Category Archives: tattoo

feeling unprepared

Tuesday is the big day. The day of my next tattoo. The one that I’ve been planning in my head for a bit over a year, and planning on “paper” for the last week or so. I had asked two different pros for help with the artwork; but both flaked on me, leaving me to create it on my own. I am now breaking two of my own tattoo rules: nothing on my back where I have to contort to see it, and nothing I’ve drawn myself.

I expect that the final design, as applied, will be imperfect. Tattoos are done by hand, after all. As is the hot-rod pinstriping that this tattoo is based on, so the imperfection is something I can live with. But… I want the art to be as perfect as possible going in, so that the tattoo artist has a good foundation from which to deviate. And I’m obsessing. It will be permanent, after all. I am so glad that I’m putting it on my back, so that I can’t easily see it and be haunted by changes I would make were I to look at it every day. Because every day, I have been moving the lines around. Every. Single. Day. While I’m writing this, in fact. Tuesday evening, the madness has to stop.

I might be on Vicodin during the tattoo after all, because I horked my neck Sunday morning. I’m starting to think that this is some old teenage headbanging injury that I keep aggravating. I few times a year, I am nearly immobilized by making some minor move that winds up royally jacking me up. Sunday, I stretched. Yep, that’s right. I stretched. Your average, everyday, just-got-out-of-bed stretch. PING! Can’t move my head. I spent most of the day on the couch with my microwave heating pad, alternating between Advil and Vicodin. Monday was an improvement, but I still feel pretty beat up. I don’t know if I’ll be able to run over to my massage therapy office on Tuesday, but I hope to get this worked out a bit before I have to sit in the tattoo artist’s chair for an hour. I’ll be tense enough during that, thankyouverymuch, without the additional muscle spasms.

The evil morning stretch preceded a wonderful breakfast prepared by Joe for those of us who spent the night after Nova‘s birthday/Paris party. French toast, of course, and granola and yogurt and berries. Oh my! I would have posted the photos sooner, but really, I was that laid out. Besides, the photos coming from Phoenix are much more interesting! MARS, people. Fekkin’ Mars.

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Perspective

Terminal illness. Family deaths. Looming divorce. The swift and unexpected wreckage left behind by a tornado, which killed at least one person and destroyed crops, homes, and businesses in a community about 60 50 miles north of me on Thursday.

None of it makes my own problems go away, but it sure makes me feel like a heel for getting worked up over them.

David: …well this is thoroughly depressing.
Nigel: It really puts perspective on things, though, doesn’t it?
David: Too much, there’s too much fucking perspective now.

So I’ll take a deep breath, I’ll put on a smile, I’ll enjoy the time I have with my friends. A Friday night showing of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. A belated birthday party. A barbecue at a friend’s house. Maybe a barbecue at my house, to celebrate my new patio umbrella (lunatic squirrels finally ate through the old one). A moment remembering my grandfather, who served in the Army during WWII, and thinking about my great uncle Harry, who was killed in service. A lot of time devoted to perfecting the artwork I’ll be having permanently embedded under my epidermis on Tuesday night. Not at all anxious about that, no.

Best wishes for a weekend spent with those you love, and who love you.

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Let the second-guessing begin

In spite of my (ridiculous and unfounded, yes I know) fear of talking to strangers, I finally stopped into Tribal Rites on Tuesday to speak with Greg about my next tattoo. At no point did he laugh at me or in any way make me feel inadequate. Good start. Also, he’s already done at least one tattoo in a style similar to what I’m looking for. Bonus. He had some excellent suggestions regarding the sketch I brought in. We talked time-in-chair (“Probably an hour, depending on how you take it.” “Well, I’m not going to be laughing through it.”), we talked pricing, we talked line thickness. We did not talk Vicodin, only because I forgot to ask. We talked simultaneous appointment with his Padawan, Dean, for Nova, who will have a little work done at the same time. BFF and all. I can check her placement, and she can check mine. Whoever finishes first will crack open the whiskey for her suffering pal. Now, we just have to do it. On Tuesday night.

Shit.

_________________

Off topic: I know that it’s a cliché to fall in love with any Jason Mraz song, but I heard the line “I tried to be chill but you’re so hot that I melted” on the radio one April evening, and was completely taken. The whole song is ridiculously happy. Damn him and his pop sensibility!

Well you done done me and you bet I felt it
I tried to be chill but you’re so hot that I melted
I fell right through the cracks
and now I’m trying to get back
Before the cool done run out
I’ll be giving it my bestest
Nothing’s going to stop me but divine intervention
I reckon it’s again my turn to win some or learn some

I won’t hesitate no more, no more
It cannot wait, I’m yours

Well open up your mind and see like me
Open up your plans and damn you’re free
Look into your heart and you’ll find love love love
Listen to the music of the moment maybe sing with me
A lá peaceful melody
It’s your God-forsaken right to be loved love loved love loved

So I won’t hesitate no more, no more
It cannot wait I’m sure
There’s no need to complicate
Our time is short
This is our fate, I’m yours

I’ve been spending way too long checking my tongue in the mirror
And bending over backwards just to try to see it clearer
My breath fogged up the glass
And so I drew a new face and laughed
I guess what i’m-a saying is there ain’t no better reason
To rid yourself of vanity and just go with the seasons
It’s what we aim to do
Our name is our virtue

I won’t hesitate no more, no more
It cannot wait I’m sure
No need to complicate
Our time is short
It cannot wait, I’m yours

Well no no, well open up your mind and see like me
Open up your plans and damn you’re free
Look into your heart and you’ll find love love love love
Listen to the music of the moment come and dance with me
A lá one big family (2nd time: A lá happy family; 3rd time: A lá peaceful melody)
It’s your God-forsaken right to be loved love love love

I won’t hesitate no more, no more
It cannot wait, I’m sure
There’s no need to complicate
Our time is short
This is our fate, I’m yours

No please, don’t complicate
Our time is short
This is our fate, I’m yours

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time for fresh ink

I have a tattoo. One, measly, “baby’s first” tattoo. Yes, I realize that it’s one more than a lot of people have, but me… I’d wanted ink since I was in my early teens. The catch was waiting to turn 18… and then trying to find something that I could live with FOREVER. The design on my ankle, drawn for me by my sister on the very day I was born, could not be more perfect. My BFITWWW, Mandy, had her ankle inked on the same day, and we considered it a sort of rite of passage into “well, I guess this is as adult as we’re gonna get.”

That was nearly seven years ago.

I am aching for more. And this time, after having experienced the same surgical laser procedure that is used to remove tattoos, I can say that coming up with something I can live with forever is definitely at the forefront of the design process. I’d been tossing around some ideas more and more vocally, when Erin suggested that we get inked together, before she moves to OKC, to commemorate our time together. Which is a lovely idea… but she leaves in July. Now, I have a deadline. I keep coming up with ideas, but nothing seems as solid as the drawing that my sister did. One concept has been rolling around for a year, refusing to die, but I haven’t hammered it out yet…

After spending the past weekend in Las Vegas with a fabulously decorated RAB crowd, I’m trying to get myself to ease up a little. Whatever I get, will be a record of whatever I was feeling in that moment. I might even break my “nothing on my back, where I can’t see it” rule because that one idea I have in mind would look best across my shoulders or as an upper chest piece, and if it isn’t absolutely, inhumanly perfect… frankly, I’d rather not be able to see it.

So, I’m hoping to talk to an artist in person this week, and float a few concepts past him. He’s the guy with the gun, so I’m sure he’ll have some wisdom to impart. And if he comes across as a twit, well, then I keep looking.

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