Zoe vs. Apple Picking, Pumpkin Spice Everything, and Nietzsche

The leaves are changing. The days are getting shorter. I can wear clothes that hide my mid-section. It's the perfect time of year for apple picking, corn mazes, and nihilism.

Because if you need more proof God is dead, look no further than your local Shop Rite, where every product has a pumpkin spice version. Nietzsche* was ahead of the curve; he knew God was dead way before pumpkin spice Oreos, Pringles, and tampons appeared on the shelves of his local Lebensmittelgeschäfspeicher.**

Since I'm a sucker for fall, I cannot resist all the pumpkin-flavored things. No matter how disgusting they are, and even when I should know better, I keep coming back for more. Insert segue to Zoe.

That's not an edit I needed to fix. I'm just that lazy and I trust you know where I'm going with this. Besides, my lack of effort fits nicely with today's theme: nihilism.

And what's more nihilistic than a fun fall family outing? Nothing! According to Nietzsche!

Here are some of his most famous quotes, all of them related to the rituals of fall, coincidentally.***

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

Zoe subscribes to this view. At least whenever I'm trying to show her how to do something. If she's trying to show me how, then her way is clearly the only way.

The guide at the orchard showed us how to pick apples off the trees. We were to twist them gently at the stem then pull up. Zoe's way was different. She pulled and pulled until the apple came off.

It was expected that guests would eat an apple or two for free, but I don't think they expected all the free "sampling" Zoe did before discarding her once-bitten apples on the ground, and when I told her not to leave the apples there, she kicked them down the hill till they disappeared, presumably into an abyss. See? Nihilism. But with apples.

If you stare long enough into the abyss, the abyss will stare back at you.

Aside from the eventual destination of Zoe's discarded apples, there was the never-ending corn maze, a ground-level abyss. Zoe led us in. When we came out, we were all different people. I'm not going to say anything more.

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

Zoe was hungry. We had apples. And gum. She wanted gum. She was instructed to eat an apple first. Somehow she bore it, and when she got close enough to the core, I took pity on her and gave her some Trident.

I'm not upset that you lied to me. I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.

The pumpkin patch had a giant velociraptor standing in the middle of it. I told Zoe the raptor was there because it was the advent of the pumpkin that led to the dinosaurs' extinction. She looked at me, recognized my waiting-for-a-laugh face, then went right back to not eating her apple, a look of betrayal on her face.

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.

Zoe's aunt and uncle bought her a motorized car that she can ride around their property. I think her brain exploded in joy when she saw it. I know this because she got upset that we were looking at her and tried to hide. One day, when she's a teenager, and asks why she can never have what she wants, I'm going to bring up this car.

We're calling it her "sweet ride." She can shift gears to drive backward or forward, and it even gets radio stations. She loves it. She rode it around and around until the battery ran out and needed recharging. And that's when she remembered her Nietzsche, specifically, the bit about how to live is to suffer. Not only did she have to wait till it recharged, she now had a creeping fear that would always crouch in the back of her mind whenever she rode it: How much time did she have until the power ran out? When Sweet Ride had recharged, her uncle told her she could ride it again. But she shook her head. She couldn't ride it anymore. If she did, the battery would die. Nothing we said could sway her from this madness. Until she ate some lunch and forgot.

All things are subject to interpretation; whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power not truth.

We also went to the mall, another American tradition observed in fall and at least three other seasons. Zoe needed sneakers. She's as hard on them as a German philosopher critiquing a Hallmark card. The shoe shopping itself was fine; the problem was the other aisles, some of which contained toys. When she saw the toys, she wanted them, and since we'd all been buying her the world that weekend she didn't get why she couldn't have a toy as well. "Do you have money?" we asked her. "No, but you do," she said. Clearly our refusal was an abuse of power. If she had her way, she'd spend her money on Legos and keep her holey sneakers.

In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.

That's cause they're stuck in the corn maze.

I'll leave you with Nietzsche's concept of the Ubërmensch, also known as the Overman, the ultimate personification of will to power. Often equated, falsely, with the DC Comics Superman. So often it's about to happen again.

Here's an exchange I had with Zoe on the way to the mall:

       Zoe: Grandma's stronger than Superman.

       Me: Connecticut Grandma or Queens Grandma?

       Zoe: Other Grandma.

       Me: There is no other Grandma.

       Zoe: Stop ruining my dreams!

Can't wait till she's a teenager.

Zoe: 113; Universe: 0

*Unusual for a humorous mommy blog, this is the second time I've referenced Nietzsche.

**German for grocery store. It just rolls off the tongue.

***By coincidentally I mean not at all.

For more of Zoe's hijinks, follow me on Facebook and on Twitter at @zoevsuniverse. 

I need a win here, people. 

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Zoe vs. the Easter Bunny

The Batman and the Joker. Rocky and Apollo Creed. Dora and Swiper. To this list of well-known adversaries, we can now add Zoe and the Easter Bunny.

They met on a grassy field of battle. Strewn with the pastel remnants of plastic eggs.

Only one could triumph. 

If you defined triumph as throwing a fit then getting sleepy. In that case, Zoe triumphed all over the place.

This year's theme was The Hunger Games.

Technically, this was Zoe's first Easter egg hunt. We'd gone the year before, when Zoe was two and a half, but the line was too long and she wasn't having it so we quickly left.

This year, as soon as the words "Hey, Zoe, want to go on an Easter egg hunt?" were out of my mouth I wanted to take them back. Images from last year of hordes of children waiting as a man in a giant bunny suit patrolled the line were emblazoned on my mind.

So why did I say them? Well, I sometimes say the first thing to pop into my head if I need to distract Zoe from some activity that's killing me, and in this case it was Zoe's request to see Elsa singing "Let It Go," on my phone, again, and next to my phone happened to be a flyer advertising the egg hunt.

Afterwards I was able to use the hunt to keep her in line. E.g.: "If you don't stop whining, we're not going on the Easter egg hunt" or "If you don't eat your lunch, you're not going on the Easter egg hunt."

Amidst nearly constant threats we got her dressed, then foolishly let her choose which of the millions of baskets she'd already amassed in her short life she wanted to take with her.

Christ died for all us peeps.
So that we could do silly things with peeps.

I keep reading articles that say giving your toddler a choice in some minor matter is good because it gives them some control, but all it ever does is fill Zoe with road-not-traveled angst. Zoe's emotional seesawing over which basket she should take before deciding on the purple one with the green and pink stripes was hard to witness. And Sophie thought she had a tough choice. 

We arrived at the park just as the first "wave" of egg hunters were released into the playground/battleground. Then we got a load of the line, which snaked around and around this search area. We knew we'd have to keep Zoe occupied if she and we were to survive the wait.

Thinking quickly, the Husband offered to buy her one of those balloons-on-a-stick. Her choice, oddly made without fuss---this is important---was a Superman one, filling the Husband with pride, though she called him Spider-Man, which mitigated it somewhat.

We continued to the end of the line, where Zoe immediately weaponized the balloon. She claimed to be using the stick as a magic wand, but in practice this meant waving it around so that the pointy end was almost hitting people. When I threatened to take it away, for a little while she occupied herself forcing Superman to dance and then dragging him face-down in the dirt, but soon she returned to magic wand/sword mode.

The signs were there. Mothers are ever alert to them. Whiny, unreasonable, frequent eye-rubbing. It was then I spotted the giant bunny. More accurately, and chillingly, a man in a bunny suit. And he was approaching us. 

Ever see Donnie Darko? Remember Frank? The demonic man-sized bunny who appears to Donnie Darko freaking him out by talking about the end of the world?

The only difference is I'll
eat your ears last.

Anyway, that's what I think of when I see men in bunny suits.

As he came closer I fear-hoped Zoe would stab him with her balloon stick wand sword toy but instead she went very still, the kind of still she'd gone just before she'd lost it at Macy's Santaland. Soon the line would bring us within his creepy sphere. Then what would happen?

Well, that crisis had to get in line, because we had to pass the balloon vendor again. And as we did, Zoe noticed he also had Dora balloons on a stick, which apparently she hadn't noticed earlier, or did but now had buyer's remorse and didn't want the Superman-that-she-thought-was-Spider-Man balloon anymore.

"I want Dora!"

No, we said. We'd already bought her a balloon and we weren't buying another one.

Rinse, repeat, then . . .

Meltdown.

Ineffable sadness.

The regret you feel when you eat the whole thing and drink something on a dare combined with hitting "Reply All" too soon. Meryl Streep could've taken lessons on how to cry.

Maybe somehing.

I carried her off into the grass expounding upon that hardest lesson of life: you can't always get what you want. More tears. More "I want Dora!" The Bunny Man was now watching. I looked away, fearing his eerie silent communication.

Meanwhile, the Husband, once again the hero, had exchanged the Superman for a Dora. "Look, Z, Daddy was able to get you Dora."

She stopped crying and ran over to get her Dora balloon from Daddy. Alas, the drama train was unable to come to a complete stop.

She began yawn-crying and insisted I carry her while using her new Dora balloon stick to poke me in the head. 

We were next to the DJ now and he was blasting some familiar song. For the past few years, my radio-listening had been limited to what blared from the open windows of cars as I walked Zoe home from day care. It was one such song, sans Doppler effect. And as I balanced Zoe on my hip, and she laid her soggy snot-ridden tired head on my shoulder, in order to keep her awake, I danced to music I hated.

Self-assessment: My yoga pants were covered in cat hair, the sun was burning the half my chest not covered in toddler, and to keep said toddler awake I was shaking my groove thing to a song by some former Disney star now turned twerk-sation. Was this what had become of me? Where was the girl who used to go to clubs and sway apathetically to The Smiths and The Cure?

Whatevs, Morrissey.

When we finally made it inside the barrier, we had to wake Zoe. She perked up a bit at all the people running around but overall she didn't get it. The Husband again came through, though, collecting her five allotted eggs (five was the limit) and getting us on to the next line where she could choose her prize, an Easter lollipop shaped like either a bunny or an egg.

Either one. 

Her choice.

Inside I screamed.

I need not have feared. I don't know if it was nature or nurture but she looked at the bunny lollipop with revulsion and chose the egg one. I ripped the plastic covering off the lollipop with my teeth and got it in her mouth before anything more could happen. The Bunny Man was loitering by the exit but I hurried past, blocking her view.

See you in my nightmares, freak!

Zoe: 40; Universe: 0

(My 40th post and there are 40 days of Lent. Feel like God's giving me a high-five. It's not like he's busy with anything else.)