Cute but Wild

Feral

I had exactly one thing I needed to accomplish while Alexis was at dance tonight. I -had- to buy toilet paper. Remember last year at this time how that was a panic situation? GOOD TIMES! There's no panicking now, though there were advantages to those store runs back in 2020. I didn't take kids with me because we weren't sure if it was't entirely safe. And, well, there was NOBODY at Target. It was so delightfully empty on a weekday evening.

Aaaaahhh. the joy of shopping alone. It's still one of my favorite things. Alas, Mila was with me this evening, so that meant she got to go to Target. It wasn't all that crowded, because weeknight, so I made the very critical error of not walking directly to the toilet paper.

I think I've mentioned that Mila has gone feral since the pandemic began. IT'S TRUE. She has completely forgotten how to behave in public. COMPLETELY. She also missed out on over a year of shopping and that kid is a shopping fiend.

And her birthday is in a little under a month.

Mila decided she was going to leverage the opportunity to compile her very long list of things I should buy her for her birthday. She plowed her way to the toy department and trolled every aisle, picking up every single freakin toy and declaring her love for it. I tried about 4000000 times to get her to move the show along, but she is the joy chaser. The kid chases joy 24/7 and has zero regard for what comes right after the joy. So, picking up a doll and yelling, "I want this!" is just great to her. She has no worries at all when she can't see me or when I'm yelling, "Let's gooooooo" or anything. She just keeps on keeping on.

For real, I lost the kid twice because she detoured to look at something sparkly and then got distracted by something shiny and then wound her way around to something special. She just WANDERS, following her personally curated trail of joy.

I on purpose lost her once to try to teach her a lesson (I say "lost" but I snuck around behind her and stayed out of sight while still keeping tabs on her) but SHE DIDN'T CARE. It's easier to chase joy when the joy killer gets lost, y'all.

Two hours. It took us two hours to walk through Target and buy freakin' toilet paper.

How do you re-tame a kid? I really need to figure this out and quick.

Mila Wins, As Usual

So, dance competition in Columbus. Alexis did a kick-ass job, as we would all expect, but it was ... weird. Columbus, that is. Columbus was weird. It doesn't take a genius to figure out why; Columbus police shot and killed a Black teenager within minutes of the Chauvin verdict. I'll stick to the data on this one - the Columbus police use force against Blacks and other minorities disproportionately. There is absolutely a problem.

And, thus, there's a lot of protesting going on.

The Columbus Convention Center is blocks away from where most of the protests have been taking place. That, I suppose, is the explanation for why there were police helicopters circling the area for much of the time that we were there. It's also, I suppose, the reason why there were police officers EVERYWHERE. The Convention Center itself was operating with extra security - lots of doors were locked and ways in and out of the facility blocked off. That's the very simple explanation for how I spent three hours driving, five hours watching dance, and yet had over 20,000 steps on Sunday. Taking the long way absolutely everywhere adds up fast.

Anyway, lots of law enforcement. Lots and lots and lots. They were very obviously positioned and I have plenty of thoughts about that, but it's mostly irrelevant to the story I'm about to tell, so.

There was a point when there was a nearly two-hour break between Alexis' performances. She's perfectly content spending those long breaks with her dance friends, but Mila and I needed to go find something to do. I guess we could have stayed there and watched several dances, but ... nah. We've seen all of them. We're good.

So we went to a park. It was only a block away from one of the few entrances/exits to the facility, so most of the walk was indoors (with literally nobody around because holy smokes that's a big facility). We walked through the park and then settled into a playground for a few minutes.

It was a short stay because the police helicopter that was literally circling the three city blocks of park was unnerving, to say the least. It was flying low and going around and around and around and while I knew there was no particular reason for it to be so focused on the park, it was still stressful because what if there was a problem RIGHT there in the park, y'know? There's no reason to patrol that long in one spot when there's nothing happening. The protests were a few blocks over but also super peaceful so WHATEVER.

Opinions, I have them. Mostly they involve not murdering people and not threatening people, but WHATEVER WHATEVER WHATEVER.

I decided we were leaving. It was too much and though Mila was COMPLETELY oblivious, I wanted to keep it that way. I had no good explanation for any of the law enforcement presence. Miss Oblivious, of course, was in no hurry to leave. She was busy running in circles and climbing on rocks and hanging off fences. Like this.

And THAT is the photo. That is the photo that caused the man who is so very clearly standing in the background to come running up to me and SCREAM at me for taking a photo of him. Are you confused? Because I WAS, TOO. Apparently I looked as confused as I felt because the man opted to explain that he was an FBI agent (he flashed a badge, but I didn't even attempt to look at it) and I was not allowed to take photos of him and ... WHATEVER.

Ahem.

I really don't know why any of it happened. Clearly I was paying zero attention to him and clearly he needed to go back to leaving the lady and her kid alone. I'll leave it at that.

But Mila wins the whole thing. Miss Mila, she who cares NOT AT ALL about consequences, heard him say, "You can't take photos of me" and turned right to him, hands on hips, and snapped, "She's not taking pictures of YOU. She's taking pictures of ME."

So, uh, we left real quick after that.