Life is a 17.4 lb Bag of Cherries

Yesterday we went cherry picking at a local orchard. This was a highly-anticipated event on my calendar. Apparently, cherries are only available for about 2 weeks each summer, and you gotta grab 'em while you can.

So we went to the orchard, walked up to the canopy, and told the teenagers-in-charge that it was our first time. They instructed us to take one of the big buckets lined with plastic bags and knock ourselves out. We'd pay by the pound at the end.

So we cheerfully took our bucket up the hill and disappeared among the cheery trees. I really enjoyed roaming around looking for the "perfect" tree--one with lots dark red fruit just waiting to be plucked. And as Erin gently picked each cherry and examined it to make sure it was good enough to be placed in the bucket, I reached up and grabbed them by the handful. Hey, I have ADD. I don't have the time, patience, or energy to delicately pick each cherry! And I got in trouble for putting some damaged ones in our bucket, but at least I enjoyed myself.

We weren't in the orchard for very long when the bucket began to fill up. "Maybe we should stop now," Erin suggested. "No way!" I countered. "I just found this jackpot of a tree and I'm getting all these cherries. Besides, how much is it going to be if we fill the bucket, 5 pounds? So what? We'll freeze a bunch." Erin agreed.

When our bucket was finally full and we brought it to the teenagers-in-charge, one of them came running to meet us and take our bucket, as if we were little old ladies carrying a heavy load. "Hmmm..." he said. "That'll be about $45." I laughed. I thought he was joking. Then he put the bag on the scale...

17.4 lbs.

SEVENTEEN POINT FOUR POUNDS OF CHERRIES.

I spent all night processing these mothers effers. We have more cherries than we know what to do with. Cherries on the counter. Cherries in the fridge. Cherries in the freezer. Cherries on the brain.

We could have cherries for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for a week and still have tons left. 

You know how adults with ADD often have a poor sense of time? We over- and underestimate how much time things will take. I wonder if this also applies to space. I really thought that bucket would hold about 5 lbs of cherries when it actually held more than 3 times that much!

Oh well. If you see me at the ADDA conference next week and my skin has a strange red glow, you'll know why.

Comments

[Annie]

You'll be spewing up cherry stones just like Jack Nicholson in the Witches of Eastwick!!!!

[firesheep67]

this could explain why I just realized in the past few days, as I emerged from my yarn acquisition coma, that I now have enough yarn for the next decade or two.

wish you had written this sooner! lol =;)

[KS]

Jen,

OK...I'm having 4 thoughts at once...

1) Don't be too hard on yourself, unless your hair suddenly turns auburn, or you embark on the task of turning your 17+ pounds of cherries into jam or preserves.

2) While some of us ADD-ers are guilty of over accumulating things, people in general aren't good about estimating things.

There is published research on "expert opinion" that shows people regardless of their level of expertise in an area are overconfident when estimating how large something is, how many times something has happened.

Unless a person knows from experience how much a cherry weighs, the person with ADD is no better (or worse) at estimating how much the bag weighs that the non-ADD person. In fact, there may be some ADD folks whose overactive brains make them very good at figuring these things out.

3) Save the cherry pits, allow them to dry out completely. You can stuff a neck pillow with the dried pits. This pillow (assuming there's no metal zipper) can be warmed in the microwave for about 30-40 seconds. (My daughter has a lambie with a removable cherry pit bag, and during the winter, I heat up the pit bag, put it back in lambie, and she takes it to bed with her.)

4) Your story (and the yarn coma story above) explain why my sock drawer is always full...instead of catching up on laundry, I just buy more...OOPS!

[Maggie]

I think it's very true that ADDers tend have as much difficulty estimating spatial dimensions as they do with estimating time. Think about how clumbsy many ADDers are. I know I am constantly bruised from bumping into things I thought were farther away.