Category Archives: Personal

Cologne Pride 2025

Posted on July 14, 2025 by Thistle

A year ago, my (then) good friend Rainstorm talked about going to Pride in Cologne, Germany by themself. I had never been to Germany, and I had barely gone to my first Pride event (Texas summers do not make for … Continue reading →

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Tattoo Tour: Witchy Cat (8)

Posted on July 10, 2025 by Thistle

When I first went tattoo-crazy in 2023, I followed a bunch of artists on Insta. One of them was Devony from Thieves of Virtue. Her artwork was incredible and I was so intimidated about reaching out to her originally. But … Continue reading →

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Tattoo Tour: Starry Night Batty Bat (7)

Posted on July 7, 2025 by Thistle

For my seventh tattoo, I booked with a woman named Kristin who does fine line ink at Twisted Tattoo in San Antonio. (Notably, this is also where Keith, who did my Dead Cute tattoo, has his studio.) I’d wanted to … Continue reading →

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Mediterranean Cruise 2023 + Tattoo Tour: Snake Arm (6)

Posted on July 4, 2025 by Thistle

This is another catch-up post. I’m going to try to do some of these as I spend two months in Europe! Since my partner is working during the day, I might as well split my time into different priorities – … Continue reading →

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Tattoo Tour: Dead Cute (5)

Posted on March 18, 2025 by Thistle

When I closed The Zen Leaf in 2023, I had four tattoos. There were the original two I got back in 2013/2014, the second of which was such a bad experience that it took me nine years to try again. … Continue reading →

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whoops…

Posted on February 20, 2025 by Thistle

Hmm, so there’s this thing where I said hello, then never wrote again… I do have reasons! First, it was because WordPress went crazy for a bit and tried to take away the old editor from me, and I despise … Continue reading →

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Happy New Year!

Posted on January 1, 2025 by Thistle

Hello! What am I doing here, you ask? Well, I was going through the end of 2024, looking over everything, and I got annoyed because I couldn’t remember most of the books I’d read this year or the latter part … Continue reading →

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End

Posted on August 14, 2023 by Thistle

My first official blog post was 15.5 years ago on 2/14/08. My first official post at this URL after some blog shuffling, when I was resurrecting The Zen Leaf, was nine years ago today, on 8/14/14. I’m still honestly not … Continue reading →

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Kittens and KonMari

Posted on August 7, 2023 by Thistle

L and I were meant to leave on our roadtrip yesterday, but we canceled. 1) The weather was alternating between excruciating high temps and severe thunderstorms for the entire week of travel and being outdoors, and that didn’t sound like … Continue reading →

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July 2023 in Review

Posted on August 2, 2023 by Thistle

July was a really hard month. We lost a family friend to ALS right at the beginning. We almost lost a foster kitten. Our a/c failed during one of the worst heat waves we’ve seen in a very long time … Continue reading →

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