musings, Nonsense

Mom’s First Tattoo

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Midlife Sentence | Mom's First Tattoo

Warning: This is not a good post for those who have issues with open conversation about private parts, i.e. I’m sorry for all the buttholes

If you’re wanting to be talked out of a tattoo, it’s probably just common sense that a 19-year-old isn’t the best person for the job, right? I mean, not that I expressly wanted to be talked out of a tattoo. I’d been thinking about getting one for a long time.

I had no particular reason why, but lately I’ve been feeling like if I was going to do it, sooner would be better than later, before collagen loss makes it near impossible to find a smooth stretch of skin anywhere on my corpus.

I actually almost got my first tattoo a while ago, at the tail end of a girls’ night out when we all know the best decisions are normally made. At the last minute I bailed on my friend Steph, as she was getting the teensiest of meansiest of little hidden tattoos of all time: a ladybug leaving a little trail of dots behind it.

It was an act of supreme bravado and massive chutzpah on her part – that little ladybug – and I’m sorry for my lack of participation. Still, Steph’s tattooing taught me a few very important things about true friendship:

  • That you shouldn’t abandon your friend at 2 am in a tattoo parlor if you don’t want to hear about it over and over again for the next ten years, and
  • Tattooists won’t work very hard to convince a person to not spend good money on a teensy, little ladybug tattoo even if said teensy, little ladybug tattoo is so small it’s going to eventually end up filling itself in and looking like a menacing freckle, and
  • Doing your homework and making the act of getting a tattoo a little more deliberate than ducking into the nearest ink shop after five hours with your girlfriends at Grainey’s is a good thing, as is not holding people responsible if they end up deciding to bail, Steph.

Anyway, back to my conversation with Jack about the prospect of a tattoo:

“Look, you’ve been thinking about it for a long time,” he said. “It’ll say something that means a lot to you, it’s going to look great and you’ll never regret it.”

I thought those were deep thoughts from someone who had yet to see his twentieth birthday and I told him so.

“Well, you’re a pretty big chicken for someone who’s already hit her fiftieth.”

Touché.

I figured if I was going to do this thing, I’d do it with him, our resident expert. When Jack was 16 and wanted to get his ears pierced, we knew the tattoo question was right around the corner. We leveraged the piercing thing against the tattoo thing in order to get a little advance notice about any tattoo plans and made him pledge to listen to whatever advice we might have about the design and the placement of said tattoo. … And long story short he now has five tattoos, and I don’t remember being part of a lengthy discussion about any of them.

We scheduled my tattoo session for right after a Rotary meeting and I couldn’t sleep the night before thinking about size and placement and fonts and what would happen if there was a typo and whether laser removal surgery was really as painful as I’ve heard. In the end, I went in and did it and I think it looks great and it only hurt a smidge.

Overall, it’s a very nice looking butt for business purposes.

My tattoo artist’s name is Gonzi (I have a tattoo artist now guys!), and he likes women’s butts. I know this because of the illustrations plastered all over his work station area. That’s his flash – what we tattooed folk call the stuff he specializes in. Turns out Gonzi really likes imagining women’s butts in all kinds of situations, clothed and unclothed and with or without flowers.

Midlife Sentence | Mom's First Tattoo

And while I think Gonzi is a very good artist, he needs a little instruction on anatomy, because even though I haven’t seen very many unclothed derrières from that angle, I can tell we have a little disagreement on where the butthole actually goes.

Gonzi’s business card is a drawing of a woman’s butt with flowers growing out of it. It’s thong-wearing butt, so thankfully no awkward conversation about butthole placement has to happen right up front when he’s making business connections. The flowers are confusing to me, but it’s an art thing, so I don’t need to understand, I guess. Overall, it’s a very nice looking butt for business purposes.

… And this probably constitutes a record for the number of times I’ve used the word butt in one post, a fact I’m sure has earned me another listing on one of those porn aggregators, and I can’t decide if that’s a bad thing because I don’t care to associate with people who search for porn, or an okay thing because I appreciate whatever drives up the ratings.

… And by the way, if you are here for the buttholes, may I just suggest this one post about pineapples which has nothing to do with porn, and very little to do with pineapples either, but neither of those things seems to matter to the porn aggregators, so I must be missing something. My stats show if you come here for the pineapples, chances are you’ll keep reading, which I like to think means that people who search for porn have more depth than I’ve given them credit. Or else they’re just really bored and looking for something to fill the time.

If you’re wondering what I had inked permanently onto my forearm, it’s my family motto: Aut Augere Aut Mori, which is Latin for “either action or death.” It’s kind of morbid, but something I’ve always thought was a good motivator for getting me up off my own butt when I’ve started to feel a little down in the dumps about anything.

Midlife Sentence | Mom's First Tattoo

A friend of Mike’s asked him why I didn’t have his family motto tattooed on my arm which led Mike to doing some research and coming up with nothing. No motto for the Markley clan. Now he’s telling people his family was probably out doing all the work and fighting all the wars while my family was coming up with the right way to describe all things in catchy, little mottos.

Which is probably a really good way to describe our marriage, now that I think about it.

Jack’s now looking forward to coming home from college for the summer because he said something about getting matching tattoos and I didn’t think to tell him I’m not getting any more. It’s not because the whole butthole flash stuff has turned me off, either, in case you’re wondering. I’m happy to recommend Gonzi.

It’s just if you want a woman’s butthole tattooed anywhere on you, you should be prepared for anatomical imperfection.

Nonsense

It’s just better for everyone that we know our limits

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I’m not really a lot of help with house projects, which is okay because we don’t do them often.

We’ve always known we’re not “house project people” and are (or …. at least one of us is) entirely comfortable with that. We are the kind of people who would call professionals to change out light bulbs or the batteries in smoke detectors if there were folks who would do that sort of thing (spoiler alert: there aren’t).

Once, our friend Darin asked Mike “what’s your next house project?” And we both just gave him a blank stare. Darin’s the kind of guy who will knock out a wall with a sledgehammer because his wife, Angela, decides she’d like a longer couch and so the wall in question needs to be moved about six inches into the next room.

That’s not to say Mike isn’t handy. He can install a light fixture or strip wallpaper. He comes from that kind of stock. There’s more than one member of his family who could build an entire house or maybe even a space shuttle from scraps they have in the garage.

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Nonsense

Why I don’t get to write the ad for Craig’s List

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Midlife Sentence | Craigs List

For Sale: Large, rustic-looking headboard with a story.

Well, not really a story, story, as in: lovingly-hewn-of-ancient-willow-by-handsome-woodsman-for-his-beguiling-bride kind of story. Nothing so dramatic. There is a story, just a tad humbler. I’ll get to that in a minute.

Said headboard is a handmade item, with slight imperfections and irregularities, and I’ll be honest, it’s a bitch to dust. I think it’s willow, or some other bendable kind of wood with the bark left on, although I’m no expert. This is just to say that no ancient árbol actually gave its life for the thing. It’s likely from a perfectly modern tree that’s fairly common and easy to grow back and not in any way extraordinary.

So, you can forget any notion of its being infused with druid spirits or anything.

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Nonsense, Parenting

The Sublime Four Percent

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Midlife Sentence | Bloody Babydolls and Halloween

Earlier this week, I was walking the dog and I came across the house of my new favorite neighbor.

I don’t know if he does this every year for Halloween, just started this year, or maybe someone new moved in and is  distinguishing him or herself as the new neighborhood Halloween master. I’d never even noticed the house before now. Up until recently, the house next to it, the one closer to the main thoroughfare, was much more noticeable, mostly for being a complete wreck.

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Nonsense

This could be uncomfortable for all of us

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Midlife Sentence | Sex toys

I have a story for you guys, but first, it’s only fair to warn you. You may think you’re visiting what seems like a mild-mannered, sometimes goofy lifestyle/parenting/whatever-it-is blog, but you could be unwittingly putting yourself in the middle of some company you might normally avoid.

Or maybe not. Maybe you do keep this kind of company but just on the down low. I don’t know. I’m not judging, just giving you a heads up.

A few months ago, I noticed that one of my posts in particular was getting a decent amount of daily attention, and I couldn’t figure out why. It’s an okay piece, worth a chuckle, I guess, but not any more special than anything else you’ll find here.

I wrote it three years ago when my neighbor invited us to an open house and I noticed the little postcard invitation had a pineapple on it, which reminded me about a local urban legend about the neighborhood just over the hill, rumored to be popular with swingers. As the story goes, if you’re interested in a swinging evening, you look for the house (or maybe houses, I don’t know how many folks are into this, maybe you have a choice) with the pineapple on the porch.

I’m not sure what you do once you find the pineapple, if there’s any protocol for announcing yourself or what, which I guess was the point of the story – that and wondering if the neighbors were swingers, which I never found out.

So that post started to get some daily attention after a few years of none at all, which usually means someone with more traffic was driving that. After a little sleuthing, we found out who. The post has been picked up by a couple of aggregators – sites that pull content from all over the internet that fit a theme.

Which is how my blog seems to have become a popular search result for people looking for porn.

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musings, Nonsense, Parenting

You know who also shows up early? People like Shawn

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I had the weirdest experience recently. I finished a meeting and had to be across town for another meeting right on the heels of my first meeting, only the first meeting finished early, so I got to my second meeting early. I’m rarely early. Actually, I’d give it about a 50% chance I’ll even be more or less on time to anything.

I have plenty of redeeming qualities. I can stick to a tight budget. I am probably the World’s Best at Parallel Parking (seriously, I should have a mug made with that). I talk to dogs. I cover my face when I sneeze. I stay hydrated.

I am also chronically tardy. Sometimes it’s only seconds late, sometimes a teensy bit more.

But not this time. This time I was maybe 15 minutes early, which kinda felt like I could fit another whole meeting in there. I thought I could use that time to check email, or else say hi to another friend in that office.

I took my stuff to the conference room, where any plans I had were thwarted when I was waylaid by members of the group I was set to be meeting with – in the future, mind you – who were also early.

This is where it got weird. I had the chance to witness first-hand what early people do with all the time they have when they show up early. This was a rare and valuable opportunity to witness another species in its natural habitat.

Ultimately it was really disturbing.

I mean, you guys, this is what they do: they freaking talk about being early. They revel in it. It’s weird.

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Nonsense, Parenting

Things might not go the way you plan, for your kids or their fish

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Midlife Sentence | kids don't always turn out the way you think, neither do their fish

Colin passed us both in the kitchen this morning, on his way out the back door. He had wet hair, no shoes and was carrying a clear, plastic cup with something in it. We watched him grab a shovel out of the shed and start working at something in a corner of the yard, his back to us.

“What’s he doing?”

“Probably collecting something for his tanks. Rocks? I don’t know.” Mike went back to his computer.

Colin returned the shovel back to the shed and came back in.

“One of my fish died.”

“Oh honey. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, I could see it had dropsy last night. I knew it probably wouldn’t live.”

Dropsy, he explained, makes a fish’s scales stick out like a pine cone, instead of lay flat. It’s also an indicator of liver failure.

“I guess I never thought about fish having livers,” I said.

“I knew fish have eyebrows, but not livers,” Mike said.*

I didn’t know about the eyebrow thing, either. Clearly I haven’t been keeping up.

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Nonsense

Squirrels Can’t Read Minds and Other Things My Crazy Neighbor Needs to Know

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Midlife Sentence | Squirrels Can't Read Minds

Yesterday I had an appointment with Steven, whose calendar fills months in advance. If I ever have to reschedule, it’ll be a while before I can get back in.

I don’t have a lot of secrets, but if I did, Steven would know them. He’s got sophisticated ways of making people talk even when they don’t want to. I’m just guessing about that. I’m not one of those people who needs a lot of prodding to spill the beans.

In fact, I’d make a lousy secret agent, or spy or anything. This would be me in any kind of captured secret agent situation:

Evil Villain: Ve have vays of making you talk. *brandishes pliers*

Me: Eek. Whatever you do, do make me tell you the secret code, or the location of our secret agent headquarters.

EV: *puts down pliers* You have a code? Headquarters?

Me: Well it’s more of a clubhouse, really… Oh shoot! Dangit.

“So, what’s new,” Steven says as I come in, hang my coat and take my seat. He’s a good one to hash over stuff relating to family, parenting, work, or just the weather. If I don’t have anything to share, he’s ready with a story of his own, just to get the juices flowing.

But on this day, I’ve come prepped with the latest tale about my flailing about as a human.

“I’m still feeding the crazy lady’s squirrels.” I cut to the chase. We only have 45 minutes.

Steven frowns as he shakes out a gown and drapes it on me.

“Let’s hear it.”

Here’s the story: Once upon a time, a woman on Nextdoor needs help unloading a big bag of birdseed from her car because her back is out. I live with two strapping adolescents, and have a rare minute to spare, so I grab a kid and head down to see her.

She’s already found help with her bird seed but keeps us on her doorstep for about 30 minutes with what I suspect is only a partial account of her personal woes. She’s thankful we’ve come to help. The rest of her neighbors can’t seem be neighborly enough to do so anymore. We manage to extract ourselves from the conversation when she finally stops for breath, but it isn’t easy.

Days later she calls (because why not leave my cell number on some strange neighbor’s Nextdoor comment?) and leaves a message that’s essentially “thank you for your kindness,” but in long form. Like, my-voice-mail-cuts-her-off long.

I don’t call back then, or later when she calls to say how nice I seem and how she can tell these things about people and would my son be able to come around once in a while and empty her cat litter? Newsflash: I can tell things about people too, and this woman freaks me out. I take a pass on the cat litter thing on behalf of my kid.

In December she calls again and I pick up, not recognizing her number. She’s fallen on ice and was at the hospital until late when her neighbors could drive her home. She’s broken both arms and her knee and can’t really function and isn’t sure what she’s going to do to take care of herself or her cat but the most tragic thing is her bird and squirrel feeders are empty and it’s winter and they’re starving and all looking at her through the window and she swears she can hear them all dying and she’s dying too and all she’s asking is if I’ll pick up the birdseed she’s already paid for from the lawn and garden store?

I promise to pick up the birdseed the next day and assure her that the birds and the squirrels won’t hold the wait against her. I hang up and have a mini nervous breakdown in the middle of the grocery aisle.

I won’t bore you with a long list, but I’ve somehow found myself Head Caretaker of All the Things at this point in my life. Worrying about how some stranger is going to take care of a bunch of codependent fauna much less her own, damn self is the last thing I need on my plate.

Which is the genesis of my latest inner monologue that’s been on continuous replay every couple of days or so for the last two months I’ve been feeding this crazy lady’s squirrels and birds:

Me: Oh my God, I don’t have time for worrying about her damn squirrels.

Also Me: It’s literally 20 minutes every couple of days, and you’re just too busy?

Me: You know it’s twice that long if she happens to catch me while I’m there.

AM: Man, you are a piece of work. You’re all willing to help a person out but only so long as it meets your criteria?

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Nonsense

We’re so lucky to live in this modern era … oh, and dinner may take a while

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Midlife Sentence | Dinners Not Ready

When I’m cooking dinner – any meal, really – I hate having people in the kitchen with me.

So, of course, that’s exactly where 60% of my family was last night as I was trying to concentrate on the complex set of instructions that came with my new gadget.

“I wonder how long before they start cooking food by splitting an atom,” Colin said.

“I can’t tell you for sure that’s not what this does,” I said, only slightly kidding.

“It looks dangerous, you should wear these,” Mike said, holding out a pair of safety glasses (I really have no idea why we keep a pair of those in the kitchen. I don’t think I’m the reason).

Honestly, the thing did look dangerous after I unpacked it. The box had been replete with pictures of roasts and steamed rice and sautéed vegetables and all kinds of promises of health and convenience and wellbeing. Inside, there were no fewer than a dozen warning labels about not touching this or that part of the thing, or putting your face or any exposed skin directly above the valve that lets steam escape, or immersing particular parts in water, or moving the thing while it was on.

Jeez, what had I gotten myself into?

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musings, Nonsense, Parenting

A couple of soon-to-be empty nesters at a baby shower

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“I don’t think I’ve ever been to a baby shower before.”

This was Mike’s confession to me as we were walking up to the door to our friends’ home, Saturday afternoon.

Had I realized this earlier, I would have though of some way to punk him. Maybe made up some fake baby shower etiquette to share with him in the car. But, right then, on the spot like that, I couldn’t think of the right thing to say that would freak him out just enough for us to laugh about it later, but not enough for him to bolt. These things take some finesse and the look on his face had me worried.

So I just shrugged.

“There’ll probably be mimosas.”

The mom-to-be greeted us with a huge smile, wearing a flattering, floral print dress. Back when I was that far along with either of my pregnancies, you’d likely find me in a baggy pair of overalls that gave me the profile of Uncle Jesse on Dukes of Hazard. On alternate days I’d switch between one of the two knit tops that still fit. On dressier days, I might wear shoes. I could go on like that for a couple weeks.

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