My Favorite Martian

How many of you out there are artists or crafters? Hands up.

Well as all artists or crafters will tell you, when we are at work things can get messy.

From splattered aprons…

To residue under our fingernails and dyed skin.

Not to mention burns from hot glue guns, kilns, etc.

Well the experience I had the other day was quite different then I’ve ever had.

So this month at work we are all about space; astronauts, aliens, the sun, planets, etc.

So the other day our theme was the moon. We pretended to be walking on it, read some adorable books: Moon Rope by Lois Ehle, Kitten’s First Full Moon by Kevin Henkes, and Happy Birthday Moon by Frank Asch (all some of my favorites).

After, it was time for our craft in which we were making moon rocks.

I was following the recipe the Crafty Chicks gave out, but things didn’t go exactly as expected.

So the recipe was drier than I expected. We kept trying to make the balls but they weren’t sticking together.

But never fear. I am a prime tortilla and pie dough maker, so I know exactly what to do in this situation, add more water.

So I knead it all together like making pie or tortillas and it comes out great. Except that now my hands are dyed a very dark green.

Yes, the food coloring I used to dye the rocks came off on my hands, like the Crafting Chicks said it would, but I was not prepared for how much.

My hands were super dark green. And then when I went to wash the, it wouldn’t come off.

I tried as much as I could, but they were too stained. Guess I should’ve worn gloves.

The kids all said I looked like an alien.

I told them, maybe I am an alien and my human makeup came off…

But they knew I was just joking. Although it did make me want to go out and say “Klaatu barada nikto” like in The Day the Earth Stood Still.

But there is a limited demographic that will understand what I’m saying. That is what happens when you are an old soul.

It still was weird walking around with green hands. I kept getting all these strange looks from people as they were trying to figure out why my hands looked like that.

But such is the life!

For more on stories from my everyday life, go to Escape to Alcatraz

For more on aliens, go to Someone Has Erased His Memory: Total Recall (1990)