Sexy Coffee and Racist Tea: Weird and Troubling Nutcracker Productions

Once upon a time six years ago, there was a very tiny toy soldier bravely marching into battle under the direction of her Nutcracker General to fight off the Mouse hordes. 

Several promotions later, that child soldier has grown into an Officer, dancing her first role en pointe in our local university's production of The Nutcracker. But just between us, the Mice really have the more righteous cause. So don't tell the Nutcracker General, but his Officer will be spending half her time secretly as a Mouse, menacing that brat Clara and bravely fighting her sometimes-comrades, the soldiers. 

I think the Mice might have a real chance to win this year!

It's time, then, for my third-favorite holiday of the year: Nutcracker season! 

Here's a Fun Holiday Game For You: Find the Weirdest and Most Troubling Nutcracker Productions

If I was still working on a PhD (if only PhD programs could be twenty years long, because it took at least fifteen years before I thought of my first original research idea that would have made a good thesis, ahem. And now I get good thesis ideas on the daily!), I would 100% be writing my thesis on regional Nutcracker productions as cultural artifacts that reveal and complicate our society's understanding of gender, sexuality, and race, as well as the male gaze when directed at female-presenting adolescents. 

Particularly that last one, ahem. I thought our local university's production was a little heavy on the child predator grooming a future victim vibes, and then I watched literally any other Nutcracker ever choreographed. Most of the productions I've seen have been choreographed by men, and they seem to have a very hard time visualizing a relationship between a male and female, even one with a fifty-year age gap where the female is supposed to be, like, twelve, that's not somehow gross. 

Other Nutcracker cliches to look out for include how heteronormative and cisgender are the children's casting, costumes, props and choreography; is the "Arabian Coffee" dance meant to be "sexy" or not; and how racist does the "Chinese tea" dance present? Our local university's production is pretty racist; it was only a very few years ago that they stopped putting a Fu Manchu mustache on the male lead, recently enough that I still worry every year that it might show up again.

Here's an interesting mini-documentary about how Ballet West addressed racism in the tea dance a few years ago:

Joffrey Ballet now also does a dragon dance, and a nearby university's production invites a local martial arts school to do some sweet moves onstage during that number. 

Every November, then, in the lead-up to The Nutcracker, it's my personal mission to find the weirdest and/or most troubling productions. Partly, I just think it's interesting to see how different choreographers handle the exact same music and same basic plot. Partly, it's just me processing my sour grapes--like, sure, they make my kid dance in pants and ugly wigs every single year even when wearing that pretty party dress and having her hair in curls was her one dream and they 100% gave her height-related body dysmorphia for a while when she finally caught on that it was always the shortest girl who scored Clara, but hey, at least nobody's in blackface in OUR production! But partly, I also like to see how our various societal tropes are expressed in this one cultural commonality. You know, who's doing something different on purpose, and why? Who thought they were doing something different but it's just an even more overt expression of that same cliche? Who's tapped into a way to empower and include artists and audience, and who's actively fighting against equity and diversity?

Dutch National Ballet: The Nutcracker and the Mouse King

Many years ago during Nutcracker season, we found a Nutcracker production on YouTube that has, to date, the most bonkers plot twist imaginable: the Mice WIN the battle against the Nutcracker and take all of the child soldiers captive, including Clara's own brother, Fritz, who was commanding the toy soldier army. We were all, like, "Okay, that was weird," and moved onto the Snow Scene, after which Act 1 ends with Drosselmeyer leading Clara and the Nutcracker Prince into... his film projector, I think? There, for some reason, the Mouse King and his army appear again and this time the Nutcracker defeats him and now all the Divertissements dance while Clara and the Prince act cute and Drosselmeyer bops in and out occasionally like a matchmaking Gollum.

So we're just happily watching the Divertissements when Arabian begins with a guy cracking a whip, and then onto the stage stumble enslaved people wearing ragged clothing and chains. The male lead starts his dance, but then one of the enslaved men tries to escape and is dragged back by one leg and starts to dance this weirdly homoerotic S&M pas de deux with the Arabian lead and we all realize--OMG, that's FRITZ!!! Fritz has been sold into slavery to the Arabian dancer! He's got makeup bruises and his clothes are ripped and he's in manacles and now he's rolling around on the floor while the Arabian dancer thrusts over him and it is WILD. 

Every year since, we've tried to find this specific Nutcracker, but never ran across it again. But a couple of nights ago, in a completely hysterical fit of insomnia, I was all, "This is my mission. I will not rest until I have found this fever dream of a Nutcracker." I Googled various search terms involving Nutcracker, Fritz, and "abducted," "enslaved," and "kidnapped," etc. And finally, I cracked it! Welcome, Friends, to the Dutch National Ballet's production of The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, choreographed by Toer van Schayk and Wayne Eagling. That YouTube version we watched absolutely was a bootleg of a 2011 filmed and streaming version (if your state university library has a Medici.tv subscription like mine does, you can watch it there), but at least right now you can also watch the 2021 production here. 

Also notable about this production: there's real ice skating in the Prologue and Apotheosis, Fritz tries to spy on his sister while she's changing clothes, and they skip Mother Ginger entirely.

And a random fun fact: after Russia invaded Ukraine, the Bolshoi Ballet's prima ballerina denounced the war, fled Russia, and now dances with the Dutch National Ballet.

Mariinsky Ballet: The Nutcracker

This is a fun one to watch, even before it gets super weird at the end, because the Mariinsky Ballet in St. Petersburg is famous for holding the very first production of The Nutcracker in 1892. Fun fact: audiences HATED IT! They thought, in particular, that it was so stupid to have children dancing in a professional production. Especially funny considering that child dancers are now The Nutcracker's biggest draw. The Mariinsky must have learned its lesson, because even though there are a few children's roles in this production, even Act I Masha and Fritz are played by full-grown adults acting like children. I love when they age Masha up for Act II so that she can do some proper dancing, but otherwise, full-grown adults acting alongside children while pretending to be their same age is a little Adam Sandler for my tastes.

This is the production choreographed in 2001 by Mikhail Chemiakin. At least right now, there's a 2007 production of Mariinsky Ballet's The Nutcracker available on YouTube:

Its portrayal starts off very comic and kid-friendly, with lots of funny noses and giant props and some pratfalls in Act I, and a low-key Voldemort-looking Drosselmeyer who obviously seethes with jealousy every time Masha and the Nutcracker Prince make goo-goo eyes at each other. Drosselmeyer also seems to maybe be in some kind of charge of the mice, who don't look very mouse-like and I really hope they're not actually caricatures of Jewish people. 

To get to the actual BONKERS part of the production, though, you have to hang on until the absolute last seconds of the performance, when Drosselmeyer raises a curtain to reveal that many of the characters are actually the treats in his candy shop. Masha and the Nutcracker Prince, who'd just finished up a joyful and romantic dance right before the curtain closed, are now revealed as the candy toppers on a giant wedding cake.

And y'all, crawling all over the cake and actively eating it as the curtain finally closes ARE THE MICE. THEY ARE LITERALLY GOING TO EAT MASHA AND THE PRINCE. 

My guess is that Drosselmeyer got fed up and figured hell, if he can't have Masha, might as well feed her to the mice.

Also notable about this production: the Arabian female lead is dressed in a skin-tight snakesuit and accompanied by snake puppets, and the poor Nutcracker Prince has to keep his horrifying Nutcracker mask on for an ungodly long time. There's also a DVD of a different Mariinsky Ballet Nutcracker production, originally choreographed by Vasily Vainonen in 1934, that's more wholesome than weird. Syd and I saw this in the theatre with her ballet buddies one year, and it's adorable.

New/Adventures: Nutcracker!

So, were you thinking that it might actually be easier in the long run just to traumatize your children with a terrifying Nutcracker production as young as possible so that they don't ask for expensive ballet lessons? 

Well, have I got the Nutcracker for you! 

Instead of casting children, let's cast adults who make big, childish movements and huge facial expressions in an uncanny valley version of childhood.

Instead of setting the scene in a wealthy household hosting an opulent Christmas party for all their rich friends, let's have Act I take place in an orphanage with a co-ed dormitory full of miserable adult-children. The grown men acting like little boys will also wear nightshirts that expose their legs to the upper thigh.

Instead of giving the kids dolls and drums and a random nutcracker, let's give them creepy shit like a ventriloquist's dummy and a working pistol. Fritz will literally shoot an orphan with the pistol, and the dummy will come to terrifying life just before the orphans revolt and one of them saws the head off of the headmaster, who is dressed in leather and wields some kind of stick... a riding crop, maybe?

Welcome to New/Adventure's Nutcracker!, choreographed in 1992 by Michael Bourne. It's not for children! 

Again, we watched this production several years ago on YouTube, in what must have been an excellent year for Nutcracker bootlegs, but right this second it's also available via a bootleg on Vimeo. 

If you don't watch the production with your kids, it's got some interesting moments that make it pretty fun. I can't completely figure out if it's Clara's little orphan buddy or the ventriloquist dummy who eventually is reincarnated as the Prince, but regardless, he's reincarnated shirtless, and their pas de deux would be charming and low-key sexy if the full-grown adult playing Clara didn't have to keep making those weird little kid faces and gestures. The overture to Act II that's normally danced by very little children playing angels or trees is danced by adults with wings wearing pajamas. Maybe they're dead orphans? It's also fun seeing how much sexual innuendo and camp and just plain bizarreness they can work into all of the Divertissements. 

In the end, Clara wakes back up in her orphanage, but who's hiding in her bed? Why, it's that hunky Prince again! 

Also notable about this production: Clara gets to dance blissfully with a whole troop of shirtless dudes, and she looks like she's having a fabulous time. The Arabian and Chinese dances aren't at all racist. And the Russian dance is, I think, a gay football theme?

Okay, I thought that I was going to monologue about all of my weird Nutcracker finds all in one place, but I actually have to go put a certain Mouse's hair up in milkmaid braids and then change into my black clothes for backstage and then drive her to campus for her stage rehearsal and then go chaperone the Party Scene children during dress rehearsal while my Mouse fights a battle and then check all the Party Scene kids back out to their parents and then collect my hopefully victorious Mouse and then drive us home and then eat Pizza Rolls in bed while watching hockey and then fall asleep without washing my face, so let's talk about weird Nutcrackers again later, okay?

And if you write your PhD thesis on the subject, send me a copy!

Ballet, or, All's Well that Ends

Remember Monday's post, when I told you that I had been insanely busy last week? It's because not only was I planning Syd's birthday party for that Friday (you will not be surprised to learn that Syd plans VERY elaborate birthday parties), but I'd also finally heeded the increasingly desperate mass emails from the director of Syd's ballet program and volunteered to help backstage at the dress rehearsals and the performance of the spring recital--a rendition of Coppelia, of all things.

I'd volunteered to help the littlest dancers, ages 3-7, so that I wouldn't be backstage while Syd was dancing, but wow--little kids and their parents! The kids have to be dropped off with the volunteers, as we've got background checks and the parents don't, and there are never enough volunteers, so for two hours at a time we're signing kids in, getting their costume pieces on, taking them to the bathroom, keeping them entertained, taking them to the bathroom, getting up two stories to backstage, trying not to lose them in the dark, getting them to their places, getting them back down to the dressing room without losing them, taking them to the bathroom, divesting them of their costume pieces, taking them to the bathroom, and getting them back to their parents.

And those parents! The first-time parents! The fretful parents! The confused parents! And those kids! The kids who always had to pee! The kid who kept hitting her ballet teacher in the boobs! The kid who, as we were sitting backstage, waiting for his turn to dance, turned to me and said, contemplatively, "You know, I thought that I wanted to be a ballet dancer, but I actually don't."

I explained to him that after Sunday afternoon, he could absolutely not be a ballet dancer anymore, if he so chose, but right now, he was 100% a ballet dancer, so scoot out onto that stage, Buddy!

And while we're on the subject, let's just pause right here to give a special shout-out to the parents who brought a tray of sticky chocolate candies as a "treat" for the small children on recital day.

The small children who wear white leotards with white skirts. Half of them are probably allergic to whatever is in the candy. The other half probably aren't allowed to have sugar.

I'm not even ashamed to tell you that those treats?

I hid them behind the piano.

Anyway, although it was an adventure and I was glad to be backstage in Syd's world for a bit, I did not expect how utterly exhausted and brain-dead I would be after corralling small children and handling their parents every night, and that is why the thing that I am about to tell you about happened.

It was Thursday evening. Syd and I had been in ballet rehearsal since 5:30, and we were finally done at 8:30. We drove home, discussing along the way what still needed to be done for her birthday party the next evening (short answer: everything). As I pulled into the driveway at 8:57, I noted that all the lights in the house were off, and thought, "Huh. Where's Willow?"

And then I remembered. She was at the library. Which closes at 9:00. A twenty-minute drive from here. And I WAS SUPPOSED TO PICK HER UP.

I'd dropped her off with Matt at 5:00, for him to take to horseback riding, and he was going to let her go to the library after that while he did some last-minute party shopping, and I was going to pick her up after ballet rehearsal, since I drove right by the library on the way home!

Oh, and my phone is basically non-functioning.

I debated peeling out and racing for the library right then, but instead decided to race inside first, to my computer, and message my friend who's always online. She immediately replied that she'd call Matt for me, and that she, too, would race for the library, since she lives closer than I do. That done, I bolted back to the car and DID peel out, and sped at a shocking speed back into town. Frankly, I was hoping that a police car would pull me over, so that I could explain where my kid was and get them to send a patrol car over to the library.

Would you like to know what was going through my mind as I drove back to the library? Here are a few topics: We live in a college town, so every now and then a young woman goes missing and/or is murdered. Could Will outrun a murderer? No. We live in a college town, so every now and then a young man rapes a young woman. Could Will outrun a rapist? No. Or perhaps a librarian discovered her before a murderer/rapist could. Would they call the police and tell them that someone had abandoned their child? Would the police give her back to me if they did so? Damn it, when I told Will the name of my friend who's a foster parent, and instructed her to have that person called to come get her if she was ever snatched by Social Services, I'd been kidding! But at least then she wouldn't be murdered!

I ended up tearing into the parking lot just behind the minivan driven by my friend. We both threw open our car doors, called out for Will, and then that very kid, who was kicked back casually against the limestone wall of the library, next to the door, a stack of books at her feet, looked up from the book she'd been reading and was all like, "Oh, hey!"

Not. Fussed. At. All.

As I forcibly embraced Will, who was frowning because I had lost her place in her book, and began to thank my friend, a SECOND friend came peeling up. My first friend had thought to call her because this second friend drives Uber and was possibly downtown. I thanked them all very sincerely, and then took my kid back home, occasionally reaching behind my seat to clutch her leg and make sure that she was still there.

I asked Will, "What would you have done if it had been a long time later and I still hadn't shown up?"

She replied, "I had six books with me. Someone would have remembered me eventually."

I don't doubt this is true. But I don't *think* that I was overreacting. I mean, right? Although she is almost twelve. Can twelve-year-olds hang out alone? I haven't thought about it. If we'd still been living in our old neighborhood, I'd have been letting her walk alone to the library and back for over a year now. But loitering in an empty parking lot is totally different from moving with purpose down a sidewalk. BUT when I was twelve, I definitely remember loitering in empty parking lots with my friends. But *I* didn't have enough supervision.

But clearly neither does she...

Regardless, from now on when I'm busy and distracted AND have to pick a kid up from somewhere, I'm writing myself a note on my hand!

Fortunately, there were no more forgotten kids for the entire rest of the week. No kids were lost at Syd's birthday party, which went really, really, REALLY well, and no kids were lost during the ballet recital, although I did have to hold the hands of a couple of children and walk them onto the stage, because as soon as they caught sight of the audience, they basically began backing against my knees, saying, "No, no, no, no!" I was all, "Nope! Too late now!" and towed them onstage.

They were fine.

And here's my own little dancer!

Sneaky action photography in a darkened auditorium is hard, yo!

After the recital, it's become my tradition to have a photo shoot on campus, mostly of the ballet dancer, because she's the one who likes it the most, but I'll also snap as many pictures as I can of anyone else who'll let me.

This one let me a little bit.

But mostly it was this one who wanted to be photographed.

I'm dressed like a stage hand, not a bank robber!

Matt snapped this photo. It's pretty typical--all of us with our mouths open, talking at the same time, and one of us frowning and possibly about to throw a fit.

I keep expecting the ballet director to finally realize that MY child is clearly the most talented and special child in the program.

I mean obviously, right?

I know very little about ballet, but even I can see how deeply talented she is!

Don't tell anyone that I said so, but she's also the cutest one in the program.

All right, we'll let Matt get in some photos, too!

When I wrote the title of this post, I thought that ballet had ended for the year, but now I hear that Syd actually wants to do the Summer Intensive session, as well...

Look for another set of post-performance portraits in a month or so, I guess!

Tinkerbell and the Vampire

As the kids and I were packing on Sunday, I suddenly had a panicked thought and burst out with something like, "Oh, no! Kids, you have to go put your costumes on RIGHT NOW!"

Because if the kids are going to be in California with their grandparents for Halloween, then that's where they'll be wearing their costumes, and so if I wanted to take pictures of them in their costumes, it had to be before I packed them! Yikes!

Fortunately, the kids were excellent sports, and put on their whole Halloween costumes for me, just so I could take photos of them.

Sydney is Tinkerbell:

She created her entire costume with very little adult assistance--I showed her how to draft a dress pattern to her measurements, Matt showed her how to transfer it to fabric, I threaded elastic through the casing she sewed in the top of the dress, I helped her bend the wire of her wings, and I showed her how to glue the clear cellophane to the wire. Syd thought up the entire costume, then watched a Tinkerbell movie and paused it whenever Tinkerbell showed a new angle, so that she could sketch her design from all sides. She sewed her dress, cut out the details at the bottom hem, drew a template for the wire hanger wings to follow, then spent hours painstakingly hot gluing clear cellophane gift wrap to them.

Fortunately, because Syd can be quite hard on herself, her costume turned out just the way she wanted!

Well, except for the part about the wings making her really be able to fly. That part didn't work out at all...

Will's usually an easy girl to please about Halloween costumes. For her vampire costume, she let me wrap one of my old homemade Moby Wraps around her head as her hood. Matt bought her a black shirt and black pants from Goodwill, and although she was going to make her old standby, the plastic fork fangs, she actually received a set of fangs as a favor at a Halloween party, so she was good to go!

  

Again, this costume surprisingly doesn't confer any superpowers, either; nevertheless, leaping the chain that blocks the drive-in's driveway remains a fine pastime for young daredevils:

The kids will actually be trick-or-treating in La Jolla this year, and they've already been teased quite mightily about the treats that a swanky neighborhood like La Jolla shall surely yield--full-sized candy bars! Each kid her own pony!

For my part, my health is going to take an outstanding turn for Halloween this year, since unlike in previous years, I have not had to buy Halloween candy and then buy it again five days later because I ate it all, and in the best of all possible circumstances I will not spend all next week sneaking treats from the kids' Halloween stashes, either, because the day after Halloween they have another five-hour plane ride to get through.

Know what makes the time pass quickly during a five-hour plane ride?

Eating all your Halloween candy, I'm going to bet!

To Do with my Kids

I've been making this list of Web craft projects to do with kids, specifically projects that celebrate autumn and the harvest season. But obviously, as I'm looking for five or so activities suitable for this list, I'm finding about five thousand off-topic ones that just look AWESOME! So then I was thinking, I have a projects To Do list for myself; why not one for me and the girls?

To Do (Parent/Kid Edition)

• I'm already starting out unrealistically, because I wouldn't buy new silk (from silkworms, you know), and any vintage silk scarves I came across wouldn't likely be all white and pristine and dye-ready, but I still love this tutorial for dyeing playsilks with Kool-aid over at the Artful Parent. The girls love to dress up and the playsilks look so versatile and light and fun--perhaps I could someday find actual vintage playsilks?
• I love the birthday crown tradition over at SouleMama. I mean, of COURSE you deserve to wear a crown on your birthday. The girls would certainly like to help with this, as only they can come up with the perfect garish/creative color choices. Perhaps I'll have one ready for a certain little birthday friend's birthday party on Monday?
• Over at Strange Folk in September, I bought a bunch of beautiful rainbow-dyed wool roving. Since then, it's been draped over a shelf in my study looking gorgeous, but my intention has always been to fill a couple of sinks with warm, soapy water and make felted balls or felted rocks (like these from elsie marley) with the girls. I wonder what else I could felt around?
• For an fundraising art project at her child's school, Perpetualplum made mosaic tiles out of small squares cut from the students' artwork. I'm as a rule quite against altering my children's artwork in any way, but Willow, I think, would be old enough to create art specifically for this purpose, and it would also fall in line with some projects I have in mind to work with the girls' love of Eric Carle--he does this same kind of thing, you know.
• You know that my Sydney is into babies and cars in a big way. I'm not that excited about the idea of making doll clothes for her--she's not really into dolls in a "dress them up, dress them down" kind of way, anyway--but I do like the idea of making her some cloth doll diapers, like these from Skip to My Lou. Natural parenting, right?

In other news, I have a game for you. It's called Find the Monkey:

P.S. Check out my other list of autumn-themed art projects over at Eco Child's Play.

Blog List

I'm sure this will be big news for you, but... I tend to be a little obsessive. No, seriously. I know, I know, I'm really subtle about it, but yeah, there it is. So, you know, if we get a DVD box set from the library, and I discover that I really like the series (hello, Joan of Arcadia!), I will watch all 36 or whatever hours of that series before I do anything else in the world besides eating, sleeping, and basic parenting. If there's a cookie cake in the house, I literally cannot settle down until that cookie cake has been consumed in its entirety. Preferably by me. The average time it takes me to read any good novel, no matter the length? About a day. You know, obsessive.

For a week now, I've been flat-out obsessed with making pillowcase dresses. I bought a few pillowcases at a Goodwill 50%-off storewide sale months ago and stuck them in the stash and in the back of my mind, and there they sat, but a few weeks ago during my forced felted wool stegosaurus sweat shoppe, I started thinking, "Pillowcase dresses. Pillowcase dresses. Pillowcase dresses." So I made the girls a matching set for their friend Phillip's birthday party last weekend:

It was fun, so I made another the next day. And another. When I ran out of pillowcases, we went to Goodwill--they're 99 cents there! I bought several, including one dinosaur-print(!). I knew I had it bad when on Thursday, dropping Willow off at a playdate, I bragged to my mom-friend that I'd made Sydney's little pillowcase shirt just that morning. In the afternoon, re-exchanging kids at the library, Noel noticed that Sydney was in a different pillowcase dress, and asked if I'd made that one, too. I said, "Yeah... About half an hour ago, actually." Oh, well. Sydney had another new hot-off-the-presses pillowcase dress for the Fourth of July parade, and then another one this morning for errand-running (Willow wanted to wear it, but Sydney said yes first. So I promised I'd make Willow her dinosaur-print pillowcase dress this afternoon). So, um...yeah. Obsessive.

Another thing I've been obsessed about lately is the finding and reading of crafty blogs--you know I list them sometimes here in the blog, but I tend to lose track of which ones I've mentioned. Hence the new feature I've been playing with, on the right above the archives and below the wist gallery: a blog list!!! Now both you and I can obsessively have handy not only the names and links of my favorite crafty blogs, but also snippets of their latest entries and a tag for how long ago they were last updated! Ooh, so helpful for keeping obsessively up-to-date.

Do you heart a crafty blog?

Last of the Line: My Little Pony--and the Police!

This last of the American Girl doll wrap skirts that I've listed on my etsy shop is actually the first style that I made for Syd, based on her current absolute favorite cartoon: My Little Pony.

I've got a ton more American Girl doll patterns that I want to try out--pants, shirts, doctor's scrubs, a party dress--but I've also got some commissioned pieces and etsy orders that I need to be working on, so more American Girl doll crafting may need to go on the back burner for a bit.

In other news, I have to tell you about the AMAZING field trip that my Girl Scout troop went on yesterday! I was so engrossed in the trip that I didn't take a single photo, so you'll have to bear with my wall of words instead:

When we first got to the police station, the receptionist looked a little surprised to see this large gang of children and assorted adults in attendance, and we had to wait for a really long time before an officer came to get us--I imagine that the conversation in the back went something like "Oh, crap! who forgot to put a FIELD TRIP on the calendar?!? Okay, everyone, short straw has to lead the tour."

I was also a little leery when a parent who was dropping her kids off with me asked the officer, "How long do you think this will take?" and he answered, "Oh, about 15 or 20 minutes." At that point, I figured, "At least there's a playground behind the police station!" A twenty-minute tour followed by an hour on the playground--that could work, I guess.

I like to prep my Scouts well for our activities, so I'd asked each child to bring a notebook and pencil, and to write two questions for the police officers in that notebook. Our tour guide, Sgt. Forston, led us to the briefing room, sat us down, gave us a little lecture on what a briefing looks like, then said something like, "Okay, before I show you the rest of the station, does anybody have any questions?"

Little hands rose into the air! Sgt. Forston, in what is surely the greatest display of patience ever seen by humankind, answered question after question after question. Are you in charge? (No.) Who IS in charge? (The chief of police.) What kind of crimes are most common? (Theft.) What kind of things do people steal? (Money, bikes, electronics, really anything.) If someone stole a computer but it has a password on it, what would they do? (Throw it away.) Have you ever been shot at? (No.) Do you ever feel like you're in danger? (Yes.) Do people call you on the phone here? (Yes.) What do they call you about? (They want to report a crime, they're not happy with something a police officer has done, they have a question about a law.) Do they call other people on the phone here? (Yes.) Is 911 here? (No.) Where is 911? (At the central bus station.) Do people ever fight you? (Yes.) What happens if you think that someone committed a crime but you don't know for sure? (We keep looking for evidence.) Do they get to go free while you look? (It depends on what kind of evidence we have already.) Is there a police dog here? (Yes.) What's his name? (Ike.) What kind of dog is he? (German Shepherd.) Can we see him? (Maybe. I'll call his handler and ask.)

For each of these answers, also imagine a thoughtful explanation. Every time Sgt. Forston came to terminology that he thought that the children wouldn't understand, such as "bond" or "chain of command" or whatever, he would reword it so that the children understood. It was perfectly suited to an audience of children.

By the time this flurry of questions had calmed enough that we could keep moving, we were already well past the twenty-minute estimate of the entire trip, but Sgt. Forston seemed totally in the groove, and never hinted that we were taking up too much of his time or that it was time to finish up. In fact, he kept thinking of even more awesome things for us to see and do! We saw an interrogation room, where children and adults were both kind of thrilled to see the chain that attaches to a suspect's handcuffs. We saw the room with the breathalyzer and a line painted on the floor for people to walk; everything in these two rooms is videotaped. We saw the evidence lockers, which are actually just lockers! They are literally evidence lockers!

A guy came by as we were standing in front of the evidence technician's door, and Sgt. Forston was basically like, "Look! The evidence technician! Show the kids your light!" So after the technician put away all the evidence that he was bringing back from the lab (Sgt. Forston gave us an excellent lecture about this and a lecture and demonstration about how to properly handle evidence), he showed us how his black light showed up hairs and such from clothing and other surfaces.

Imagine, of course, that all through this children are just peppering Sgt. Forston with questions. Does each locker have its own key? (No, they all use the same key that the evidence technician has.) What goes in the little locked refrigerator? (Blood. Long pause. Just blood. Good editing for a child audience, Sgt. Forston!). What's in that jug? (Distilled water.) What's the distilled water for? (If you flush a syringe with it, you may get dried blood that you can then get DNA from.)

We covered DNA swabs and how to bag evidence, and then Sgt. Forston set the children up with plastic CD cases that he'd touched, fingerprint powder, and brushes, and he let the children actually dust for fingerprints! It was the coolest. Thing. EVER! He talked the kids through gently tapping the brush into the powder, and then just sort of gently swirling the brush along the surface. You still have to really look to be able to see the fingerprint, but if you hold it up to the light, there it is! It was so great, and the kids were really into it. I mean, of course! We also saw how to use a piece of tape to lift the fingerprint off the surface, although apparently it's preferred now to take a digital picture of the print, rather than lifting it.

We saw the undercover police officers' office and where the detectives work, the conference room where those in charge talk strategy, and then Sgt. Forston got ahold of the K-9 officer and found that although he was in the middle of a training session across town, he could leave then and be with us in 10-15 minutes. Sgt. Forston looked at me and asked how we should pass the time. "Tell the children all about first aid!" I said.

And so he did. Bless that man.

On the way outside to meet the police dog, I got the children's attention and said, "Now, Children, when the police dog shows up, I want you to..."

"Remain calm," many children finished for me. They know me so well!

Officer Keaton pulled up to the parking lot where we were, and he gave us a little lecture on police dogs and how and why they're used, and got to experience his own flurry of questions, himself. How old is Ike? (I don't remember the answer to this one--I'll have to ask my troop!) What happens to Ike when you go on vacation? (He goes to a special kennel in Indianapolis where they're used to police dogs.) Does he ever go inside the police station? (Not usually, because he's trained to defend Officer Ike, and could bite an officer who was just roughhousing with him.) Why isn't he neutered? (Because he's never out of his officer's supervision.) Do your kids get to play with him? (No, but sometimes they're allowed to pet his back.) We found out that Officer Keaton gives his dog, Ike, commands in German, we passed around his special remote control that shows him what the temperature is inside his car and has a panic button that he can press when he needs Ike to come rescue him. It opens the door on the right, which Ike only uses when he needs to chase down somebody.

We got to examine the special police car that Ike rides in, and then we sat in the grass while Officer Keaton showed us how Ike finds drugs. He'd hidden a little magnetic box inside the wheel well of a car, and as we watched, Ike sniffed all around, then sniffed back and forth in the same area over and over again, then got low and sniffed, and then finally scratched at the exact spot where the drugs were. As a reward, he got a tennis ball on a rope, and he was so happy!

At exactly two hours and 17 minutes after we first arrived at the police station, Sgt. Forston asked, "Anymore questions?" and for the first time, nobody raised their hands. I told him, "I don't think that ANYBODY has ever run them out of questions before!" And then we thanked the officers VERY wholeheartedly and all the children ran off to the playground.

Seriously, this was service WAY above and beyond the call of duty. Can you imagine the patience of someone who had originally intended to spend 20 minutes with a group of children, and then went on to indulge them for a full two hours, never hurrying them, never saying "Just one more question," going out of his way to find them interesting things to look at and do? It was one of the most impressive adult-child interactions that I have ever seen.

I know a certain couple of police officers who are going to get handmade thank-you letters and a big delivery of bagels and doughnuts sometime soon!

Just Like in Little House on the Prairie

My entry for the Creative Class!

The big kid stayed in bed with a fever all morning, watching TV and accompanied by her sister, and yet today I still managed to make an egg breakfast nobody ate, fetch juice and "bunny crackers" and juice and peanut butter sandwiches and juice, ineffectively clean the house, work on the computer, curse at the printer, put a child down for a nap, conduct a large-scale craft project with another child, get into a big argument about the clean-up of said craft project, search every freaking where for tap shoes, get children dressed for dance class, continue argument about craft project clean-up, take children to dance class (even the one who had a fever this morning because I NEEDED A BREAK), work on the computer during dance class, take children home from dance class, take the car to the shop because its brakes are being funky, visit Hobby Lobby for party supplies (icing bags and tips, biiiiiiiig cake pan, candles), have serious conversation with tearful child about how we can't afford to buy her every single party supply in the store for her party (This was huge for me. I seriously want my kid to say, "Wow, Mama! A jump house--that must have cost a fortune! A cake shaped just like a dinosaur--no telling how long it took you to make that! I couldn't ask for anything more!" Instead she's all, "I want a cupcake stand to hold the cupcakes I want! And these purple glittery sprinkles! And these whistles shaped like dogs!" Seriously, what gives?), conclude argument about clean-up of craft project at home (not quite a win, but not quite a loss), melt down from low blood sugar, eat dinner, feel better, go on long bike ride continually harangued by husband because I tend to keep bike in first gear, go home, put kids to bed, collapse.

In other news, the big kid and I are currently being worked up into a complete lather because we have decided to enter stuff into our county fair. It's something that only townies do, but I've been here for eight years now, and it's time. 

Entering the county fair is about as awesome as it gets. There are a million categories, even for kids, and I think that everyone gets a ribbon, and first prize? It's a dollar. Awesome, right? 

So the big kid is entering about a million of the Young Child contests, including jewelry (she beaded a frankly half-hearted necklace but a much better crown), quick bread (is it appropriate for a four-year-old to enter beer bread?), photography (Polaroid film is on our shopping list for tomorrow), collections (hello? Dinosaurs!), and paper art (I have the sweetest fingerpainting with foam heart collage that she did last week during a break from painting the playhouse. Seriously, it rocks). I, too, am entering tons, including recycled art (I'm thinking my favorite fatty steg), sewing for children (pillowcase dress?), holiday ornaments (I made these crazy spiderwebby wire things with black beads while the big kid was throwing beads around the room this afternoon), photography, and whatever else I can come up with before Wednesday (I only found the entry information this week, and not being a townie, on account of they just KNOW things, I practically had to hack into somebody's server to find it). 

I'm making Matt enter, too--he's going to enter some of the comic strips we've drawn into the Sketch category, and tomorrow night he's getting out the Legos to show the big kid, because they have a Lego category both for adults and young children. See? Awesome. 

I've even got my dear friend to come over on Wednesday so we can go over to the fairgrounds all together and I can make her enter these messenger bags and purses she crochets out of plastic bags. Crochets, people. Out of plastic bags.

So my photography entries are pretty much ready, except, you know, that I still have to crop the borders off them and matte them and buy a frame and frame them, but yeah, pretty much ready. 

This is my entry for the Black and White Class:

It's the big kid with a sparkler. I like how abstract it is, how you maybe can't even tell that it's a child with a sparkler. It's just chaotic and beautiful and maybe frightening, just like my life.

Do you enter your county fair? You should.

Trashion/Refashion Show 2019: Gibbon Girl

It's fun to see how Syd has grown in the nine years that she's participated in our town's Trashion/Refashion Show:

2011: Fairy Princess

2012: Rainbow Fairy

2013: Rose Dress

2014: Upside-Down Orange

2015: The Awesomes (with WILL!!!)

2016: The Phoenix (which I sewed while sick with the flu)

2017: Supergirl of the Night (the last design that I helped Syd sew)

2018: Medieval Maiden (the first garment that Syd constructed completely independently)

And that brings us to 2019: The Year of the Gibbon!

These are Syd's application pictures, and every year they suck, because February is rarely well-lit. Oh, well. You can still see that Syd's vision is a caped black tunic and leggings (upcycled from a few black tops and sweaters that we thrifted). The highlight of the garment is a pair of sleeves that Syd can make look ruched, but can also make look like this:

She used a pair of pants for those sleeves, and later altered it so that she could have a secret pass-through for her hands when they're in their super-long formation.

Syd really, really liked the idea of sleeves that drape like a bridal train, but she also intended from the beginning that they could be fully weaponized, like so:

I love seeing her have so much fun with her design. From the very beginning, Syd's garments have always been playful, and most of them embrace big, powerful movement.

Her garments are never something that you simply wear; they're something that you DO:

 Our town's Trashion/Refashion Show is happily well-situated within our busy spring every year--it's generally about a month after cookie season, and about a month before Syd's birthday party. It's nice, because as soon as we finish planning for one thing, we can move right into the next!

The day of the fashion show is the hair/makeup call, then the stage rehearsal, then cooling our heels in the house while the other acts rehearse--

--then the pizza party--

--then the fun time of squeezing into a few square inches in the overcrowded dressing rooms backstage--

--and then I go sit in the audience with the rest of the extended family, and Syd?

She shines.

Here are some cheater pics that I took during the dress rehearsal:

And here's the real show:



This year's official show photographer has been taking photos for four years now, and he also created the slideshow that played between the acts. Check out this awesome tribute that he made for all of the Trashion Kids--he made a whole slide for each kid that he'd seen come back every year, and here's Syd's!

Look at how she's grown. Syd actually HATES it when people tell her how much she's grown (it's Nutcracker-related trauma on account of they cast by height and they're always looking for the shortest kids and it sucks), but look at the kid in those photos. She has grown! Syd has always been an artist, but she's become such an able DIYer, too, confidently constructing her vision garment from top to bottom, shoes to hairstyle. Those leggings? She sewed them from a stretchy black sweater, sure, but she also did it WITHOUT A PATTERN. No template. She didn't even trace another pair of leggings! She just... started cutting, sewed them up, and boom. Perfect leggings.

Perfect leggings. Smoky eye shadow that she applied herself. A garment with sleeves fit for royalty and suitable as long-range weapons.

I absolutely can't wait to see what this kids does next.