because some tattoos are just silly

Posted on July 28, 2023 by Thistle

I waited so long after my last horrific tattoo experience in 2014 to finally get the one I got last month. It was like a dam burst. All these ideas that I’d had swimming in the back of my mind for so many years flooded in. I’d kept inspo photos for years, tucked away in various corners of my files. Cat tattoos and spooky tattoos and silly tattoos. Pretty tattoos and interesting tattoos and unbelievable (aka patch) tattoos. Suddenly, I was organizing all those files into collections, labeled with the location I wanted to get them and screenshots from the artists I wanted to work with.

(I am so bad at taking selfies!)

There’s a chain of shops in town called Ink Couture. Every Thursday, they do a walk-in only Ladies’ Night where you can get a 3×3 tattoo for a discounted rate. Stephanie wanted to get her first tattoo and it fit the parameters of the event, so yesterday afternoon, I took her over to our closest Ink Couture location for Ladies’ Night. It turned out to be a slow night at the shop. The artist who came to meet us had been ghosted by her appointment, so she actually ended up taking my makeshift designs for a calf tattoo (that was slightly too big for the LN parameters) and tattooing us both.

My calf tattoo was actually the most recent thing I’ve thought of, a silly tattoo that combined my love of tarot with a lingering signature from college. In my second year of college, my mom sent me a box of those Valentine’s conversation hearts like she used to do every year. Those things are disgusting, but it was family tradition, heh. In 1999, the company introduced a new heart that just had a wide smiley face on it. This particular smiley face was only around for that one year, and it was a rare find. I loved it. I loved it so much that I bought a giant bag of disgusting conversation hearts just so I could pick out the four smileys that were in it and send one to each of my closest friends. And I began signing my letters – because I was still sending post letters regularly then – with a smiley heart.

In subsequent years, the smileys first disappeared, then returned as a smaller smiley inside a circle, then became a weird flirty smile with oblong eyes and creases on the smile ends. I can find photos of those two online, but I’ve never seen a photo of the original that only existed the one season. I’ve drawn it so many times, though, that I know exactly what it SHOULD look like. And as I was thinking about silly little tattoos I might do for Ladies’ Night after Stephanie and I decided to attend a few weeks back, I realized I wanted this little smiley heart. It’s not important, it’s not meaningful, it’s just a silly thing that I remember from college. And because it’s me, I decided to turn said smiley heart into the Three of Hearts from the tarot deck, in an ironic twist – to smile despite being stuck in the middle of the heartbreak card. I’d say it’s meant to be a reminder or some such nonsense, but it really isn’t. It just made me laugh and reminded me of the Everything is Fine Modern Witch tarot card hanging over my computer.

I chose to use the version of the Three of Swords from the Phantomwise tarot deck (done by Erin Morgenstern, inspired by The Night Circus) as a template. Most Three of Swords cards will show the heart pierced in a way that doesn’t allow room for a smiley face to show, but Morgenstern’s art provided a perfect empty tableau for the conversation heart portion. The smiley inside the circle on the more recent conversation hearts is mostly the right shape and proportion to itself, just needed to be bigger to match the 1999 version. I’ve said it before – I’m a terrible artist. But this is the rough sketch I came up with. (Heart itself was printed from online, which is the only reason the heart and its bottom shadow/sides are correct. I can trace mostly! Heh.)

The artist informed me that this particular tattoo would not work in the 3×3 parameters, because it would muddy up too badly over the course of a few years within that frame. I was okay with paying a higher rate, though, and said absolutely she could take this design and make it her own, as long as the smiley was right and the heart looked like a conversation heart. I’m no artist, and I want the true artist to take my idea and make it perfect! So she did. Quincy was our artist, and she turned my silly little idea into a silly little tattoo with her own twist on the design. It’s simple and effective, and one day I might get the heart shaded in one of the pale pastel colors of the candy. I laugh every time I look at this, because it’s just so incongruous, the smile and the swords, ha!

Three fun facts: 1) This is the first tattoo I’ve gotten on the right side of my body. My wrist and shoulder were on the left, my back tattoo was obviously in the center. 2) This is my first tattoo with any shading. All the others are line-work only. I still don’t have any with color, though I hope to change this soon! 3) Ink Couture had those gumball machines for flash tattoos, and I really want to play that game at some point!!

Posted in Personal | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Death and the Conjuror, by Tom Mead

Posted on July 25, 2023 by Thistle

1930s, London. When Dr. Anselm Rees is found murdered in a room locked from the inside, the cops are flummoxed. Inspector Flint calls on a retired stage magician, Joseph Spector, to help him solve the puzzling case.

Let me start with the good: I enjoyed the mystery in this book. I never figured out what was going on, and the plot kept me engaged. That was enough to give the book a solid 3 stars, if I rated books. Unfortunately, that’s where the good ended.

I wanted to start with the good, though, because most of the “bad” is very subjective, and wouldn’t irritate every reader. It also wasn’t bad enough to negate the good. Ironically, weighing the two together made this a “just okay” book – the type of book I try to avoid or cull from the beginning. If I hadn’t been in my summer-brain mode, I definitely would have culled this one early on. But as I said in my most recent Sunday Coffee, I kept going for 28 pages when finally the mystery itself overcame my other reservations. Culling may have been a better choice for me, but also, it had been weeks since I’d really read anything, and that may have made continuing worth it.

But enough. Extremely minor spoilers – to do with how the book was written, nothing to do with the mystery itself – to follow.

I also mentioned in my Sunday Coffee post that the writing style wasn’t my favorite. It remained unimpressive. The author seemed to relish in his own cleverness, using obscure vocabulary (sometimes incorrectly – one doesn’t wake “with a priapic jolt” from a terrifying nightmare, for example) and whole sections of the book where two characters outline what we know in the mystery thus far. There was zero character development, as the characters’ personalities didn’t matter at all to the mystery. There were odd consistency errors that seemed like misdirection but ended up just being errors, like the emphasis on when the rain started – at 11pm on the dot, then at 9pm, then back to 11pm as if the 9pm declaration never happened. Then at the end, there’s literally a one-page section that speaks to the reader to essentially tell them that all the clues are there and it’s their last chance to say they know the answer before it’s revealed. Followed by footnotes during the revelation to show the reader what small details they may have missed. Oh please.

Then to cap all that, the reveal isn’t made organically, like in a good mystery. Instead, the magician gathers all the suspects – without even telling the inspector the answer, but having him look on as all is revealed – and proceeds to explain the night in painful detail. Honestly, the last time that worked in fiction was when Clue released in theatre, and only then because they made it funny – parody of a very old, very tired trope! So the ending fell flat, the reveal feeling a lot like the way it’s disappointing when a stage magician tells you how they did a trick, and said trick is so mundane the magic is ruined.

So in the end, I guess – good mystery, badly presented? At least for me? The thing is, while that all sounds very negative, I’m actually willing to give the author another chance, hoping he’ll improve over time. He has another Joseph Spector locked-room-type mystery releasing soon, called The Murder Wheel. I plan to give that a try, but perhaps with a little more wariness than I had going into this one. If it seems to be written the same, perhaps I ought to skip ahead to the inevitable Spector-Tells-All section to get the answer, and return the book to the library.

Posted in 2023, Adult, Prose | Tagged | Leave a comment

Sunday Coffee – Readathon-ish

Posted on July 23, 2023 by Thistle

I haven’t participated in a Readathon on quite a long time. The last time I tried was spring of 2018, and I realized throughout that I’m just not cut out for a hyper-focus reading day anymore. Since then, I’ve periodically used upcoming Readathon events to sort through teetering TBR piles, cutting them to more manageable levels.

June wasn’t the best reading month, and July has been the same. Other than Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, I’ve struggled to get into any books at all. There were two that I was reading (one print and one audio) for nearly three weeks, then they were both due back at the library and couldn’t be renewed re: other holds, and I realized that I was maybe 15% into each of them max and couldn’t be bothered to rush to finish. I decided instead to just cull them both.

That’s about when I heard that the Reverse Readathon was upcoming. Immediately, I put my entire virtual TBR pile on hold at the library. There were already quite a number of titles on there already, ones on order that haven’t hit their soon-coming publication date. There were quite a few others that had long hold lines, so I knew I wouldn’t get them in time for my little twist on Readathon. But five had arrived by last weekend, and I hoped others would follow throughout the week. I also pulled the unread books off my shelf, adding another four to the pile.

I took that photo on Sunday last weekend, knowing that yes, it was possible I’d get more books throughout the week, and I’d have to take a new photo. And then, because 1) they were sitting in a pile already and 2) I have never had any kind of patience when I get it into my head to work on a project, I started on my Readathon Culling Project nearly a week before the actual Readathon started. Because of course.

My culling method, which has served me well since I implemented it in 2010/11, goes like this: Choose a book, read the first five pages, decide if the book has interested me enough to keep on the list. There’s a yes pile, a no pile, and a maybe pile. Once I’ve been through an entire stack of books, the maybe pile gets an additional five pages read, at which point each book joins the yes or no piles. I’ve never regretted any book I’ve culled, and there have been some books in the Yes pile that I’ve eventually given up on after I pass that five page point. You can tell a lot from those first few pages – writing style, type of characters, how the author wants to draw you in, etc.

Anyway, I decided that since this was Readathon-inspired, I’d spend a little more time with each book. Especially given that my brain has just not been book-oriented since May. In this kind of mood, I can give up a book I love within a paragraph, so I have to be very careful to know when I’m actually not interested vs not interested at this moment in time.

Note that below this will go into specifics of what I did/didn’t keep reading, and some people weirdly get offended if I don’t like the writing style of a book they loved or if I find some beloved book boring, so if that’s you, perhaps don’t continue this post? Here is how my week-long culling Readathon went:

  1. The Carnivale of Curiosities – I started with this because I love carnival stories and magic. It really wasn’t capturing my attention, though, so I gave it several chapters and culled it around page 17.
  2. Death and the Conjuror – Unimpressed with the writing style at the beginning but suspected it might just be my summer-brain, so I kept going long past normal and decided around page 28 that I’d continue.
  3. Damsel – This was always a maybe even on the plot, and I was bored right away, so I forced my way through 16 pages before culling.
  4. Biased – By the time I’d finished the introduction, I’d decided to continue with this one. Unfortunately, the audio isn’t for me. Wish it was because I highly prefer audio for nonfic!
  5. I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself – Read through page 44 before I stopped. This is staying on the keep pile, though I’m not sure how much is interest and how much is the one-paragraph-long sections style of writing. We’ll see if I’m still interested after a forced break from it.
  6. Sign Here – Culled after 20 pages, though I knew pretty early on (maybe even the first page) that this was def not the style for me.
  7. The Last Tale of the Flower Bride – I was really disappointed to cull this one, but after 15 pages, I couldn’t remember a word I’d read and the writing style irked me beyond reason. Oh well.
  8. Black Candle Women – Read 27 pages before I remembered that I was only previewing! Can’t wait to get back into this one!
  9. A House With Good Bones – I already knew this is one I wanted to read, but I was pleasantly surprised to find the audio is read by Mary Robinette Kowel!! An audio preview confirmed that yes, I do want to read it.
  10. Saint Juniper’s Folly (not pictured) – Meh. Gave it up after 16 pages. Too young.

Takeaways: Stop buying books before I’ve read them, especially from Book of the Month, as I’ve culled 6 of the last 9 I’ve gotten, and of the other three, one was just okay. This is an old rule but I’ve taken to breaking it quite a bit in the last year or so. Suggestions from Nowhere Bookshop tend to be keepers, as 4 of the 5 kept books were all from them. I now have 4 books to read in print, and I’ll likely try to read the 3 that are library books before they need to be returned. But we’ll see, as I still have a number of others on the hold list that may come in as well! My TBR (physical and virtual) is down to around 15-20 books, excluding those that haven’t released yet, and that’s a good place for me. Goal by the end of the year is to have no unread physical TBR, no audio queue, and under 20 published books on the virtual TBR (preferably under 10).

Posted in Book Talk | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Photoshoot: Engagement

Posted on July 21, 2023 by Thistle

Recently I had the honor and pleasure to take engagement photos for a beautiful couple. Julie happens to be one of my oldest friends, having met all the way back to when we were ten-ish. She and her fiancé, Carlos, contacted me about an engagement photo session a few months back. Due to their schedules, it took until this summer to get it all set up, but we finally got out there!

They chose Denman Estate Park and The Rosemont for their photos. It’s a beautiful location with so many great spots to shoot, even though we’re smack in the middle of the summer so the pond was low and a lot of the greenery was a bit less than green. The couple’s chosen outfits were perfect for the location, a great pop of reds and blacks to stand out among the background. We took so many photos, and it was hard to narrow my favorites to just a few.

I loved doing this. Not just because Julie is one of my oldest friends – I love taking the photos, hyping up the clients, finding the perfect looks and poses and backgrounds, then editing it all afterwards to turn good photos into great ones. In the moment, I forget about the heat, about how sore my muscles will be the next few days because I keep dropping into squats and lunges, about how silly I might look getting into the right position to take the best picture. I love the delight on my clients’ faces when they see the photo previews, and it makes me so happy when they’re happy with the final results. I may never make a full living or career out of photography, but I hope that I’ll be able to continue this for a good, long time!

Posted in Personal | Tagged | 2 Comments

Sunday Coffee – The Nightmare Week

Posted on July 16, 2023 by Thistle

As the title suggests, it has been a nightmare this week! It started last weekend with Droplet’s emergency triage. I talked about that a little and I’m not going to go into the gross details, but essentially the whole situation ended up with us sitting in the car at the (closed) shelter while a skeleton staff worked to get the kittens tested and treated. Because of the major heat wave that we’ve been in for most of the last month, it was already almost 100 degrees at 10am, and after almost an hour of being in the car with no shade and the a/c on low (because otherwise it would have been literal killing temps in the car), our engine overheated. We had to ask the staff to let us sit inside the hospital despite it being closed, which thankfully they allowed. Also thankfully, a half hour later when the kittens were ready, the car re-started without a problem. We got the overheating warning early enough to (hopefully) not cause any permanent damage to the car!

Then there was the a/c in the house. We replaced the entire unit, indoors and out, in 2020. Since then, it has failed multiple times. I suspect something was done wrong when it was installed, or perhaps it’s the crappy build of these mid-90s houses that is contributing. Either way, we noticed that the a/c wasn’t working well in the afternoons starting about a month ago. We normally keep the temps around 77 in the house – any lower, and the unit tends to freeze over – but it was getting up to ~81 each afternoon. At first we thought it was the heat wave, with temps at 105+ on some days. It was catching up every night, so we worried, but not too hard. We also did some preemptive work: changing out the filter several times, making sure the drains weren’t plugged, checking for leaks. We also started texting our hvac guy, who didn’t respond for WEEKS until Saturday night, at which point he said he’d call sometime on Monday to make an appointment.

Unfortunately, Sunday seemed to be the beginning of catastrophes, and instead of getting up to 81 in the house, it got up to around 85. It was boiling. We went out to get a window unit for the living room and some extra fans for the bedrooms, but even then, it was miserable. Sunday night, I didn’t sleep. At all. Literally. I finally gave up trying around 4:30 and got up, shaky and sick. There I found that 1) it was still 80 degrees in the house, so the a/c wasn’t catching up, and 2) Jason was sick and shaky on the couch. We’d ordered out the night before so we didn’t warm up the house even more by cooking, and most likely he got food poisoning from his meal. He spent the whole morning throwing up and feeling ghastly, his skin waxy and yellow and clammy. We didn’t know if he caught something from Droplet (it can happen) or if it was food poisoning, so he was in quarantine during the early part of the day.

Meanwhile, the a/c continued to get worse. The drain, when checked again, was a tiny bit slow, so we ran a drain snake through it as best as we could. While that seemed to help slightly, and by 2pm we weren’t any hotter inside than at 4:30am. Only then, the coils froze (probably because of how hard it was trying to catch up), and the entire unit was out of commission for about 8 hours. In the middle of an afternoon with 104 temps outside. Oy. At 10pm, it was about 83 in the house and again miserable, but after an entire night with nothing but a 1.5 hour nap mid-morning, I took a heavy sleeping pill and crashed.

Thank goodness, I woke up to a gloriously cool morning. Our a/c had started working in the night, and had caught up. In fact, it had overcompensated slightly and gotten us to 75 degrees. Hallelujah!

The good news: 1) Jason did in fact seem to have food poisoning, and started feeling better Monday afternoon. 2) While the a/c still struggles during the day and it tends to get up to 79ish, that is a far cry from what was happening before, and so far we’ve had no more coil freezes. 3) Droplet slowly improved on her meds and by Tuesday, was starting to very slowly gain a little weight and have improved energy. By Thursday evening, she was almost back to where she was pre-illness. 4) So far at least, our car has been working fine.

The bad news: Our hvac guy did call late Monday evening and scheduled to come on Thursday morning. However, he didn’t come, but instead put the appointment off multiple times that day. Then didn’t come the next day as promised. Now we’re told he’ll call “sometime next week” to reschedule something. So the a/c is still limping along, but thankfully never as bad as those nightmare days.

At least I got to end the week with an engagement photoshoot for a client who also happens to be one of my oldest friends, as well as some time out with my siblings who are in town for the weekend. Jason and I also ended up picking up Puddles’ and Droplet’s brother, Smudge (above), to join them. He’s underweight but had just gotten healthy with his former foster (also the girls’ former foster), so we need to help him catch up to his sisters and get the whole litter better! Smudge-photo for cat-tax on this depressing post, heh!

Posted in Personal | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, by Brandon Sanderson (audio)

Posted on July 13, 2023 by Thistle

From StoryGraph: Yumi comes from a land of gardens, meditation, and spirits, while Painter lives in a world of darkness, technology, and nightmares. When their lives suddenly become intertwined in strange ways, can they put aside their differences and work together to uncover the mysteries of their situation and save each other’s communities from certain disaster?

This book is like Freaky Friday meets astral projection, set in the Cosmere. It’s wild and beautiful and I loved every second of it. Sanderson has such fascinating ideas. I mentioned before that this is one of the two books from the kickstarter that I’ve been most looking forward to, and it didn’t disappoint. Sure, there were a few things I could have lived without, like any book, but they were nbd. There were too many similes that could have used editing out, particularly noticeable in audio format. I’m also still not the hugest fan of Hoid as a narrator, though he was more tolerable here because 1) he wasn’t as present in the narrative, and 2) he talks to the reader as if they’re from Roshar, the planet in the Stormlight Archive, with references back to that series and planet. Those parts were delightful. Plus I loved seeing a bit more of Design, Hoid’s companion (no more to be said on that, lest I give away spoilers for other books!).

This is the best kind of book, standalone but with so many other references to Cosmere-related things to allow those of us invested (ha!) in the Cosmere to really dig in. Even if you don’t care about the world or other books, though, this one is a fascinating story that never reveals where it’s going beforehand. I didn’t have a clue what was going to happen next, or how this was going to resolve. Even after finishing, I couldn’t look back and see what foreshadowing had been there (and Sanderson usually gives a truckload of foreshadowing that we all still manage to miss every time!). It’s definitely a book that needs a second read, for me at least. I plan to reread in print form, because while the audiobook (Michael Kramer and Kate Reading) was awesome, the print has illustrations that I want to go through! Note: Once I received the book, I found out all the illustrations are in a gorgeous anime-inspired style that is sooooo perfect!

And in case you think this is just a book I love for the story, nah. Sanderson always has thematic elements that add depth to his stories. There were his usual themes of friendships and interpersonal relationships, but this one also delved into trans issues (very obliquely), nepotism, free will vs duty, and the potential problems with AI development. Among others. It was *chef’s kiss* delightful!

Posted in 2023, Adult, Prose | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Water Kittens

Posted on July 10, 2023 by Thistle

The day after our dear friend Chris passed away, grief was fresh but elusive (because my brain doesn’t process grief linearly, and instead waits to latch onto something seemingly inconsequential to grieve over). I felt both restless and absent, my brain buzzing and numb, my body twitchy and exhausted. When the foster email list came through, I latched onto it. Can’t process grief? Why not rescue some kittens so that your grief energy at least has an outlet? No, that’s probably not the healthiest method of dealing with my shit, but it’s also not the unhealthiest – it’s certainly better than getting drunk or sleeping all day – and in the meantime, some kittens get rescued. I can put some good out in the world while occupying my brain and body with something other than restless don’t-know-how-to-grieve.

Enough of that. Meet Puddles and Droplet, the newest temporary members of the household. They’re 4-5 weeks old and just weaned from bottle to gruel (a mix of kitten milk and wet food). Both little girls are so very sweet and have clearly never known anything but love from humans before. Likely bottle fed from pretty early on in their life. Both love to be cuddled and to have their bellies pet. Puddles (no orange spot on the forehead) goes into crazy zoomie mode, running around like mad. Droplet started equally energetic, but after about 24 hours, she developed a severe illness that caused her to lose a massive amount of weight. It was the worst case we’ve ever had and we weren’t sure she was going to make it before we could get meds for her. Thankfully, we were able to get her vet care yesterday, and both girls began a medicine regimen (Puddles as precautionary, since the two are always together). Droplet rallied a little yesterday, gaining back a tiny bit of weight. She’s not out of the woods yet but I hope we can help her to fully regain her health!

They’ve only been with us for a few days  now, and yes, their cute little personalities – not to mention the focus to care for a medical crisis – help to heal the soul. Honestly, I think that Chris would have loved that I’ve channeled that grief into saving these little babies. He would have approved, he would have heartily recommended that I write in to get them that day, even if I did so with my brain numb and my heart on hiatus.

Posted in Personal | Tagged | Leave a comment

SC – All the Books, 6mo In

Posted on July 9, 2023 by Thistle

For the last five years or so, I’ve been averaging around 50 books a year, down from the few years before that when I was reading about 70-75 a year, down from the horrific early days of blogging when I was gorging on 150-225 books yearly and feeling sick all the time from it. So far, 2023 is shaping up to be mid-level when it comes to reads – not quite as low as the past few years, but not quite as high as the years before that. I’ve finished 32 books at the six month mark, abandoned one, and culled another 34 from my potential list of reads. This is actually the first year I’ve ever tracked culled books (because sometimes they go off my list in less than a page of reading), so I have no idea how this compares to normal. I just thought it was an interesting thing to look at. Likely I’ll never do it again in later years, heh.

Anyway, my year in reading has been dominated by dark books – mysteries, thrillers, dark supernatural, horror, etc. It’s almost like I’ve been RIP reading all year. Just what I’ve been in the mood for I suppose. My favorite by far in these last six months has been Hide by Kiersten White, with a few others rounding out other standouts: The Books Eaters, Good for a Girl, The Spare Man (all from January!); and two runner-ups: Nettle & Bone, The Last Remains. Until June, I was actually reading about 50/50 physical and audio books, but I’ve struggled to get into any audiobooks I’ve had since early May. My strained relationship with Audible hasn’t helped.

As for my Priorities list for the year, I’ve done pretty well with it. I’ve been able to cross off 23 titles (15 read, 7 culled, 1 with a new publishing date in 2024). Of the remaining 11, 6 have release dates after June, 3 are sitting on my shelf waiting for me, 1 isn’t available through my library, and 1 I’m still on the hold list waiting my turn. Not too shabby. Of course, I’m not a huge fan of having so many physical books on my TBR (5, plus a 6th on Audible). I usually don’t like to buy books before I’ve read them except in special circumstances, and I’ve let myself go overboard a lot over the last year. It’s unfortunately lead to several culled books that I paid for and then didn’t read. Sigh. My virtual TBR has grown quite significantly as well, sitting at an extra 20-25 books beyond my Priorities list.

A lot of the TBR growth, both physical and virtual, is because of Nowhere Bookshop, which is probably my favorite new book-related find of 2023. I adore the shop, and yes, I buy too much when I go there! It’s also gotten me out of my comfort zone with my first ever “blind date with a book” purchase, as well as a “no pressure” book club (just a chat hangout deal). Other fun stuff for the year include switching over from GoodReads to StoryGraph, and the kinda-monthly book-based subscription box from the Year of Sanderson kickstarter. (I say kinda-monthly because several of the boxes have been delayed due to manufacturing timing.) I’m really enjoying these boxes and look forward to the rest of the packages. The two remaining books coming as part of the kickstarter are the two I was most anxious to read, too.

Speaking of most anxious, the books I’m most looking forward to reading in the second half of the year are:

  • Defiant, Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, and The Sunlit Man (Brandon Sanderson)
  • System Collapse (Martha Wells – the next Murderbot!!)
  • Mister Magic (Kiersten White, seems to be in the same style as Hide!)
  • The Running Grave (Robert Galbraith)

I’m sure more will be added to that list eventually. I’m still watching out for some of my favorite authors/series for when their next releases will be!

Posted in Book Talk | Tagged , | Leave a comment

The Kitty Tattoo

Posted on July 7, 2023 by Thistle

Back in 2015, I decided that I wanted to get a tattoo across a particular part of my back – sort of between my shoulder blades but slightly lower, at a spot where I tend to hold a lot of my stress. I was just starting with yoga that year, and realized through a long series of events that when that part of my back was touched, my body would almost instantly relax. Whatever the tattoo would be – and I had no idea what at that point – I wanted it to represent a place of happiness and a deep rooting into my soul.

That was, of course, eight years ago, and I never figured out what I wanted to do until very recently, when I saw a viral tiktok video about someone who had done a sleeve make up of hexagons. Each hexi was then filled by a different tattoo artist, so the sleeve ended up both an amalgamation and a tribute. I loved this idea and immediately began thinking about hexagons and my cats, and the way they all have linked to each other over the years. Some have bonded very closely with a single cat, avoiding all the others, while some have kept on their own and others have tried to bond with everyone. I cut out a bunch of hexagons from an index card and began planning things out, to see if I could make an accurate representation of their interrelationships.

The hexi part was new, but I’d already planned to get an arm tattoo involving nine paw prints for my nine cats (including those deceased), and to fill in each paw print with rainbow as they reached the end of their tenure here. I even had an artist picked out to do this, though I hadn’t written him yet. But after the TT vid, and my playing with the hexis, I found that I could very easily and accurately represent the various relationships the cats had to each other, and it formed a bit of a constellation. I could imagine different artists doing portraits of each cat, all in different styles that would represent their personalities. My cats have been an integral part of my mental health journey, especially in learning how to be vulnerable and open myself up to love and the grief that inevitably comes with love, and suddenly this felt more fitting to be on my back than on an arm or leg.

Now, I am not an artist, not by any stretch of the imagination. I can download a hexagon and plug it into Acorn nine times, and arrange them in the formation that I want. That’s about it. I printed the idea and kinda scribbled around it some approximations of where I wanted tattooing to go, in henna-like patterns that the artist I’d chosen (Vinny at Buddha Box) does a lot of. I wanted him to build on that, and after a few back-and-forths over email, he created a pattern that was not exactly what I originally had in mind, but honestly better. The relationship and ratios were the same, but the hexis had transformed into intricate framing that made the whole thing mine and not a direct copy of a TT vid. Heh.

I got the tattoo done on the last day of June. It was incredibly painful. They said the spine would be the most painful part, but honestly, I didn’t mind that part at all. The parts closest to my shoulder blades were the most difficult, and the last parts he did were all very painful because my skin was very irritated already at that point. I have hella nerves in my back, extremely sensitive to the lightest touch, so it doesn’t surprise me that there was a lot of pain there. Thankfully, Vinny worked very fast and the entire tattoo was done in 1.5 hours!! It was so much cleaner and more delicate than my previous tattoos (the most recent of which was blown out horribly and badly scarred, ugh). It’s also the first time I’ve had plastic covering, ink-leaking, long-term special care instructions, etc. (Should I have gotten decent after care instructions with my other tattoos? Yeah. This is why I didn’t go back to that shop. All they told me was “don’t scratch it, it’ll be fine.”)

Incredibly grateful that my friend Stephanie went with me. (Drove, in fact, because a back tattoo can make your reaction times slower if you’re in pain afterwards.) She helped to keep me distracted during the last agonizing sections of the tattoo, telling me stories and giving me updates of how much was left without me having to ask at all. She also took pictures with the stencil on so I could see the placement, as well as pictures while I was on the table (above) and standing afterwards. It was perfect and she was the best person to have there with me. And bonus – she was able to get some piercings at the same time because there was a no-show no-call dropped appointment at the same time!

It’s no surprise that I chose to focus on this tattoo for my July self-portrait. I set up my room with the right colors and lighting, then pulled out tripod, camera, and my 50mm prime lens. In former self-portraits, I’ve focused more on up close photos due to focusing issues, but this time I set to auto-focus and hooked up my phone so that I could see what my camera saw before each shot. This allowed me to get into various positions to best showcase the artwork.

Other than the fact that the Dial-and-Aquaphor combo has caused my back to erupt in rashes that I had to minimize in post production (and also frickin’ itch like crazy!!), these photos came out so beautifully! One of the best things about tattoos, imo, is that they help to celebrate the body despite its perceived imperfections. I don’t mind the curves and lines, when said curves and lines act as canvas. It’s a whole new level of body celebration.

Posted in Personal | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Goodbye to the Double Trouble Singletons

Posted on July 5, 2023 by Thistle

Well. After six weeks, our little posse of kittens is gone. Some of what’s in this post is repeat of earlier posts, but at this point, I don’t know what I’ve said where, so I’m just going to write as I wish and if I repeat myself, that’s just too bad. Heh.

Juice arrived in late May, 3.5 weeks old and bottle-feeding every four hours. From the moment he arrived, he was pure chaos. We had to wrap him up in a blanket in order to feed him because he was so exuberant that he couldn’t keep the bottle in his mouth. Even after his claws could physically retract, he never learned how to pull them in completely. When he weaned onto wet food, he ate by face-planting into it and sucking it up like milk. He needed so many baths from food-covered face, neck, and feet, not to mention diarrhea-covered tail, butt, and feet. Like with food, he struggled to learn how to properly aim in the litterbox, and at times, would decide to go in a different spot altogether.

It did get better as he got older, though not as quickly as with other kittens. Juice was a bit…slow. Honestly, for awhile there, we were concerned he may have had a head injury or some kind of nutrition-deficit-based brain damage. He didn’t show neurological signs of trauma, but he didn’t learn nearly at the same rate as most kittens. I mean, there’s a joke in the cat world that there’s kitten-dumb, and then there’s orange-kitten-dumb. Orange cats all seem to share a single brain cell, so they rarely have a smart day. Juice wasn’t even orange-kitten-smart. No thoughts at all, just pure vibes. All he wanted to do was wrestle, on his back, getting his belly pet while he clawed and bit at the hand that pet him. I’m sure he’ll grow into a calmer being as he gets older, but likely there will never be any kind of complicated thoughts there for him. He’s just…Juice. Shrug.

But speaking of orange cats, we have the other half of our foster duo, Florence. When she dropped into my lap, she was scared-feral (rather than aggressive-feral), no experience with humans and probably separated from her mother too young. Flo is an intrepid explorer, and I suspect she explored a bit too far, leading her to the road, where she almost got hit by a car before she was rescued. Once in human care, she was extremely timid, quiet and cuddly and compliant. The vet tech we first saw wondered when she would develop the wild-orange-cat gene. Turned out that would be about a week after she arrived, when she was healthy enough and comfortable enough to come out of her shell.

Flo alternated between bursts of crazy activity, often with a feisty, bite-heavy slant, and insistent cuddles that involved suckling on my neck. She slept next to me at night, except when she got too exuberant and I had to lock her in the bathroom for a few hours. When she was in a playful mood, she would puff up to make herself look big and scary for the toys or people she was wrestling. She bit and clawed too hard in the beginning, and had to learn appropriate boundaries (which tbh she’s still learning). It was easy to tell when she wasn’t feeling well because she’d become cuddlier for longer periods of time (often the entire night sleeping next to me without playing). Originally, she was meant to be in to the shelter around the 26th, but a few days before, developed a severe case of diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting. We actually had to get her tested for panleuk (eek!) but thankfully it was negative and we just needed a normal round of meds again. (Why do all the fosters always need multiple rounds of meds??)

Both Flo and Juice went in to the shelter on Monday. Both were up to 2.3 lbs and ready for surgery and adoption. Honestly, I had mixed feelings about letting these two go. Because they were separated and both needed full time care, I spent far more time with Flo while J spent far more with Juice. I never had a chance to connect with Juice all that much, but at the same time, Flo got overly attached to me. She believes I’m her surrogate mom, and she would get distressed if I wouldn’t let her suckle on me when she wanted to sleep. Poor girl is going to struggle to adjust, and poor Juice is going to be so confused as to what’s happening. But I’m also glad they’re off, because two in two rooms really was too much. This allows us a little break. Jason and I went into deep-cleaning mode on both our rooms so that 1) our other cats could enter them without getting sick, and 2) we could pick up more fosters when it was time. Now we just need some time to clean the rest of our poor neglected house before we bring in another batch to care for!

*****
Note: This was pre-drafted. I have a few more posts pre-drafted that will auto-post, but I may be sporadic after that. Last night, a longtime family friend passed away, and my best friend in the world became a widow. Chris was diagnosed with ALS almost two years ago, and it was an unusual case with very rapid progression. I spent yesterday afternoon holding Natalie, and shortly before midnight, she saw him into the next world. I never know how I’m personally going to react to grief, and in terms of the blog, that sometimes means too much writing, and sometimes means long breaks without. So whatever comes next, comes next. There are posts scheduled through this Sunday, but if I disappear after that for awhile, I’ll eventually be back.

Posted in Personal | Tagged | 2 Comments