radio-active

Today is the inception of a specific time in our house. A ritual of family obligation and appreciation. A time devoted, intensely, to the fulfillment of dreams. Today, I have begun the kids Halloween costumes. And already I have been thrown off of my proverbial horse.

This year's big hill to climb: Henry's jellyfish costume. Nora wants to be a fairy, no problem, I already had the wings (don't ask). But Henry always wants to be some sort of off the wall thing. Something that no person in god's good earth would have thought about shoving into a prepackaged thing sold at walmart. Last year was a Nordic warrior. I went and bought tons of fur lined things and glued them strategically onto a sweatshirt... fur in every crevice of my basement. To this day there is still fur floating around down there. Throw an axe into his hand and away we go. The year before, he wanted to be the guy from that black and white video game that came out on XBOX that year... LIMBO. No problem black outfit... bunch of cotton shreds and a seriously big spider. This one though... this one is taking some effort. A jelly fish. Not just any jelly fish... a moon jelly.

I went down to the laboratory, I mean basement, today and gathered material.
1. Clear Bubble Umbrella
2. 25 blue glow sticks (more about these later)
3. Those bendy balloons that magicians use
4. Bubble wrap (big bubbles only please)
5. Strips of white cloth
6. Various utensils for cutting
7. The ubiquitous hot glue gun

Missing materials:
1. some sort of harness to attach the thing to Henry so he can devote both hands to shoveling in the candy load.
2. Medical attention....... (Again, we'll talk about this later)

I was ready. I even invited Henry down into the depths to watch the beginnings of the transformation.Thank god he got bored at some point and went back upstairs... I opened the umbrella, perfect, just the way Amazon described it. Very bubbly, very moon jellyfish. Oh, I should include a picture of a moon jelly for reference. So you get the idea. Today I started experimenting with the four circles (Henry has informed me that they are stomachs) in the center of the thing. My idea was good. I will take the magician balloons, find four blue ones and shove a glow stick inside of them, bend the things into circles and tie them off. Then, I will suspend them from the inside of the umbrella with tape or glue stick or what have you. The problem was that no matter how hard I tried, I could not get the glow stick inside the balloon. (Lets all think eighth grade health class here). It kept ripping and well.. just not very successful.

I tried for nearly an hour, using things to wedge the thing open. Nothing. So, a great idea: split the glow stick, pour the glowy, radioactive looking fluid into the balloon, inflate the balloon, tie it off and tada!! Glowing circles! Well, I learned that the glowing, radio active looking fluid inside a glow stick is actually two fluids, one being held in a tiny, very breakable, glass vial within the light stick. That's why the stick has to be bent to become actively glowy. So, I sheered off the top of the glow stick with a knife, success; expanded the end of the balloon around the end of a small funnel without tearing it, success; poured the glowey, dangerous looking fluid into the balloon thus finding the little shards of glass vial, success; (this is where the warning sirens should have started whistling in my head... but no), remove the shards with needle nose pliers and dispose of them in a waiting trash bin, success; take the balloon and inflate it with a pump used for inflating pool floaties, thus avoiding touching the nasty smelling, glowing, radioactive looking fluid to my lips, success; bend the balloon into a semi-circular shape and tie off the end to the left over, uninflated portion at the end of the balloon; YES! Success; Shake said balloon out of pure joy and to coat the nicely glowing balloon completely, thus nearly perfectly replicating a moon jelly stomach and allowing your son to experience true jellyfish happiness during Halloween, well that wasn't so successful. The balloon completely popped and sent the nasty smelling, radioactive looking, glowey, combined chemical substance shooting outward in a spray that found its way into every open orifice in my face, as well as over everything in my workshop. Click the picture below to get a good look at how completely this thing exploded over everything in my shop and just imagine my excited, open-mouthed face roughly 1 foot from the chemical bomb) Fortunately, the stuff is non toxic. But it stings like heck when it gets in your eyes, let me tell you. Also, ten minutes of holding your eye under a running faucet didn't feel very nice either. Also, Also, glow stick fluid tastes like nuclear fallout, just in case you were wondering.