Random Tuesday: We Kissed, As If Nothing Would Fall*

Right. Let's get to it.

I received an angry email yesterday from Iowa insinuating I have some type of cranial flatulence issue. While that may well be, forgetting her pictures was an accident. So without further ado, the lovely and forgiving Church Punk Mom: "Here's mine.. the verse it references is, "Consider the ravens: They do not sow, or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds!" It's my little reminder to myself that I'm important to God and He's always got my back... cause I seem to forget that.. like.. a LOT."



and here is my husband's... it reads: "Dead to sin, Alive in Christ".. the red arrow represent his sin, which is broken and the two different color eyes are the old him changing to the new him. He likes to use 'band art' for his tattoos.


We're all about customer satisfaction here at Us & Them.

The other day I was out returning some movies. I drive into the strip mall the video store is located in and am immediately nearly t-boned on either side by two Mercedes who apparently believe their right of way is righter than mine because their rides have five digits in the price tag. Well kids, here's the thing. This is a four year old Caravan, I am well insured and my children are not in the car. Not only am I not slowing down because I have the right of way, I am speeding up. Let's test all those vaunted German safety features! Will I get hurt? Don't care! You're payin!

How is it that 'righter' gets past spell check?

Four months after starting to paint my bathroom it is finally finished. I don't like to rush things.

Saturday morning I was just about to leave the house when I noticed my shirt smelled. Like really smelled. Like wet goat who has eaten a durian and has bad gas. Don't know what a durian is, ok, wet goat who has eaten a rotting corpse and has bad gas. I thought maybe I'd forgotten to put on deodorant. Not that I smell that bad (I hear Supreme Leader laughing). So I put on some more deodorant and a new tshirt and off we go. Later in the day I realize the smell is back. Rewind three or four days. Liam wakes up with a fever. While sitting with me at the computer he throws up over my shoulder. SL cleans it up with a bath towel that eventually gets buried beneath a pile of other laundry and forgotten amidst countless other disasters. Yes the room smells, but we figure it's from the carpet where the puke originally hit (hence the current search for a steam cleaner). Friday I discovered it and did a load of laundry. Same load the two shirts were in. See, it wasn't me. I'd never eat a rotten corpse.

Ikea: Swedish for designed in Hell for your suffering. You know what's more fun than going to Ikea on a Sunday afternoon and then having your 3 and 5 year old try to help you assemble 3 book shelves? Having the five year old lean on a shelf that is only attached by those little f*cking dowels while you search for a screw. Then you get to go back to Ikea! Despite all the crying (his!) I think this may have been Connor's plan so he could go back for more ice cream.

Speaking of Ikea, while I loaded the car (first time), Supreme Leader took the boys to get their ice cream. When the server handed them over a woman beside SL started complaining that SL had received more ice cream than she did. Why? Why did I decide to load the car and come back?

Dear (insert name of American retailer, large or small who doesn't ship to Canada), Hello? This isn't North Korea or another planet. Granted there isn't a lot of us up here, but still, there's quite a few of us. It's like deciding not to sell to California. We want to buy your stuff. We have money. Yes, it comes in a kaleidoscope of colours, but it's still money. Look, this whole recession thing? Hitting us too, but not as bad. We can help. Really. Amazon.com sells like, everything. Amazon.ca? I can buy a fork.

I think I've been screwing up Random Tuesday Thoughts by not hitting some button thingy at Un-Mom's. Guess I should have mentioned her up top too. I meant at the top of the page, not her... you know, top... though I'm sure it's worth mentioning. Er... watch the video.



*name it.

Ink

Finally. It's three days late, but whatever, not like I'm on a time table. First off, I'd like to thank everybody who participated, I wish I could have used all of them, but the stupid (insert a long profanity laden rant here. Really, cover your ears, it's bad) site I tried to use to assemble all of my pictures had a minimum which it didn't actually tell me about until after I'd loaded 49 pictures into my Flickr account. Whatever, let's get past it.

As usual, the pictures are posted in the order I received them with mine first because I'm special. And pretty. Oh, so pretty. Pretty, and witty and straaaaaaaaight! Sorry, it's been stressful. Anyway. First pic is of the boy's Thai names, Mongkhun and Montri. What really made these special was that my supervisor at the time and I discovered that the 'gigantic financial institution' we worked for had nothing in the HR policy to say we couldn't have visible tattoos. Muah ha haaa! The back piece? If you want the skinny on that you can go here.






Jess from This Life Is Mine. "My boss is from Iran so I had him write it out for me...I feel confident it doesn't say "My secretary sucks" or anything as hilarious as that. It says Āmīn which in Americaneese (Amen) means "Verily", "Truly", "So be it", and "Let it be". Word to your mutha.


Second is a photo of my ankle area. I was born in 1981. Clever. There is an up close and far away for your "Where is that on her body?" perspective pleasure. I had help taking the one of my whole foot. My office mate took the picture for me and then said my foot looks like a penis. I am not sure how to feel about that.


Last of all, I give you, in all it's glory, all of my tattoos in one shot...well, save the ankle, I'm good, but I'm not THAT good.
The sun was the first tattoo I ever got and I drew it up and the tattoo artist made it hotttt. Literally. I really couldn't get the flames to do right in my drawing. The second tattoo I got was the blue flames covering my flanks. Then I got the triquetra, which means Father, Son and Holy Ghost. What can I say? I am a spiritual lil shit.

I would like to give a shout out to my Irish and Scottish heritage. I challenge anyone to a freckle face-off. Yep, I win.



Wendy from Among Mad People. Wendy gave me a story on her tats, but I cannot find the email as I probably deleted it when I downloaded the picture. To make up for this I suggest going to Wendy's site and checking her title picture, it's great.



Michelle from Michelle's Blog. "Well, they're not real but they were fun! One is mine and one is Peanut's... I'll let you figure out which is which."



The Mister. "The short people's little foot prints, from the hospital, in order of appearance."


Nonna from Nonna's Nonsense.



Larry in MN


Amy's hubby.


Goodfather's much better half.


Jodi from Jodiferous. "Right after I got it. It's on my back shoulder. It's a flaming chalice, the symbol of the unitarians. The flames are green because it's my favorite color. Designed by my friend kam.


Melanie from A Day In The Life Of... Oh ya, and she's my sister. Thankfully she only sent in two pictures. She has... thirteen altogether? She had my niece and nephew write their names out for the first pic below.



IB from Idiot's Stew.


Lo from Slap Happy Musings.



Momma Trish. "This is an anklet, and it's actually the second line of Clair de Lune (by Claude Debussy). It took more work than the artist had anticipated, and he really never wanted to replicate it, so it's a one-of-a-kind."


Tattooed Mini Van Mom. TMVM sent me a couple links to two posts she'd done on her and her husband. I'd have loved to put them all up, but my eyes are actually bleeding now so I've only picked a few. If you'd like to see more, go here.




Mr. Tattooed Minivan Mom. I couldn't put all of his in, but here's a few. Which, now that I look at them are really really small. WTF? This post is cursed. It's like the Bermuda Triangle of blogs. Hell, I'm not even trying to fix this. If you'd like to see the rest, check him out. Sorry, TMVM.






Anonymous. And if you're one of the two readers who may recognize these, shhhh! She wants to be anonymous.




Louize from Geez Louize. "Ahhh...story....So, it had only been a week into finding out that my soon to be x had just cheated on me. A trip to Vegas with my sister had already been planned. It was a much needed trip at the time.
I had already decided to leave the bastard. But when I was young I had a tattoo on my ankle of a yellow rose. The bastard always bought me yellow roses. I all of a sudden hated the thing. One night while talking with my sister we decided that the next morning we would go over to Hart & Huntington at the Palms and see what they could do to either change it or make it into something else. After much deliberation...I just decided to change the color of the rose to purple. (I can stand to look at it now)
But, while we were waiting my sister and I decided to get inked together. Something to commemorate "US" and this time in our lives. (also at the time my son had been cancer free for a year). We have always called each other "chick". We wanted something simple, pretty, and US. We looked at the books they had...nothing was "us". And we really didn't want to pick something out of a book. We spoke to the tattoo artist and told him what we were looking for and he drew up a few pictures. What he drew was perfect!!! "US"


*Late arrival. The lovely ankle of Vodkamom.


This will be the last Friday pics (yes, it's Monday) post I do for probably ever. They've been fun, but more work than I usually like to do for anything. Really, I was hoping for some naked pictures so this was really disappointing.

Thanks again to everybody who sent in photos, for this one and all the previous ones.

Got Ink?

So I've been bitching a lot lately about how much I want a digital SLR. About how much better my pictures would look if I had one. About how good other people's blogs look because of the great pictures they took with their nice big cameras. I even found some extra money I'd been saving that I'd actually forgotten about that would have easily paid for one. I carefully prepared a sales pitch for Supreme Leader backed with weeks of subtle hints (she's shaking her head as she reads this) and "hey, look at this!" Feeling cocky and infallible I went in for the kill. "Maybe we should pay down some debt first. Besides, we're still paying for for your dragon."

DOH!

And she's right, as much as I hate to admit it. The dragon in question is a full back tattoo I started working on last September and finished back in May. It took almost 24 hours of work and stretched over 5 sessions. Two hours of driving each way and pain in the ass border line-ups every single time. All the work was done by Aaron Bell of Slave to the Needle in Seattle, Washington.

Supreme Leader and I went down in July of 2007 for a consultation and then we started work the next month after the drawing was done. This was taken on September 7th, a few days after my first session. This is five straight hours of work.



The whole family went down for the first session. Supreme Leader took the boys to the zoo while I hit the needle. We didn't realize just how long the first one was going to be. I think Bern was ready to let me walk back to Canada before I told Aaron we'd have to quit. (If you read about the trip, I don't mention the tattoo because I was planning on surprising my family with it)

Ok, second session, October 2007. Six hours under the needle. SIX HOURS of being stabbed with tiny needles, yee ha! This session was all filling in scales and shading.



Session three, December 2007, 16 hours in. Finally got some colour after two sessions of black. Aaron still hadn't decided what colour the head was going to be at this point.



February 2008, session 4. Lots of colour. This was another five hour session and Aaron actually wanted to push through and finish it off. He thought he only had about two hours of work left to finish off the eyes, teeth, claws and spikes, but I couldn't do it. I was in agony.



This is my fourth tattoo so the pain wasn't anything new. The size and amount of work required was though. Even though I was going a month between sessions and the surface skin would be totally healed it was still very sensitive. The first session was long and hurt, but no more than I'd expected. In fact I was a little surprised by what did hurt. Bony areas like the spine and shoulder blades hurt like I figured they would, but the fatty bits like my love handles? Holy shit! I have an old tattoo on my right hip which is only about... 3 inches below where the dragon ends. The difference in pain, even at such a short distance, was day and night. And the ribs? I don't know how people get their ribs done. I could not do it, not a chance. The areas where the dragon's claws and legs wrap around the sides was hell.

Anyway, every time we started new work it hurt more than the time before and it did it right from the start. You don't realize how much blood you lose either. Every time I'd get up off the table my legs would be shaking and I felt dizzy. Then I'd jump into my car and onto the I-5 for my two hour ride back home. That was safe.

Last session was back at the end of May and was only about two hours. This picture was taken about two weeks ago. The skin on my back decided to let me know just how unhappy it was with the rough treatment and wasn't in shape for photos for a long time. If I can get a better shot today I'll replace it.



And that's why I'm stuck with my old camera.

via wolves at night



via...somebody on tumblr, oops.

Feeling decidedly disheveled today. My shoes feel too big, my jacket feels like it belongs to someone else and my back feels like it's covered with a think coat of goo. Wait, my back is covered with a thick coat of goo. Or at least a coat of vitamin A and D cream to help my tattoo heal and not get infected. I absolutely despise the feeling of creams or ointments between my skin and my clothes so that probably isn't helping. That and the fact that my beloved iPod keeps crashing. It does that occasionally. Now I'll have to reload the software again which is a pain in the ass. It started Saturday on my trip down to Seattle. Fumbling with your iPod doing 110km (70-ish) down the I-5 is not a good thing. Wouldn't have been so bad if I'd been in the van, that thing's a tank, my sister-in-law's Subaru though, you exhale more from your right lung than your left and the car is drifting that way. Don't get me wrong, I love that car. We used to have one before the van. That's a car you'd want for a police chase. Maybe not on the highway, but for in the city where you need to turn on a dime and corner like you're on rails, hell ya.

Where am I going with this? No idea, but the note pad and the music won't work at the same time now so I've got to keep myself distracted on the bus somehow. But now since I'm getting nauseous maybe it's time to switch back to the music.

Hours later. I figured it out as soon as I got in the office. Forgot to put on deodorant. That's why I carry the man-purse, always prepared. I'm thinking arming myself might not be a bad idea either. There's a rising tension level in the office, a feeling of imminent violence. Maybe I should turn my desk around so my back is to the wall?

Endings

Saturday I finally finished my tattoo. Five sessions, twenty-three hours of work, twenty hours of driving back and forth to Seattle and who knows how long waiting at the border and it's finally done. Once it's healed for a few days I'll put up a picture.

In an ironic twist of fate, this week also marked the end of my job. Wednesday afternoon my department found out we've been "centralized" to Toronto. It's been a long week. At least last year when Bernadette's place closed down they knew it was coming. It still sucked, but they'd been talking about it for awhile. This was out of nowhere. Thank goodness I'm already in therapy! Speaking of, kudos to my therapist who decided we should do a little crisis management and actually role played me through telling Bern. I hate role playing, but it definitely helped dropping that bomb.

So ya, August 28th and my 13 (ha ha!) years at my company come to an end. Well, unless I find something else there, but positions at my level are scarce and the idea of dropping a level... we'll see. "At my level," sounds like I'm upper management or something and not just another slave at the oar. At least with thirteen years under my belt I've got a good package. Oh, so many many jokes in that last sentence...

Anyway, that was my week. If you know anybody who's hiring or you need any odd jobs done around the house, let me know. I've got some free time soon.

Maps

New info guides in Hannover?

I could make some comment about the sprawling suburbs south of the city, but I won't. It would be a little hypocritical given my own sprawling suburbs.

I Love You, Weng Weng

Before he retired to the Island with Mr. Rourke, Tattoo was a playa.'

Online Xmas Cards

Go to this site and stop looking. Tattoo a live Santa with a holiday greeting. Put your words of love on that 'bowl full of jelly.'

Tattoo

I was planning an end-of-my-tattoo blog here, but it's not done yet. Thought the last one would be it but after 5 hours of fun there's still quite a bit to do. After the last session in October it looked like this:




Now the dragon's underbelly is red, the claws are... well, right now they're pinkish, and there's some shading around the outside. Still need to finish its (haven't decided if it's a he or a she) head, claws, some fur and the flames. Almost.

No pictures for a few days since right now it's pretty disgusting. Not the lovely post-session tattoo you see on Miami/LA/London Ink, but real life blood, scabs, bruising and pink skin. Not that anybody wants to see that in TV land, but a little more realism in those shows would be nice.