Diamonds Are Forever...Except When They're Not

My best friend left me. No, not the handsome dude in the photo. Diamonds are supposed to be a girl’s best friend, but if you are a flower girl on a mission, they just might leave you.

First, I blogged about my anniversary. Then Rena challenged everyone to post a wedding photo, and then Carrie wrote about diamonds hidden in sticks of deodorant. All that reminded me of how I LOST the DIAMOND right out of my engagement ring.

Recently I was a floral designer for a special event company. Big corporate types threw giant extravaganzas with varying themes. We provided the flowing volcanoes, the ten foot tall elephant sculptures, the authentic Mexican produce carts, all with exotic coordinating florals. Sometimes clients wanted weird things. One day I was commissioned to come up with a container large enough to create a giant floral that would incorporate, among other things, a Styrofoam lemon bigger than a Thanksgiving turkey.

I combed the warehouse for props. I found an oversized megaphone that looked promising - just the right shape for a vase. More digging turned up a large umbrella stand. If I shoved the four foot long megaphone upright onto the umbrella stand - voila! I’d have one extra-large floral urn.

I just needed about five pounds of hot glue to hold it together. I melted dozens of gluesticks to fuse the cone to the base, so the whole display wouldn’t topple onto a chocolate fountain and splatter someone’s spiffy attire. I painted the entire thing a blinding yellow to match the overgrown lemon. The result was dazzling.

I can’t say the same for my ring. I felt something pokey on my left hand and looked down to find four empty prongs where my diamond used to be. There was only one logical explanation; my diamond was now embedded in a hunk of glue in the hollows of a giant megaphone.



I considered melting the whole thing down, possibly ending up with no diamond and no job, either. I figured it was futile to try to find it.

There should be a moral in there somewhere. Loose stones sink in cones? Four prongs don’t make it right? If life gives you lemons, make lemonade - but hold the ice?

So diamonds might be a glue’s best friend. But hey, I still have that handsome dude in the photo.