"Sew, old one! Sew like the wind!"

Crunch week, no time to post. Hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving. We did.

My brother may regret frying that first turkey. It was hugely popular and may have to become a regular, and grossly expensive, addition to the meal.

The third generation is growing up like fast forward. Little girls are beautiful young women, the boys are heading towards, or topping, six feet, some of them can legally drive. Makes me wish my mom were still with us, so she could see them.

And Mr. Bubs, the beau of the ball again. The hub-bub made him clingy at first- he wouldn't even come to his Mimi, but after a while he warmed up and ran around outside, with K's fiancee as wrangler. "Good baby training" said Sissy to K's mom. "Anything we can do!" said K's mom. Bubs has inherited his Aunt Migg's fear of taxidermy: the big mounted deer head was as good as a baby gate at keeping him off the stairs.

Brother brought Rachel and Miggs brought Plum. Both were big hits and I think they had a good time. Plum brought a pecan pie. Rachel had baked an apple-cranberry with crumb topping, but forgot it. I think she was a little nervous, but she needn't have been.

Miggs presented her grandfather with his 80th birthday present, a beautiful hand-knitted afghan. She had an original false start that she passed on to me -acrylics shall not sully her hand- and began again with a baby alpaca that was so expensive that she had to wait for every payday to buy a new skein. Which is why his April b-day was being gifted in November. He was delighted: "This really took a lot of thought and work, Miggs." Which for him is like another man's standing ovation.

We were having a girly re-hash of the previous night's Project Runway, when my youngest brother said "That's it- we're critiquing the pies. Now, this pumpkin- I do not think that you challenged yourself very much with this. Next time, I want to see more creativity. And this chess pie- do you feel that you acheived your vision of it? Let's talk about your workmanship on this pecan- this crust can stand a lot of improvement."

Good times...

Drama-rama

Well…
Ro and I both went to “How to Succeed” on Saturday night. She met up with six or seven of her alumni friends, and sat just above the walk-through with them. I was several rows up behind them.

Delightful production, acting-wise. The lead is very polished, and her old reliables are giving good solid performances. Several of the kids have improved greatly since last year. The young man with the wonderful voice who, in Les Mis, was instructed to ‘stand behind this barrel and don’t move”, has graduated to a real supporting role with funny bits of business. You can tell that the dance teacher labored long and hard to achieve the level of choreography this year. It’s all going very well.

First act ends, second act begins. Here comes the scene which introduces the pirates and the Treasure Hunt Give-away. But what is this pink and black one-shoulder dress she’s wearing? Where is her pirate costume? The next scene is the TV show. Everyone else is in black and pink, as well, with primary colored boas on their hats, which looks distinctly odd. What happened to all that multi-colored crepeback satin? I could literally hear the thought waves rising from Ro, rows in front: “What the hell? WHERE ARE OUR PIRATES?”

Finale, curtain calls, standing O, lights out. Ro and I collide in the walk-through.
“What happened? What was that they were wearing?”
“I have no idea! What do you think went wrong? Can you go find out?
(Because you can’t approach a director surrounded by happy congratulatory parents and old students and ask awkward questions, when there may be a simple explanation.)
“I’ll go backstage and ask Mrs. ______ and tell you when I get home.”
“Thank you! Oh, and Ro- be cool.”

An hour or so later she arrives with the skinny: the costumes were fine, fit great, looked cute, but when worn under the spotlight they used for that scene, they were too shiny, bright and distracting. They borrowed some outfits from the drill team instead. IOW, they “went another direction.”
Whew- their mistake, not mine. What a relief after awful speculation.
These things happen, and you have to do what works best for the production.
And I still get paid...