“Bubbles, it’s going to be a long night.”

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I’ve never understood why makers of sparkly shoes don’t go balls-to-the wall with it. Usually they’ll have sparkly sides but boring toe caps, and as a person with child-size, hoof-like feet, my pants tend to cover up the majority of the shoe other than the toe cap. This is unacceptable, and I decided to take a pair of shoes I owned from sort-of sparkly to Michael-Jackson-disco-ball-explosion-unicorn-fart-SHAZAM. They’re now my Damien Hirst shoes, entitled “For the love of sweet sparkly Jesus”.

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Here’s how:

Take the item you want to funkify, and clean it until  there’s no more dirt and grime or gross buildup. Rubbing alcohol works magic on white shoes. Get some Gem-Tac, a china marker, and an approximate buttload of flat-back rhinestones. You’ll want to go glass rather than acrylic–glass is more reflective and plastic will get scuffed up and look cheap, rendering your item ugly and your time wasted. You definitely want to order the rhinestones online, because they are cheaper wholesale than in the craft stores by an order of magnitude. You can use whatever size rhinestones you want, the smaller the stone, the more more sparklicious impact the project will have, but bear in mind it will be fussier and require many more stones per square inch. I used SS16 (4mm)on this project, for example, but on something smaller like a cell phone, I’d want to use a smaller stone.  Spread some Gem-Tac on the area you intend to cover (it’s easier to work a bit at a time than covering the whole surface with glue.) and pick up and place the rhinestones with the tip of the china marker. You can use tweezers instead if you’re a fan of frustration, I won’t judge. Rinse and repeat until you’re done. Once you’ve let the glue dry, you’ve got a piece of eye-searing sunshine on your hands.

 

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BLAM. Sparkle time!

Use this power wisely.

Meeting the Parents

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Jason’s mom came to visit in late March. I was a bundle of nerves about meeting her, and each sly poke from a friend with a sideways glance and a “So….meeting the mother-in-law, eh?” made it harder. It’s difficult enough trying to make a good impression on your boyfriend’s mom without the thought that she may well hate you for the better part of the next forty years if your relationship takes the next step. It’s like an interview with the boss after you already have the job.

I needn’t have worried. Moms always love me, because I can crank on the charm at will, making me the Eddie Haskell of girlfriends. The last serious relationship I was in, the mother credited me in front of her son for making him a good person, which was a lovely compliment save for the implication that even though moms are supposed to love you unconditionally, prior to the point in time where we started dating, he was on a mental checklist as “not making the grade”. She still sent me birthday cards for years after we broke up. She may well have loved me more than her son did!

Jason’s mom was to be in town for a week; we were supposed to meet as a group for dinner on Wednesday, and then I expected I would be on my own for the rest of the time, as Jason and his brother spent time with their mom. Instead, I was invited to everything that week. She said I was a member of the family now, said she’d told everyone about me, and invited me along on a family trip this fall–it really could not have gone better.

I can only hope that Jason’s first meeting with my mom next month goes as well. My hopes aren’t particularly high, as on one occasion, she asked me “Is Jason Jewish? Because he looks a little Jew-y*” and on another occasion, she was concerned that I was out on a daytrip with Tristan without Jason because I “wouldn’t want to be with one of those jealous guys who turns out to be a beater**.” So apparently she’s got an impression of him already as some sort of Jewish girlfriend-beater. However, she’s also supposedly “desperately in love” with someone she met on Match.com though they’ve never met in person and I “couldn’t possibly understand because [I’ve] never felt that way before”…so let’s take alllllllllllllll of that with heaping tablespoon of salt.

*Wow, mom. W-O-W. **Here I burst into hysterical laughter and said “I can’t even begin to describe the number of things wrong with that statement.” When I turned to Tristan and related my mom’s sentiment, he started laughing and said “Maybe I could see YOU beating HIM but not the other way around.”