  Or that I ordered 2 hard tacos and an order of nachos from Taco Bell at 2am every Thursday night.   

And now, here we are, all of us married, most of us with kids.  How will we be able to look at these children, knowing what we know?  How does my wonderfully adorable roommate, who could only contribute a jar of pickles to our pantry every month, have 3 children?  How do I sing nursery rhymes to my children without throwing out the f bomb or talking about popping a cap in yo ass?  Why won't I allow my kids to eat something that fell on my kitchen floor, that I clean daily, but let my BFF eat a piece of pizza that she dropped in the street?

And, true to our nature, our old selves reemerged on Saturday.  I was out on the dance floor, dancing and rapping to Nelly.  One roommate was drunk on dirty martinis (okay, that's new - we drank cheap beer back in the day) and "I love you"ing everyone.  One friend was crying the whole evening because she was drunk so happy for all of us who were married with children.  The bride and groom supplied us with a photo booth at the reception to make fools of ourselves capture the evening... and we took full advantage of it.

In my Great American Novel, though, there'd have to be more than just fun drunken times (that are now forever captured in hundreds of hilariously posed photos).  There'd have to be some drama, some intrigue.  Like one of the girls brings another's ex-boyfriend as her guest.  Or one of the bridesmaids is actually a spy and the bad guy is a guest at the wedding.  There could be a shoot-out at the reception, during a 2Pac song (and most guest would think it was just a part of the song), and the spy, in her cinnamon colored organza bridemaid's dress (with matching heels) effectively captures the bad guy.  And the ex-boyfriend, after getting in the line of fire to protect his ex, realizes life is short and wins the ex back.  And they live happily ever after.  After a trip to the hospital to stitch him up.

Hmm.  Makes the real wedding seem kind of boring after that.