Bubbles

Because I like to be all Tiger mom and shit, I decided that I was going to do something fun with the kids this weekend.  Alexis had a friend spend the night, so I looked up some tutorials and decided we were going to make some ginormous bubbles.  As I was putting this shit together for the kids, I realized that I could certainly make my own tutorial for this craft as I was not following one exactly.  So that is exactly what I am setting out to do here, for the reading enjoyment of my 9 followers.  I mean, it's not like I am using this blog to generate income or anything (mostly because I am too lazy to figure out  how the ads work, plus the whole 32 cents I could potentially generate from my 9 followers seems to not be worth the effort involved).  I am going to walk you through how I made ginormous bubbles for the kids.  But minus any actual pictures of how I did it, because you all aren't fucking idiots and I imagine that you could figure out how to screw eye hooks into a dowel rod and tie some string to it, as well as how to mix shit together for bubbles.  Anyways...Welcome to my mind.  May the odds be ever in your favor. It's not too late to turn back, you know....


Still here?  Great.  Let's begin.

So the original tutorial I found gave some basic directions on how to make the wands for these huge ass bubbles.  It seemed fun, and if it was an epic fail it was summer and I could potentially hose the children down and/or burn the evidence of this craft, so I gathered up the shit I needed.  Some dowel rods.  Some eye hooks and washers.  Cotton string.  I measured the children up and cut the string.  Then I needed to insert the eye hooks into the ends of the dowel rods.

Now the lady at that link said something about just screwing them in without drilling first.  Fuck.  That.  Shit.  It was hurting my little fingies, and I need those to unscrew the top of the margarita mix and my Xanax bottle once  Alexis's friend headed home, amirite?  So I grabbed my husband's drill and a teeny drill bit, but the drill already had a screwdriver head on it so I had to find him to get it off and put the new bit on.  For some reason I can't fucking figure out how to do that on a drill.  I hand the drill and the bit to him, and he looks at me with the wariness of a man who is married to a crazy lady who likes to do crazy things.  Like this one time, when I was like 7 months pregnant, I started to dig up what I thought was a small rock in our yard, and it ended up being one that required two men to lift and a wheelbarrow to transport to what I was told had to be its forever home because he wasn't ever fucking moving that fucking huge ass thing again.  (In my husband's defense, he doesn't swear that much at all, so I may have added some extra emphasis there with the cussing.  His tone totally said all that though.)

Anyways, I get the wands all set up and then realize...these are fucking nunchucks.  With an extra added bonus of a washer to add some extra knockout power.  What made me think that giving Charlie these was a good idea?

Sure, give three children under the age of 10 these potential weapons.  What could possibly go wrong?

At this point, I start to question my (remaining, because let's be honest, there wasn't much there) sanity and really wish it would be ok to just start pounding the wine.  Since I am a semi-responsible adult, I refrain and move on to creating the bubble mixture.

Now, in that original tutorial, the video shows the bubbles not lasting very long.  Of course, I am all like fuck that shit, our bubbles are going to last longer.  Tiger mom, remember?  So I hit Google up, go to a second tutorial, and mix some magic bubble potion up.

That is baking power on the floor next to the bubbles.  I promise.  Semi-responsible, remember?

We were supposed to let the mixture sit for an hour at least, but of course I can't be arsed to follow the directions so we head out after 20 minutes.  I mentally prepare myself for the possibility of this being as big a failure as Sean Spicer's spins on his boss's rhetoric while attempting to hide in shrubbery, and gather up the children to head outside to try this out.

And you know what?  Holy fucking shitballs, it works.

No spin needed here, Spicey!  These are tremendous bubbles!

A twofer, even!

So there you have it folks, my first very lazy tutorial on how to make big ass bubbles.  On a ranking scale of being able to be sober to necessitating speed-balling to get through, this one is one I can handle without the aid of pharmaceuticals.  

Rainbows III

By now, you should know the significance of rainbows and my son for me.  If not, you can find it here, here, and here.  Most people also don't know this, but a baby born after a loss is called a rainbow baby.  Technically, I have two of those, Alexis and Charlie, though not many people know that either.

If you would have told me after my son died that I would soon become obsessed with the white light of the sun being refracted through raindrops into something colorful in the sky, I would have looked at you askew.  Of course, if you would have told me that I would be willing to get twice daily injections of heparin into my pregnant stomach to keep my body from killing a baby after that, I would have looked at you the same way...point is, it has become a pretty significant thing for me to see a rainbow.

I always loved storms.  As a child, I would sit in our front room and look out the window as they came rolling in from the west.  I used to freak my sister out by jokingly running into the middle of our lawn and licking my finger and holding it up in the air for the lightning to come strike me.  (I am strangely confused as to why it did not, but perhaps it was because I was still an innocent child?  I don't tempt fate now, I tell you what...)  Of course, I always came in before the rain started, because ew.  Water.  But even the torrential downpours that accompanied a thunderstorm were fascinating to me, from the dry safety of our house, of course.

I honestly don't remember seeing that many rainbows as a child.  Most likely explanation is that I simply wasn't looking for them.  I didn't run outside when the sun started shining in the west and it was still dark in the east to look for them.  They were no where near as meaningful at that time as they are now for me.  I've said it before, I am fully aware that the times in my life with rainbows are probably just as much a coincidence as the times with fire (and I haven't even talked about all the fire alarm drama, either...).  I like to think that the rainbows aren't, that my son is still with me even as his ashes sit on my dead people's shelf in my living room.  (For the record, he is the only literal dead person on this shelf.  It's not like I am collecting corpses to pose on this shelf in a variety of positions.   It has other mementos from our passed on loved ones, as well as his urn.   I strangely feel the need to clarify this for you people.)

I'm really hoping that the fire shit isn't like a sign from hell, though.  That would not strike me in the feels nearly as much as the whole rainbow thing.