water damage

So. Wait. Am I using the same font as before? The font says "Font." You know, or you soon will, why my children are going to put me in a home. I haven't blogged for a bit since my first foray, not because I didn't want to, but because I keep forgetting my various passwords. What the heck is this font "Font?" I write and/or edit multiple eNewsletters at work, badly, I might add, and have a tough time remembering passwords and authenticators or some such there. Since I work at a bank, some of the 4 passwords required just to use my computer require a fingerprint and multiple versions of same password except with different versions of Upper/lOWERcAse kinds of things going on. I read the other lovely blogs, and occcasionally glance longingly at my own, with the black background. I have somehow managed to bluff my way back into my own blog just now. I am short of sleep but the siren call of the blog was too, too much.

Water Damage. The Period of our Water Damage. During the Water Damage Period, we lived in a 2 BR Residence Inn Suite for about 5 months while the back half of our house was being reconstructed after a burst pipe in January of '08. A strange interlude, to be sure. I am still a bit water damaged. I had every-two-hours-on the hour insomnia, our cats developed eating disorders, we had a wack-job of a contractor, anything else? Oh, tattoos.

So, what's this lovely landscape, you ask? Not quite the same as that otherworldly dusk dreamphoto I took down on the Cape last August. How will it look against that austere black background? (Do I look thinner against that black background? Okay, fine, that is not important now.)

You don't care, whose tat is that? is what you want to know. It is (was) my daughter's first, acquired shortly after her eighteenth birthday in March of '08. WTF? I said. Wait, wait, I was the very picture of restraint, I said it only to myself. The effort, however, caused most of the blood to drain from the top half of my body, causing me to fold and peel down the wall of her future college's administration building like Gumby, no, like a COLORFORM (do you remember those from when we were kids?) because she had elected to share it with me during the Accepted Students Weekend Reception there in the side hall by the vending machines in Cambridge Massachusetts USA. She and her boyfriend were devotees of the Sailor Jerry old school style tattoos, like ships, and bluebirds with banners, and pinup girls. So that one's name is Gloria. There was some explanation of how this sexy little curvy pixie (the tattoo, not the daughter) was brains juxtaposed with beauty, because there she was reading a book (Sweet Thing is an English major) and beauty doesn't objectify women, it's men that objectify women. WTF? you say. Or, alternatively, Phuh, I know, right?

Should one surmise that I am just all against body art? No, one should not. I like to watch Miami Ink and L.A. Ink as much as the next gal, but keep the tats on other people's daughters, not mine until she reaches the ripe old age of, say, 28. You know, tattoos tend to stick with one. Reach the age where you know what you might like to have hanging around on your person for the rest of your life. Like a Red Sox tattoo, f'rinstance.

[May I digress here? Why certainly. This is not scholarly writing, not a white paper, nay, it is a blog, and it is my blog. I have a friend who is a cardiac nurse. Actually, she is now a nurse practitioner in internal medicine. Back in the day, at an unnamed/unnamable (for HIPPA reasons, somewhere in the fine print, don't you know) medical facility on the West Coast wink wink, there was a patient in the CCU in a coma with a cannon tattooed on his, well, yes. Can you imagine the steady stream of professional onlookers through the CCU? What was the guy thinking?]

So anyway, her second one says "Mommy." With a little heart after it. It is my signature from a valentine card, on the side of her ribcage, near her heart, as though I had signed my work. And to think I almost forgot about that one until just now, in my haste to tell you about the third one. Aw. Is she not a Sweet Thing?

Her third one was a shark. On her shoulder. Cartoon-like. I have no words for that one. No photo, either. Can I be forgiven for that?

I could almost go for something of the sort, though not a shark, but only if it lasted say 2 or 3 years. I myself go for piercings, but more to punctuate. Earlier in this millenium whilst in law school I was under considerable stress while writing briefs prior to oral arguments. I was afraid of either the old pencil-in-the-eye compulsion or being tempted to smoke crack in the Quincy Adams parking garage on the Red Line, I merely pierced the cartilage in my upper ear. But the pain was so exquisitely blinding that it sharpened my focus admirably. How could you not love it? It just puts a finer point on things. The darn thing hurt for 2 years. My hairdresser regularly rips the earring out with his comb and I scream. Then he screams. This has got to have been happening for 8 years now. It's why we tend to drink (both of us) while I get my hair done.

So, let them put me in a home. Yeah, I am a little spotty, stained, water damaged, like I said. A gentleman caller-type friend told me last night he thought it sexy when my mascara ran. Yeah, in a mildewed, goth kinda way.