Eating play dough may have paid off....

When I was a kid my mom used to make us play dough using flour, water, who knows what else, and a LOT of salt.  We always seemed to have a gallon ice cream bucket filled with play dough and to this day I can remember the smell that came wafting out when you pulled the top of the container off.
Also when I was a kid- I loved salt.  I mean, is there a kid who DIDN'T love salt?  I know so many people who would just eat straight up spoon fulls of butter when they were little, so I guess I should be grateful I wasn't doing that.  However... there was a play dough eating incident....  I had a friend growing up who I spent a lot of time with, I won't call him out by name but let's just say he's moved on to a much higher place in the world than I did since he finished a master's degree in biomechanical engineering at Stanford in the last couple of years- so i guess this incident didn't ruin him so I'll claim the same for myself.  Anyway, this friend and I spent a lot of time together and looking back on it I think we generally found ourselves getting into a lot of mischief.  So there was a time when my mom had made play dough and at 5 years old that play dough smelled kind of... well... tasty....  so my friend and I climbed under the dining room table with our gallon of play dough and proceeded to eat it.  I don't know if we each had a small bite or if we ate half of the container, but I do know that when my mom found us she was surprisingly less angry than I expected and now I realize it's because I'm sure she was using all of her strength not to just start laughing at these two very small children hiding with a gallon of play dough.

I'm not entirely sure what has possessed me to share this rather embarrassing story with the entire internet community (although I'm guessing only about 3 people will even read this, and I pray that this boy never reads this...) but here we are, with my play dough past now out in the open.

So anyway, I went to a training today that was hosted by the Children's Advocacy Taskforce and whenever they host a training they put out play dough (and this time pipe cleaners) for people to play with while they listen to the presenters- I guess they understand that we all need to occupy ourselves while listening to presenters who are a little over our social worky heads.  So before lunch I started with the pipecleaners and the very kind Petersburg police officer next to me even gave me his so I could continue my creations (I think he was amused by me).  The only thing worthwhile that I created from the pipecleaners was a dog.  He needed a way to stand up so I dove into the play dough to create a platform that, as it dried, ended up looking a bit like a surfboard.

This general dog design has been my only real method at creating dogs since probably about fourth grade.  I checked a book out of the Lousy Crotch- I mean- Lyles Crouch (my second-level elementary school) library about how to draw (clearly art has always been a skill I've always longed for) and really the only thing that stuck was this "scruffy" dog which is basically made up of scribbles.  So i used my scruffy dog design to make this little guy who I will ask Joe to name since he's gifted at naming things.

Once he was done I was a little obsessed with creating things (especially since the first presenter kept talking about neuroscience and I only understood ever 5th word or so) so I helped my coworker create some eggs for what, I think, was meant to be an easter basket but ended up looking more like a nest of totally awesome dinosaur eggs.

After the eggs I attempted to pay attention... but that didn't last long... so I was back to the playdough.  I had really bright colors so I decided to make some calla lilies because they seemed straight forward.  After I'd made one I needed a container so I made a box/basket thing...  and then I thought they looked pretty cool.

Please disregard my notes...

So then it was lunch time and one of the staff members announced that she was going to have 6 people who didn't create anything with the dough to judge the stuff everyone had made.  Unfortunately I was not pronounced the winner.  It ended up being between a former coworker from my old agency who made a glass of wine and some music notes and my current coworker with the basket of eggs.  Highway robbery if you ask me.  Anyway, the eggs won so I took a little credit for the win since I helped!

After lunch there was a presentation which I'd already seen so I started doodling a tree I'd seen out front during lunch- you know how I love trees.  While I was doodling the tree I realized I might be able to use to dough to create a neat tree.  When I started the creation process my former-supervisor (and my advocate role model), who was sitting next to me kept saying "well... that's... interesting?"  Granted- at first it looked like some weird-antler kind of thing.  However, as it grew and started looking like a tree I noticed my coworker couldn't stop staring at it, it was pretty funny.  Once I added the "flowers" she couldn't stop talking about it either- "It looks like some kind of Japanese art!"  "I wish you'd turned the paper over so you had a blank background!"  Part of my felt like I should gift it to her- maybe I'll create something out of real clay or sculpy for her.

It looks different now that it's kind of dried out.  I was working with play dough after all so I guess I couldn't really expect it to hold it's shape.  As it dried it kind of.. shrunk I guess, so some of the branches have pulled away from each other and the base of the branches pulled away from the trunk completely.  Plus, you can see the VSDVAA logo under the top of the tree which is too bad, but it's still kind of neat.

As I was collecting all of my crazy-kindergarten-artwork everyone walking by kept saying "Oh how pretty!"  "Wow that's so creative!"  and I have to admit that I loved every second of it since artistically creative has never been me at all.  Needless to say that I enjoyed aspects of the actual training, but overall I loved my day of creation.

But I admit.... the best part of the day was meeting Joe at Deluca Gelato after the training since we were both on that side of town.  I got to have my favorite amaretto gelato and I even tried a new one!!!  I tried the chocolate, coconut, rum and damn it was tasty!