Ravens at the front door

01.31.07 (2:03 pm)   [edit]

Every day I throw out the leftover parrot food from my parrot's cage.  I put it outside for the red squirrels to eat.  My parrot eats all the seeds and peanuts out of her food first and often leaves the more nutritious kibble bits for the squirrels.  As a result, we have very healthy looking squirrels, with shiny coats and fat tummies!

So this morning I heard the squirrel making a racket like he was yelling at someone.  I took a peak and it turns out that two ravens had decided to help themselves to some leftover kibbles.  They were scarfing back the fruit-based crunchies with vigor.  They ate a few more as I watched and then one raven crowed out a deep "bullfrog croak" of a sound and they flew off gracefully.  It was like he was saying "Thanks for the snacks!" 

I can still hear the ravens in the trees.  This is an unusual but very welcome visit.  I love ravens.  We don't often get them here because they're over at one of our neighbour's places.  That particular neighbour has an awesome garbage filled with leftover cheeses, meats and assorted sausages.  They haven't learned how to cook for just themselves since their kids moved out and so they throw out a fair bit of yummy food unfortunately.  As a result, the ravens raid the garbage on garbage day and make off with enough food to last them from one week to the next.  The birds have set up shop near this house and as a result we don't often see them looking for food over here.  I wonder if the neighbour got a new garbage container or something.  Anyway, whatever the reason, I love seeing the ravens as long as they don't drop dead stuff or garbage on our lawn where the dog can eat it.  Pesky carrion birds!

Actually my husband and I wish we could attract even more ravens and some vultures to hang out near our home, but we just can't compete with the dump that's ten kilometres down the road.  They have no interest in our seed (except to take the kibble apparently) and the only time we see vultures is when something dies on the property.  The vultures literally swoop out of nowhere to scoop up the free lunch.  Since we're not going to keep rancid meat on our property (we also have bears in the area) we can't really attract the ravens and vultures to nest nearby.  Maybe we need to start cooking for four instead of two and that will fix things up!

Sleepy morning

01.30.07 (12:33 pm)   [edit]

I've had a very sleepy morning so far.  I woke up on the early side (9 am) and didn't go back to sleep as I often do.  That will help me out tremendously with sleeping tonight.

I often wonder why it is that I don't want to fall asleep.  I mean I want to be well-rested, but I enjoy thinking.  I daydream and think a LOT about life, especially when I lie in bed at night.  I wonder why it is that I get so into what I'm daydreaming about that I don't want to just slide into a nice deep sleep.  It's like I resist sleep for some reason.  It's like I don't want my brain to shut off for some reason.  I mean on a logical level I obviously want to sleep, but it's like on some other level I enjoy being in charge of my own dreams and so daydreaming is more enjoyable for me.  Seems weird.  I mean real dreams don't have the same boundaries and limitations as daydreams so you'd think I'd look forward to having them.  Maybe that's the point then...the drugs I take make it all but impossible for me to remember my dreams.  Maybe that bothers me.  I dunno.  All I know for sure is that I stay awake so late at night for no reason and all I can think is that my mind enjoys daydreaming more than it enjoys regular dreaming. I'm sure there's some other scientific reason but for now that's all I can come up with.

Zzzzzzz...

It's really cold outside today.  We've been having a real deep freeze for the last while in this region.

I'm sorry but I'm so sleepy that I can't even keep typing right now.  Zzzzzz...

Deep freeze

01.29.07 (3:09 pm)   [edit]

It's really freakin' cold here in Eastern Ontario today.  It's sunny and sub-arctic out there.  I'm glad it's cold but even the dog finds it a bit too cold to stay out for the full day.  He came in early to hang out inside but has now decided to go back out.  I suspect he'll be in and then out again fairly often from now on, instead of just staying out there asleep.  He's also extra silly when he comes in because he's full of the chill from outside!

My husband found these dolls online that I like.  They're called Bleeding Edge Goth dolls.  You can look at them here: http://www.begoths.com/" title="http://www.begoths.com/" target="_blank"http://www.begoths.com/  I have a collection of Living Dead Dolls (www.livingdeaddolls.com) but these are a little different, yet equally nice.  They look a little like Bratz dolls so that's kind of funny.  I love the costumes they put them in...very cool.

The parrot is driving me batty today.  She's extremely interested in chewing boot laces off any boots or shoes we have in the house.  As a result she spends a lot of time trying to destroy footwear...specifically my husband's footwear.  I can't help but wonder if she notices the footwear he wears and remembers it for later.  She seems to leave my shoes alone, but I also don't wear as many pair of shoes with laces and those I do wear are in the closet!  I guess the moral here is that a parrot will teach you to keep your shoes in the closet or teach you a lesson about leaving them around!

The cold is still bothering me, but my husband seems to be over the worst of it.  This is what I hate about colds with MS...they last way longer than they should.  They also seem to take longer to get as bad though.  I wonder why that is.  MS patients also recover much slower than normal patients from things like surgery.  The whole healing process seems to take longer for them.  Weird.  It's a very bizarre disease to say the least.

I slept WAAAAY too much last night.  Tonight I'll be lucky if I sleep at all.  I fell asleep at about 3:00 in the morning but I didn't get out of bed until 1:00 in the afternoon.  I'm definitely going to pay for that in the form of lost sleep tonight.  I should use the time to read my Skin Deep magazine which I have been too sick to read since getting it about a week ago.

My legs are bothering me today...just the usual neuropathic pain, combined with muscle pain.  I'll ignore it for as long as I can and then take some Sativex (cannabis spray).  If that doesn't help I'll have to take morphine but I think it's not that serious and should be able to be managed with the Sativex.

If you've ever had to take morphine you know that it can constipate you something fierce.  It's the last resort drug that I take when I'm basically giving up.  I only take it when I've taken everything else first.  I find that more than anything, when I take morphine it usually makes me pass out because I also have a lot of THC in my system.  That THC amplifies the morphine and makes it pretty much impossible for me to stay awake.  So the morphine doesn't really kill the pain, it just knocks me out completely and that's usually the last resort.  If I have to take morphine today it will help me to sleep in spite of the fact that I already got too much sleep last night, but I won't do it unless I have to.  I'll try the Sativex method first.  For now I think I'll just ignore it though. 

Did nothing

01.27.07 (7:30 pm)   [edit]

Today my husband and I did basically nothing.  We are both sick with colds and so we just hung out in bed with each other and the dog, and the parrot!  All of us spent hours hanging out in the bedroom lazing around watching TV and using the laptop.  It was sublime.  Amazing how a day just spent doing nothing can be so awesome if you're doing it with the right people.

I couldn't sleep last night.  I literally fell asleep at 8:00 am today and woke up at 1:30 in the afternoon...but I'm hoping that tonight I'll be able to sleep.  It's very important to my mental health that I not have insomnia for too long.  It very quickly turns me into a cranky child when I haven't been able to sleep for days or if my sleep pattern gets too badly out of whack.

I dislike it immensely when my mind won't shut off at night and that's what happened last night.  I kept on thinking and daydreaming, but not actual dreaming.  I lay in bed with my eyes wide open and my mind wide open and I just thought and thought and thought.  A hundred different scenarios played out in my mind's eye as I imagined what it would be like to learn how to tattoo...then I imagined what it would be like to do it as a business with a website and business cards.  Then I imagined what it would be like to own a shop...it was a long night.  I kept imagining how the business would grow and how some people would object to us being there...and how we'd develop a cult following of all of our tattooed customers.  I want to create a clan mentality among my clientèle so that I can maintain a loyal customer base...these are the things that go through my head.

I obsess.  I think that last night I was obsessing about a future for myself.  I was creating a place where it was okay for myself to hope for the future and okay to imagine myself having a productive life doing something fun and interesting.  I continue to see that future, despite the fact that the odds say it won't happen for me.  I refuse to stop hoping.  I guess I know that the tattooing career may never actually happen, but I can make sure that I do it as a hobby no matter what.  I'd be okay with that.  I mean if I never get to own a shop I'm still going to enjoy being able to tattoo people.  There's always going to be someone looking for a tattoo so I won't ever run out of customers and as long as I enjoy the work I'm going to want to keep doing it.

Comment on Life

01.26.07 (6:38 pm)   [edit]

My cousin was over for a visit last night and we got to talking about people and the way they communicate.  My cousin has been off work for four months on vacation (she took a leave of absence to travel).  Anyway, she has been "out of the rat race" for a few months and she said to me "have you noticed how fast everyone talks and how nobody listens to anybody anymore?"  She had found that since she was no longer in a hurry and could take her time with stuff that people have become too fast and too crazy for her to almost be able to stand communicating with them.

I told her it was a reliefe to hear that other people had the same problem.  We discussed it at length and decided that people don't communicate at all anymore.  I notice it when I'm online with bloggers.  So many of them don't read.  They THINK they've read something and they react without reading clearly what is being written.  I try to be very careful about what words I choose especially when I'm typing something that I want to be understood.  I attempt to use language that is simple and isn't convoluted, but I feel like I succeed less and less because people simply don't read what I've written.  They think they read it...they will claim to read it but then they'll completely miss the point of what I'm saying because they're in such a rush to confront me on what they THINK I said to them.

My cousin and I were saying how people are in such a hurry (and I've complained about this before) that they ask you a question and then don't listen to the answer.  It's like "Hey how is that boil on your foot that was bothering you?" and before the person can really say "Well it's not that great, the doctor gave me some ointments..." and the person who asked the question has already said in their mind "They're fine." and has moved on.  Meanwhile the person who is answering the question tries to finish answering and the person cuts them off to ask something else.  It can feel like machine gun fire when you're being subjected to it and I feel like the more I try to communicate with people, the more I run into this disjointed, "too fast" thinking and I simply cannot communicate with these people.  I like taking my time with ideas and thoughts and I wish more people could slow down and do the same.  I realize that somehow they've become conditioned to think they need to go faster and faster and faster, but it's not actually true.  They need to slow down and listen, and read and think.

Bummer

01.26.07 (5:36 pm)   [edit]

My husband and I have tickets to the ballet tonight.  It's a modern interpretation of Cinderella, performed by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet at the NAC.  We are both too sick to go.  We had to give up the tickets to his parents so that they wouldn't go to waste.  What a total bummer.

I have mentioned that my dirty little secret is that I love classical music.  My other dirty little secret is that I ADORE the ballet.  I love the grace and beauty of it all.  It literally makes me cry.  The music and the power of it combined with the beauty of the dance and the TONS of energy pouring from the audience...it brings me to tears every time, it's just that overwhelming.  Sometimes I feel like my head is going to explode when I'm there!  Seriously it's that powerful.  When I consider all of the tattoos I plan to get over the next few years, I always consider that I don't want any of them to show when I go to the ballet.  I'm a different person when I go to the ballet...and that person doesn't want to have tattoos showing.  I love my tattoos, but I love being a snob even more!  Heh! 

I don't want anyone looking "down" at me when I'm at the ballet and so we always get the best seats and sit in a box and I always look my absolute best when we go there.  I like being able to slide into and out of that world whenever I want to...and I don't want that to change, so I won't be getting any tattoos that show on my hands or neck or face.  I also won't get any near my ankles or lower down on my leg in case I wish to wear a nice skirt.  I'm so schizophrenic with my life in what I like to do and how I like to look...what's ironic is that when I'm tattooing I'm going to want all of my tattoos to show to prove that I enjoy them and am proud of them.

I guess that brings me to tattoo placement.  So far all of my tattoos are easily hidden.  One is on my lower back (also known as a "tramp stamp") and the other one is on my shoulder blade.  I plan on getting one on my left shoulder and one on my right ass cheek sometime in the next year or two.  After that I will probably continue with places that can be hidden by either a bathing suit or at the very most t-shirt and shorts.  But I expect that my lower legs and lower forearms will not get done for a very long time.  Those are considered to be more "hard core".  Obviously the face, head, hands and neck are even more hard core, but the further you venture beyond "t-shirt and shorts" territory, the more extreme a form of tattooing it is.  So far I'm still in bathing suit territory!  I plan on getting a back piece, upper shoulder/arm areas and ribcage done (ribcage is supposed to be the hardest place to get a tattoo).

The back piece will be the tattoo that I spend the most time designing.  I want it to be gorgeous.  It's going to be pretty hardcore for me, as a woman, to have a back piece and so I want it to be stunning looking.  I don't want it to have any kind of "goth" imagery, but yet I want it to have a goth feel.  I don't want it to be overtly symbolic, but I want it to be secretive...like it's a secret that only I know about, but that everyone else can look at and still enjoy.  I don't want to have it so symbolic that it's "too serious" either.  I've toyed with a few ideas but I believe I'm going to settle on a shield and a sword surrounded by a vine of lilies.  I don't want anything too dark or too "fantasy" looking either.  I really don't want to look like one of those seventies murals with the viking women!  Basically I want to avoid cheese and I want it to be meaningful to me.  I'll have to do some more research and get some good graphics, but I've pretty much got the whole thing laid out in my head.  Now I just need to make it look right for a tattoo.  Once I have it designed, I'll have to see my tattooist to see if she can do it.  I don't plan on making it too detailed so she won't have any problem with it, I hope.

Before I get a big back piece I'd want to lose a few more pounds.  I've been steadily losing over the last year or so but I would still want to get myself down a bit more before getting a large tattoo.  Human skin stretches and rebounds when we gain and lose weight, but it doesn't always rebound to the same place it was, and so you can ruin a big tattoo by losing a lot of weight or by gaining a lot of weight.  Before considering a large tattoo, it is important to consider whether you are planning to lose a lot of weight in the next while.  I'm not saying you shouldn't get the tattoo if yoou think you need to lose weight, but I do think that if you know you're going to lose weight because you are already losing it, you can safely say that you should wait until you're closer to your goal weight before getting any permanent ink.  That is my current situation.  I'm about 15 pounds more than I should be and until I lose that fifteen pounds I'm going to hold off on a back piece...even if I do have it drawn up by that time.

Money and Chicks

01.25.07 (6:11 pm)   [edit]

I got my latest issue of "Skin Deep" (which makes me wonder why "Tattoo Magazine" is so slow).  I haven't had time to read through it yet.  I've sort of been saving it like a literary cookie for myself to enjoy later in the evening.  However I did flip through it a little and I found a great quote.  It said that if you get into tattooing for the money or the chicks, you're in it for the wrong reason.  I had to laugh when I read that.  Do some chicks really dig tattoo artists?  Well I'm definitely not in it for the chicks and I can tell you that I plan to make no money at it.  I want to do it because I really think I'll enjoy it.  No other reason.  They say that the people who have the right attitude end up being the most talented artists.  I guess it's like any profession, you can get into it for the wrong reasons and if that happens you won't enjoy it for long.  I think that in order to be a good tattoo artist you have to start out with at least an interest in art even if you aren't a full-blown artist.  I think that's the problem a lot of tattooists have...they don't realize that you have to like to draw before you can like drawing on people for a living.

On my own personal tattoo front I have found some really great graphics to be part of my back piece.  I keep changing up design elements and in so doing I have managed to come up with some artwork that really will look amazing done in black and grey.  The back piece will be black and grey with red highlights I think.  Of course I change my mind constantly on what I want but with this new graphic I think I'm going to be very content with red highlights done in sort of a washed out look.  We'll see how it looks when I draw it all up.  I need to find a good sword graphic.  That could be tricky. 

My husband is now sick with the cold.  We are both coughing and sneezing and he stayed home from work today because of it.  He's thinking he can make it tomorrow but I told him that I didn't think it was a good idea.  I doubt he'll be hard to convince in the morning.  In fact I'm quite sure he'll be staying home, but he likes to think that maybe he'll make it in. 

Ugh, when I sneeze it hurts my throat.  I hate that.

Yesterday my turtlenecks arrived.  I ordered them a little while ago.  They're awesome. 

Well that's it for me.  I'm really grasping at straws today for things to say because my ears keep popping and I'm just a bit too tired to be writing.  :)

Freaky Electrical Poltergeist thingy

01.24.07 (5:17 pm)   [edit]

I have had for many years now a "poltergeist" which follows me around (at least I think it's a poltergeist)...it actually seems to protect me though so I don't know if that still qualifies as a true poltergeist.  Often a poltergeist is mischevious and destructive, and my poltergeist is no different.  The latest victim to its clutches?  The PVR.  It's been on the fritz for a couple of days now.  It is now completely dead.

The poltergeist that follows me seems to be of an electrical nature.  If it's electrical my poltergeist seems to be able to screw with it.  Lights, TV sets, computers, appliances...even the alternators and batteries on every car I've ever owned...sometimes twice on the same car.

I always wonder why this poltergeist becomes active when it does.  Sometimes I notice that it happens when I am angry.  Other times I notice it when I'm sick.  I've been sick...really sick, for a few days now and I'm wondering if my poltergeist is on guard.  It's never just any one event or thing that leads me to start suspecting the poltergeist; afterall I can go months or years without seeing it at all.  It's usually a bunch of events that tell me that it's active again.  The PVR dying is one of many little hints I've had that the poltergeist may be getting busy again.

Poltergeists usually build up their activity until a culmination of some kind occurs.  The poltergeist that follows me around doesn't seem to get as voilent as it used to be, but it nearly killed my ex-boyfriend...literally.  So without getting into a whole pile of ugly past stories about my ex, I can say that it seems to mean no harm to me whatsoever, in fact I believe it protects me.  It's kind of cool but can be a bit freaky too.  My husband is the one that notices it more than I do.  When him and I have had arguments things go flying or break or lightbulbs blow out.  It's all pretty bizarre and sounds completely insane when I say it out loud.  I don't tell my family or friends about it because they'd look at me like I must be high.  With all the THC I take, I usually AM high, but that's not going to explain how my appliances and batteries and things keep dying. 

Anyway, the poltergeist seems to have fried the PVR...good thing it was a rental.  However, it means that we cannot watch all the awesome TV shows we had queued up until we get it working again, and if we have to swap it with a new one we may lose those shows completely.  Not a big deal...we aren't much as far as TV shows go; we watch a couple that we'll miss, but most of them are re-run a few hundred times so we'll catch them.  It's more the annoyance of my husband having to make a trip to return the PVR to the Rogers Video and get a new one.  We seem to have to return PVR's fairly often.  Stupid poltergeist! :)

The Number 23

01.23.07 (5:18 pm)   [edit]

Have you seen the ad for that movie with Jim Carrey...The Number 23?  It looks like the ultimate paranoia movie.  I can't wait!  I definitely have to see that.  Jim Carrey is the perfect actor for that role.  It embraces his very dark "other side".  He has such a dark element or undercurrent to him.  They say that the funniest people are usually also the darkest people...they have a dark half.  You can almost see Jim Carrey's dark half oozing out of him when he acts.  It's a perfect role for him.

When I was a kid I really enjoyed painting the faces of the other kids in my family.  I was actually "banned" from doing so by my aunts and uncles because I was sending their kids home to them looking like accident victims and monsters!  The kids loved it, but the parents didn't.  I hated the way that the things I enjoyed were always frowned upon in favour of wholesome activities in "teams" or groups.  I liked painting faces.  I enjoyed making them up to look scary.  Scary was always how my art looked.

Even as I grew up and became a very talented painter and drawer especially I liked drawing realistic things and I liked drawing scary things.  I enjoyed painting scary things too...and not overtly scary but creepy.  I liked creepy art.  I liked making it and I enjoyed seeing it too, but I didn't enjoy having it around me!  Weird, but I don't actually like dark art on my walls!  So I always was in this weird place where I enjoyed making dark paintings but I didn't like them to hang on the walls of my home!  Bizarre.

Anyway, I think that tattooing is one way for me to be able to get that dark artwork urge out without making art that nobody wants.  I mean dark fantasy art is cheesy at best and at worst can end up on the walls of some pretty weird people (Saddam Hussein comes to mind).  I wouldn't say my style was as bad as a 70's van mural...it's much MUCH darker than that, but it isn't a style that has ever received anything but shudders from those who have seen it.  It's not easy to make that kind of artwork work...and yet people LOVE to get that kind of thing tattooed on their bodies.  So there you go.  The perfect medium for me!

I'm hoping that after years of doing tattoos that I can then design them as well.  I would like to maybe do some flash art design so that I could share my artwork around with other tattooists.  That would be assuming that I feel well enough to do so.  My goal is to do something I enjoy and get my artistic urges out...the other stuff will be gravy.  For instance if I can sell T-shirts with my designs on them that could be profitable too but the main goal is for me to be creative.

My husband has been buying some tattoo flash on eBay for me...we've both been enjoying looking through the artwork and the more flash we get the more we both feel like this is the right business for us.  It's like we enjoy being around the stuff.  It makes us happy to look through them all and as we get into the flash, we get into the artists as well.  It's going to be so awesome when I finally get my first machines.  I am really getting jazzed about this all!  Look at me...getting excited about something I don't even know if I'm capable of doing.  Stay tuned to see what happens! :)

Lame

01.22.07 (3:35 pm)   [edit]

Today I am still ill.  My writing suffers sometimes when I'm sick and today is one of those days.  I feel like I don't have too much to say.  It's not that I'm not full of my usual witty observations, it's that the effort of writing those observations out is just oppressive because I'm not up to par.  Par...I hate sports references.  Anyway, I'm not up to my usual standard of writing and so I hope you can enjoy it for its simplicity today.

It's a glorious, sunny winter day out there.  I don't know if you've noticed but the days are creeping back.  It's now 5:15 at night before the sky out front gets dark enough that I have to turn the outdoor lights on.  At Winter Solstice it was dark by 4:30 in the afternoon.  In the springtime it's usually 8:00 or so before it gets dark.  That means we have to wait for the planet to rotate around to the point where we get another two hours and fourty-five minutes.  Doesn't seem that bad when you think of it that way.

The dog is in high maintenance mode now.  Every day he gets this spurt of energy at the same time and he needs to be entertained for a while before he will calm down.  He can be quite rambunctious despite his seven years of age (going on eight) so some days he can be a big dufus and act like a hundred pound wolf puppy! I hope he lives to be twenty.  The odds say that probably won't happen but I can still hope it.  I should correct that and say that I hope he remains healthy until twenty.  I don't want him to live in pain or discomfort if at all possible.  Wolfdogs live longer than normal dogs because they have "fresh" DNA running through their genes.  They don't tend to suffer from the same ailments or inbreeding problems that all other breeds suffer from.  "Mutts" have better genetics than purebred dogs because they are blended with a few different genetic lines, but if those lines were all inbred, it still only improves the genetics so much.  Wolfdogs have "brand new" dna because of the wolf in them and as such they are generally much more hardy than even mutts.  That's the theory anyway.  I hope that's how it plays out as well.  I will be a basket-case when that dog finally dies.  He's my best friend aside from my husband.  Nobody has been as good a friend to me during my lifetime as he has.  In fact I doubt I'll be able to have another dog after having had such a smart creature as a buddy. 

They outlawed wolfdogs and other "dangerous" breeds in Ontario a while ago, with a grandfather clause for those who currently own those breeds of dogs.  We fall within the grandfather clause and so we are fine to own this wolfdog, but we cannot legally ever get another one until they change or repeal that law.  That's not likely to happen and quite frankly I'm not entirely against the idea of banning the breed as they are an "advanced" canine which most people are far too stupid to own.  However, I disagree with the idea that a "breed" is bad...I think it's owners that suck and all breeds can be managed if the owner is intelligent.  Like I said, most people are too stupid to own wolfdogs and so I would rather just see them outlawed.  How that sucks is that also includes me :(   The law has to be written to cover everyone...right down to the very stupid.  We will be prohibited from owning the breed we love and admire ever again. 

That means that the next option would be a malamute.  They are pretty much the closest thing to what we have in the "dog" world...it would be okay I guess, but mals are not the same as wolfdogs.  For one thing, you can't ever let a mal off leash.  Our wolfdog can be off leash all the time.  We keep him leashed for most of the time because of what he is and his prey drive, but when we go to the cottage he stays right by our sides the whole time and we never need a leash.  Aside from the leash thing, wolfdogs are WAY larger.  Our dog weighs in at 100 pounds which doesn't seem like much, but he's 30 inches high at the shoulder.  He's lean and lanky and extremely strong.  His paws are HUGE.  Malamutes don't come in those proportions.  They're usually about 25 inches at the shoulder MAX and that's just not big enough as far as I'm concerned!  Someone needs to breed a giant malamute with a skinnier build.  I think that if you crossed a mal with a great pyrenese dog you would get the right size of dog...but the temperament would be all wrong.  Really, the wolfdog is the perfect dog for me because it's almost not a dog.  I sometimes feel like I'm almost not a human so it's perfect!  Quite frankly I have a lot more in common with my dog than I ever will with most of the humans I meet!

Sunday in bed

01.21.07 (5:10 pm)   [edit]

Today I spent the day in bed.  That meant that the parrot had to have her perch beside me so she could watch over me while I was sick.  She was most helpful (not).  However, I do understand that she's like a two year old toddler in her mentality and she's very selfish.  It's always about her.  So while she was concerned about my being in bed, and was on her best behaviour, she definitely was a handful just the same!  Parrots are like little children and you have to constantly hedge against them trying to push your buttons.  It's what they try to do sometimes and you have to just ignore it.  She was being a bit boisterous towards the end of her "out time" and eventually I had to put her away so I could rest.  She got her three and a half hours of time out with me and I got to be protected from my husband for three and a half hours.  Not exactly a fair trade but who did I think I was "owning" a parrot!  They can't be owned...they can be housed, but they own you!

So after I put my parrot away I decided that it would now be safe to take out the laptop and write a little.  I'm also using the TV to listen to baroque classical music.  I am just that pretentious!  Just kidding.  I'm not pretentious but I have to admit that over the years I've developed a real taste for baroque classical music.  I think it will be funny at the tattoo shop I own someday.  I'll be wanting to listen to classical music but my customers will think I should listen to Tool and Danzig.  My husband listens to that stuff, but for me I have to admit that my dirty little secret is that I love classical music.  I listen to Green Day and Good Charlotte (what I call "weenie rock") to get my little "pop punk" on but when it comes to being into dark music I like to think I'm into the original goth music when I listen to classics.  Okay it's not actually "dark" music; more like incredibly uplifting, but let's not split hairs!  It's definitely baroque and ornate and over the top, and that suits me to a T!

The other day I had a dream about an old friend of mine.  I woke up with his face in my mind and it made me worry about him.  We actually were boyfriend and girlfriend in high school.  I don't think he ever truly got over me...that's not me being conceited at all, he was just one of those people that took each relationship to heart and really felt like the people he was with were integral in his life...even when he wasn't with them anymore.  He often said I was his soulmate and that even though we weren't going to be together (because I broke up with him) that I was always his soul mate.  He's reaffirmed that theory a few times since then even though he's reasonably happily married and has kids.  I don't think he ever really knew why I broke up with him in the first place.  The truth of it was that he lied.  He was sneaky and a liar.  It was the only thing about him that I didn't like.  Instead of always being honest about stuff he would lie and it was sneaky stuff...like he wrote a poem "about me" but it turns out that I found the same poem in a book of old poems he had twritten to his previous girlfriend.  When that incident happened...in that exact moment I stopped wanting to be with him.  I found the old poem in his books of old poetry and when he said he had written it "just for me" he said it with a completely honest face.  He said it was an original, I even asked point blank (because I had seen it in the book) if he had written it "just now".  He said he wrote it over the last week or two.  Liar.  I cannot abide by lying.  There is never a good reason to lie.  Telling the truth may be less popular and result in hurt feelings, but if he had told me the truth when I had asked him point blank, things might have not ended the way they did.  But the point is that he DID lie.  He DID hurt my feelings but in a different way.  He made it so that I could never really know if I could trust him.  I mean sure it was a little lie, nothing critical, but if he'd lie about that little thing, what other "little things" would he decide were worth lying over?  If I can't trust you I can't trust you...it really doesn't get more simple than that.  Funny how it has baffled him all of this time as to what my "logic" was.  Why did I suddenly dump his ass and change my mind about moving to another city with him...it must still make him wonder.  I have heard a lot of crazy theories about why, including that I did it to get even with him for cheating on me the first time we dated.  Okay, maybe that was the reason I started dating him the second time...but it wasn't my intention for the entire time...just at the beginning.  But when he lied to me about the poem I realized that a leopard doesn't change its spots. 

What is interesting about him was that he used his former girlfriend (who cheated on HIM and dumped him) as a way to try to control me.  He'd basically try to use her memory and constantly talking about her as a way to make me feel like I always needed to worry that I wasn't really good enough.  It didn't work too well on me but knowing his tendency towards this behaviour and the fact that he told me that his wife HATES me now (we were friends in high school) shows me that he has used MY memory and effect in his life to manipulate and control his wife for all these years.  No wonder she's frigid.  He uses his former girlfriends and his supposed love of them as a way to screw with his current wife's self esteem.  He says things to her like "I think that Wolfen would have been the perfect person for me to be with if things had just worked out."  No wonder she fucking hates me now.  I saw her at a fitness class one time and I was so friendly and happy for her and asking about the kids and asking to see photos.  I think she realizes that she has no need to actually hate me, but I wonder if she realizes that it's because her husband has poisoned her on my memory all so he can use it to make her feel bad whenever she doesn't let him have his way.  Nice guy.  Now why wouldn't I want to move away to another city with someone like that?  Because I'm smart, that's why!

So as I mentioned, I had a dream about this guy.  Not so much a dream but a really vivid dream and I had it as I was coming out of my sleep, more like an astral projection.  So the dream wasn't really "about" the guy so much as it felt like a sudden flash of that person being right beside me...scents and all.  I was very suddenly reminded of him and when that happens to me it often means that something bad is going to happen to that person.  I didn't want to be with the guy, but I also don't want anything bad to happen to him.  I mean I don't have any bad feelings towards him, actually I have no real feelings towards him and so I would hate to think that something bad has happened.  I guess if something bad has happened I will eventually hear about it. 

All of this dreaming and memory twigging made me remember how it used to be to always be with someone who was imperfect.  I always seemed to end up with someone who seemed right for me until I checked their moral code and found it flawed.  I never actually thought I'd find someone who was morally upstanding in the way that I wanted.  I don't care if you're covered with tattoos or if you hold down a weird job or even if you're not "normal"...in fact I would often find people like that very fun and interesting.  The one thing I wanted was someone with the same morals as I have.  I didn't care what they did or how much they made.  I didn't care if they were odd, or freaky or even a scorpio...I just wanted to meet someone who felt the same way about the world as I do.  When I think of people from my past I always think "Wow, I'm SO incredibly glad that I didn't end up with that person." 

My husband is the perfect match for me.  I tell him that all the time.  Because of who he is, I am now becoming who I'm becoming.  I feel like I'm finally getting to move forward with my development because I'm supported by a wonderful friend and life partner.  I can be whoever I'm going to be.  He embraces everything that is me...and I hope I do the same for him.  Being in a good relationship has shown me how I was correct in my instincts about people and that by never comprimising, not even when I was married the first time...by never compromising on what I needed in a relationship, I now have a perfect husband for me.  I hope that everyone is as picky as I am when it comes to finding mates.  It pays off if you just never go against your own morals.  Never compromise your moral compass for anyone.

I really hope that my old friend is okay and I hope that my dream was just a red herring thrown out by my brain to get me thinking about life.  I really hope it wasn't a harbinger of some bad event that is about to happen.  I hope his folks are okay...I was really fond of them.  Time will tell I guess.

Richard Tate

01.20.07 (8:24 pm)   [edit]

I'm blogging from bed because this cold is still kicking my ass.  I hope I can write out a decent post for today.

I have been absorbed in all things Tattoo lately as I'm sure you've noticed.  I was looking through some flash on some of the sites that sell it and I found an artist whose work I just LOVE.  His name is Richard Tate.  He's from New Zealand and he's only a young dude of some twenty two years.  Check out his flash art here: www.tattoojohnny.com/store-item.asp?sku=RTS-00107

I love it when I find some new artwork that I just love, but the fact that it's tattoo art is even better.  I am going to definitely going to get one of his pieces of art tattooed on me!  My husband said he wondered if the artist was available for custom artwork.  He has an idea he'd like to see interpreted by this artist for me to then have tattooed on my body!  Fun!  I'm sure he can get in touch with him at his myspace account to ask.  Let's hope he does it soon as my birthday is coming in the spring! :) 

I love that style of artwork...sort of cute but sort of goth and sort of cartoonish but with a dark edge and bold colours.  I like the crisp lines.  I definitely like Mr. Tate's artwork and I hope he does as well as I think he will in the tattoo industry.  I would love to tattoo his work in black light ink with the red parts highlighted.  I wonder if artists like him ever see their tattoos on people just walking down the street...that would be so cool!  Imagine seeing your artwork all of a sudden on some guy's arm or some chick's thigh.  How surreal that must be for tattoo flash artists.

What I like about his work is that it's not the "same old thing" as so many so called "new school" artists are apt to produce.  His artwork is edgy and crisp and fun.  Plus it has heavy goth flavour that I simply adore.  It's the type of art I would produce if I wasn't still at the poser level of artist! :)  It must be so fun to be able to produce images that make so many people happy.

Flash Success!

01.19.07 (3:29 pm)   [edit]

"Tattoo Brand" 126-C sheet from 1991-1992....if you happen to own this sheet of flash, my bat tattoo is on that page!  I was searching through my flash...all 7000 images of it and I stumbled across the page of flash that contained my very own, very first tattoo!  How exciting.  I can't believe how happy I am that I found it!  That's so cool!  I now own the flash that I chose when I decided to get my very first tattoo.  They've taken it down from the tattoo shop where I got it (apparently it's that unpopular!) so I didn't know if I'd ever see it again...how fun!  I told my husband that it would be fun to tattoo that tattoo as my first one on someone else too, just for poetic symmetry.  I don't actually think there are too many people that would get too excited over that little bat, but hey I will definitely keep it up at my tattoo parlour some day....just in case!  I'd love to see the person that came in and said "I want that little bat!"  It would be like being in a little club!

So speaking of flash, that stuff is SUPER expensive.  I'm learning that everything that has to do with the tattoo business is expensive....needlessly so.  Flash collections (good ones) sell for about $350 US for 50 sheets.  Just to clarify, my DVD has some 2000 sheets of flash...a lot of them are old school and many are just plain old, but you have to have every option available for people, even if you don't hang them all on the walls.  I'll be able to put the older stuff in binders for my customers to flip through if they are looking for older style tattoos. 

The way I see it, when people go to the tattooist, they are trying to speak using pictures.  Visual people get tattoos.  So if you are good at speaking with colours and pictures, you may not be good at expressing yourself in words.  What I mean is that for many people it's easier to say "A dragon like that one" than it is to say "a classic Japanese style flaming dragon in black work with red highlights."  Though I would know what the person wanted, they themselves might not know the words to exactly describe it.  If I happen to have hundreds of Japanese style dragons to choose from, their job and mine have both suddenly become much easier.  We can now speak in pictures.  "A dragon like this one..." pointing at a Japanese dragon tells me a lot about the style of tattoo the person wants, even if they don't actually know it's a Japanese style at all.  I can then educate them about the tattoo they like and explain that Japanese dragons are good and that they represent the valour of battle and the importance of moral fortitude, they are meant to be revered and treated with great respect.  That may not be the feeling they were going for.  Maybe the dragon they want is actually a mean dragon...something evil.  When they find out the mythos that goes with that particular dragon they may decide it's not for them afterall, but generally when people have their minds made up on what they like visually, they will change their opinion on what the reason is for the tattoo in the first place!  In other words, that same person who wanted an evil dragon would probably just decide that they like the Japanese style dragon even if it isn't evil...it's still powerful and that's usually good enough.  So flash is very helpful in allowing the tattoo artist and the customer to start speaking the same language and making sure they don't waste too much time on the wrong idea.  I have a lot of it on DVD now, but I know that in the future I'm going to buy a lot more for my shop (some day!)  I really like to look at it!

I must sound so funny with my daydreaming as though it's all just a matter of fact that I'm going to become this tattooist even though I have MS and am currently unable to work.  It's like my logical mind is disconnected from my artistic mind.  That's never happened to me before and I have to wonder if it's the prolonged effect of my cannabinoids (I am on THC and cannabis spray).  I noticed earlier that I was hungry but couldn't think of what I wanted to eat.  It was like I was trying to reason through the hunger using logic when what was really required was for me to just get up and eat something.  I didn't do that.  So what I'm finding now is that I daydream about all of this great stuff and it doesn't seem to click with me that I "can't" do some things.  I mean I'm aware of my situation, but I'm developing what can only be a medication-induced side effect of being bissfully determined about life...like somehow it will just work out.  I've never been much like that before and at first it feels weird to sort of throw up your hands and say "Well I'm just going to keep on as though I'm not sick and wait for MS to catch up to me!"  After a while though, with things always sorting themselves out one way or another, I'm starting to feel a bit like my life will work out no matter what I do and so I should just keep on doing what I enjoy.  The end result of me being too sick to be a tattooist is not lost on me.  I know that it's a distinct possibility...even a probability, but I can't help myself from trying.  I think that being too stubborn to give up is also a side effect of THC! :)

Wintry Day

01.18.07 (2:57 pm)   [edit]
Today was one of those days where I slept in forever.  I didn't get up until 1 in the afternoon.  That's late even for me.  The cold is knocking the stuffing out of me.  I am really feeling it now, much worse than yesterday. 
Yesterday in the mail came an eBay purchase that my husband made for me over Winter Solstice.  He bought me 2 DVD's of "Flash" with over 7000 tattoo ideas.  It's really fantastic and includes Kanji symbols, full body suits, old school art from the 50's and 60's as well as new art from the 90's and early 2000's as well.  It's really incredible and spans the last 60 years of tattooing.  It's got every traditional tattoo image you can imagine.  It's also got some kickass new stuff that really is outstanding.  I am only through A-E so far and can't wait to finish looking through it all.  The best part about Flash is that once you have it, you can trace elements from it to compose new tattoos.  So it's helpful if you want to make a custom design.  The customer can say "I want this style of dragon, but I want it bigger and instead of flying, I want him breathing fire." and it's easy to do when you can copy a portion of the face and scales of the dragon from an existing image.  Much harder to just draw one freehand and have it look like the dragon they want.  That's what I like about tattoo art...you don't have to be a master artist to do it, you just need to be able to trace and alter...and I LOVE tracing and altering.  It's so much fun!
What's really cool about all of this flash is that I get to look through it at my leisure, without the tattoo shop guy saying "Are you gonna just spend the whole day in here?"  I've never been kicked out of the tattoo parlour for spending too much time with the flash, but I suspect they get those "tire-kickers" that spend DAYS searching through the flash for the perfect image.  I'm going to get to be one of those tire-kickers!  I don't expect to find exactly what I'm looking for as my back piece, but I expect that all the elements can be found somewhere in that flash.  I have an idea of what I want and when I see some of the images that I need I'll be able to form a nice piece of art.  It will take me a while to come up with what I want.
More than anything I'm just really glad to have sheets and sheets of tattoo images to look through!  I love tattoo art.  I really like old school stuff too, so it works out well that I got this particular batch of flash.  There's a lot of old school stuff and a lot of newer stuff.  I also got a fair bit of tribal stuff...which is less popular now, but at least it's not TOO much tribal.  There's sheets and sheets of old school images and I'm actually half-assedly looking for the sheet of flash that my first tattoo came from.  I wouldn't mind having the original bat image so I could know who the original artist was.  I've modified that tattoo since then, but it would be nice to say it's a "modified John Smith" tattoo.  It would be nice to know a little bit more about the design I originally chose.  I wonder how many other people in the world have that bat tattoo.  When I got it done I was the first one they'd used it upon, but the flash sheet was probably a fairly common sheet in almost any North American tattoo shop.  I wonder how many other people got that same one!
I'm really jazzed up about the flash and I can't even believe how much it makes me want to get more tattoos!  I also hope my tattoo magazines arrive in the mail soon.  I'm waiting on "Tattoo Magazine" to start arriving and I'm also waiting for the next issue of "Skin Deep".  I couldn't believe how much I learned from just one issue of Skin Deep.  I hope that I can continue to learn from reading more about the industry.
The only intimidating part about tattoo magazines is that they show you what other artists are doing, and they show you the BEST of other artists.  It's easy to forget that those artists make it look easy.  The truth is that learning is going to take a bit of time and practice.  I will be taught the correct technique at the school, which is very important, but the ability to be artistic will be slowly developed.  I suspect I'll do a lot of flash before I ever do anything of my own...we'll see.  I mean it's just that it's skin and it's permanent.  I don't want to do any tattoos until I know what I'm doing.
Well it's another wintry day out there...cold and overcast.  It's perfect!  I am reminded for some reason of my elementary school's winter olympics.  It always occurred during the bitter cold of late January.  Every four years they'd subject the entire school to an olympics that served to absolutely horrify me each time because it consistently reminded me that not only was I not very athletic, I wasn't coordinated, balanced or able to keep up.  It was a completely humiliating experience that all the other kids used to get so excited about.  The second time I had to participate I "called in sick" for the entire week.  My mom was kind enough to realize how traumatizing the last olympics had been on me (I came home crying every day) and said I could "be sick" for the week.  She saved my ass completely...thank gawd.  I would never subject my kid to a week long competition designed to show how great athletes are, especially if my kids were not athletic.  I mean do we really need to subject these kids to this much humiliation and trauma.  When I told my teacher that I didn't want to participate because it was too competitive she laughed at me and told me to "get over it."  Bitch.  I hope she dies of Alzheimer's.  Stupid wart-faced cunt.  Who the fuck lets a bitter woman like her become a teacher of children?  That woman was incredibly cruel to me for no reason.  She used to openly make fun of my lack of desire to compete.  Basically she thought I was a wuss.  I was consistently brought in to teach kindergarten children to do art.  In fact I was often taken from this teacher's class by other teachers to teach art to lower grades, but the only thing my teacher could see was that I didn't like being chosen last for every basketball game we had.  That must make me a wuss.  I hope that old bitch dies alone and hated like she deserves.  I won awards for my ability in art, but she would never congratulate me for that.  In fact, she would say that she didn't know why the other teachers felt the need to pull me out of her class.  In retrospect they might have felt sorry for me.  Perhaps they got tired of her making me feel bad too. 
Teachers like that do not "add character" to people's lives.  I don't feel that my life was somehow, in the long run, made better by that old gargoyle.  She was not a positive influence in my life and the idea that "mean" or cruel teachers somehow add to the fabric of our personalities is simply incorrect.  I really wish that society would treat "bad" teachers with a lot more reprehension than they do.  The trauma that a "bad teacher" can cause can be enough to cause someone to literally "go postal" later in life.  I knew a teacher who got slashed in the face by a student he pushed too far.  He picked on the poor kid and he just picked on him one too many times.  The kid nearly killed him by slicing his neck open.  The kid was treated like a criminal.  The teacher was treated like a hero.  The fact is that I had that teacher and though he liked me, he would pick mercilessly on "weak" kids in his class.  I don't blame that kid for going nuts, it was completely the teacher's fault.  He should have been reaching out to that kid, not making fun of him.  But in our society we just lock the kid up for being violent.  We don't address the fact that the poor kid was pushed to his mental limits by a form of psychological torture before he finally turned on the teacher.  We don't care, we just see that the kid attempted to murder the teacher.  What about what the teacher attempted to do to that poor kid?  How is that somehow okay?
Well that's my rant for today...apparently having a cold on a cold day reminds me of the winter olympics!  Who knew that would be such a trigger! :)  Hope you have a much less traumatic winter experience today! :) LOL!

Bed Blogs

01.17.07 (4:49 pm)   [edit]

Well I'm in bed blogging once again.  I do this from time to time.  It makes a great way for me to get comfortable while I type.  With the cold in my throat and head I am almost ready for bed so I figured I'd just go lie down to do my blogging.  I know it probably seems weird, but I actually find it very relaxing.

The dog is beside me in bed.  We're both wimping out on the sub-artic temperatures, even though he's got a thick warm coat.  He's enjoying the extra duvet on the bed for winter and how puffy it makes the whole bed feel.  He sinks down into the layers of comforters and blankets and falls into a deep sleep.

The pharmacy called me the other day to let me know that they don't have my birth control pills anymore.  Great.  So they put me on a new one...one I've already tried before.  You see part of the reason I get so many migraines is from the birth control pill.  I have a migraine almost for my entire period and so I've been put on the lowest estrogen containing pill on the market.  It's a "mini" pill.  It doesn't aggravate my migraines TOO much and so for years it's been an acceptable pill for me.  Well they told my husband that the building that the pills are made in caught fire and burnt down, and they don't make that pill anymore! 

So they upped my pills to the next lowest estrogen pill, but I've already tried this pill before and it causes me much worse migraines than the pills I was taking.  So I now have to go off the birth control pill completely or suffer through horrible migraines each month.  That sucks.  It means using condoms which is a drag.   Stupid fire.  You'd think they'd just find another building but I guess they decided they didn't need that pill anymore to make money.  I hope they do eventually start making it again, there has to be a small portion of the population like myself that needs to be on it because anything else causes migraines...and now all of those people have to find something else to take.

Everyone has their little "thing" that they do when they have a cold.  Some people whine, some sleep through the whole thing, some people need complete silence when they're sick.  My brother has to have his own box of tissue with him at all times when he's sick and he just blows his nose until it's raw.  For myself, when I have a cold I take Dimetapp grape elixir.  I don't know if it does anything but I take it almost every day when I have a cold.  It's the decongestant part of it that works for me.  I cannot stand having a runny nose and so I would rather die than have my nose leaking all over the place.  I take Dimetapp and it works to keep my nose dry.  That's pretty much my only concern when I have a cold, is that my nose not run.  I love the sickly sweet taste of artificial grape syrup that covers the decongestant medication flavour within.  You would have no idea you were taking medicine when you take this stuff.  You could drizzle it on ice cream and you'd never know it wasn't a grapey topping!  Ever since I was a kid I have loved that type of cough syrup and so every time I have a cold, out comes the Dimetapp.  That's my "cold thing" and though it could be much worse, I suspect that for my husband it must seem like the strangest thing the way I won't take any other syrups or pills unless we're out of Dimetapp and then I usually send him out to get more! 

Well I can see how blogging from bed can become a bit of a problem...I'm getting sleepy!  I'm going to be too tired to do much more than fall asleep here at the keyboard, so I think I'll sign off for now.  ZZzzzz....

Another day

01.16.07 (2:50 pm)   [edit]

Well it's Tuesday.  I know that because that's what my computer says.  I have no actual concept of days anymore.  My only reference to weekends comes from the fact that my husband is usually kicking around on those two days.  However, if he goes out on a weekend to do something, I forget that it's the weekend and think he's at work within minutes of him leaving!  When he goes out on a weekend my "weekend reminder" of him being there is gone and to me it feels exactly like a weekday again.  On weekdays I often have no idea what day it is.  Like I said, I know it's Tuesday because that's what my computer tells me.

Today the parrot was ornery and really took a lot of playing and attention to get her back to her normal self again.  I don't know if she had a bad dream or what, but she was cranky today.  I put her in her cage with some grapes and some Nutriberries (parrot treats) and she seemed happy about that.  She seemed like she needed a nap like maybe she woke up in the middle of the night for some reason.  Anyway, she seems fine now but I really didn't need the extra demands on my already tired body.  On any other day it would have been fine, but with the cold working me over I'm a little wiped to begin with, nevermind adding a bunch of parrot exercises to that.  She really knows when to push!  She's in her cage with her toys and her treats and I think that will allow me to get a nap.

It's extremely cold here in Eastern Ontario and it finally feels like winter is here for a while.  I hope so.  I hated all of that warm soggy weather.  It was so dark and gloomy.  I like a little gloom, but drizzly, rainy stuff doesn't suit me at all.  I prefer overcast snowy days to rain.  The snow makes it feel so special, whereas rain is just "the usual".  Snow is so much more cozy somehow...like warm pyjamas by the fire!

I hope there's some mail soon.  I'm kind of hoping that my tattoo magazine will arrive so I can read up on some more conventions and things.  I also hope that my order of turtlenecks arrives soon.  I ordered a bunch of different coloured turtlenecks online and I'm looking forward to them arriving.  I can use them to keep me from having those terrible chills I get all the time.  There's a few things that are supposed to come in the mail soon.

I really hope my husband hears from some of the recruiters he's been in contact with.  It's a busy industry and people have busy schedules but it's important to go to a company that you feel is eager to have you.  When people get too busy to meet with you it makes it harder to feel like you want to work for them.  I hope he hears some good news and gets some interviews and meetings scheduled so he can see things moving forward.  It will do him a lot of good to get out of his current workplace.  I'm looking forward to him having a bit more freedom than he has now.  He'll be bound by contracts and meetings but he'll be his own boss if he gets the job he wants.  If he gets a full-time position he'll have bosses and managers again but at least he'll work for a good company.  I think that getting off the sinking ship is the main thing.

Winter

01.15.07 (3:20 pm)   [edit]

Winter's back.  Weird.  I wonder what it will look like next week!  However, for now things are white and fluffy and cold...the way they should be.  Climate change is crazy.

Today I still have the cold and I still have the crazy headache I developed yesterday.  It's some kind of sinus thing that feels like a freight train running through my brain.  It took a phenomenal pile of drugs to knock it down yesterday and as those drugs wear off I can feel the headache coming back.  Joy.  I will type now while I know I can.

The dog is all excited by the snow out there.  He's been lying in it on the front step and it's making him silly and restless.  He's being a total brat!  I love that he gets so worked up about the snow.  It's really cute to watch him get his face all covered with it.  Him and I just had a snack of ricotta cheese and I'm hoping he'll now feel like taking a nap!

I still haven't received my Tattoo Magazine.  I guess I can look forward to getting my next issue of Skin Deep before I get my first issue of Tattoo Magazine.  We'll see.  I am looking forward to getting one of them though!  I really enjoy reading about the different competitions and conventions.  I also really enjoy the photos of the amazing work that people are producing.  It's a bit intimidating I must admit.  I hope that I can hold my own once I'm trained.

I am getting ready to go lie down.  I can use the laptop in bed and I can watch TV if I feel like it, or I can just doze off.  That sounds perfect actually.  If I can convince the dog to stay outside for a bit I may catch a few z's.  I'm going to have to take some THC to deal with this headache and that will make it impossible for me to write anything that doesn't sound like the ramblings of a lunatic!  I guess that could have its own merits but I don't feel like sharing quite that much of myself with my readers!  I'll keep my REALLY crazy stuff for my husband to enjoy! :)  Hee-hee!

I hope that nobody else out there is having the migraine/headache issues that I'm having but I actually think that climate change is making it worse and that soon a lot of people will be complaining about even more headaches than normal.  If you're having headaches or migraines, all I can suggest is that you smoke a lot of reefer or find someone that will prescribe THC for you.  It really helps with neuropathic pain.  Of course if you're in the US all I can do is send you positive energy and hope for the best...you guys can't get THC or pot for neuropathic pain.  Lame.

Sunday blah...

01.14.07 (7:43 pm)   [edit]

Today was a quiet day. I have a headache so I didn't do too much aside from rest in bed and watch TV.  Not too exciting.  My husband vacuumed the house today and the house looks great. It helps that we got all of our Winter Solstice decorations down...things don't look all cluttered.

Hey you know what I miss?  I miss Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  I just wanted to say that!  I watch "Supernatural" to get my paranormal ya-ya's out, but Buffy was a far superior show.  Maybe they'll make a "Faith the Vampire Slayer" show.  I won't hold my breath.  I don't know if they could do it now, it's been too long since the show ended.  Someone somewhere, maybe Tim Burton, should make a good supernatural show.  Something like Buffy would work well...but you know, with a Tim Burton edge.  That would rock! :)

That's the end of my thoughts for the day...not too chocked full of wisdom, but that is what's on my mind today!  I hope you have a good one.

Treeject

01.13.07 (6:21 pm)   [edit]

We ejected our Winter Solstice tree today.  It had a good run but it was so dry that all the spruce needles fell off before we got it outside.  It looks like a coat rack out in the fire pit.  The mess was pretty easy to deal with though...well for my husband.  He's the one that got the fun of putting it outside and then of cleaning up after it had passed through.  He unfortunately has to do most of the cleaning because MS makes it harder for me to do many chores.  However, on "good" days I can get a few things done. 

On days like today I get very little done.  I have a cold.  That means I have no energy at all.  I do have a headache though.  Seems like I should have gotten a better consolation prize for the whole lack of energy thing.  A lollipop might have been nice!  Anyway, I'm sick...again.  Do you know that a few years back I NEVER got sick.  I never got colds and I never felt ill.  Now I get colds so easily it's not even funny.  I get every cold that goes through town it seems.  I wonder why I changed.  I mean my immune system is overactive and attacking my nerves (that is pretty much the definition of MS) so if my immune system is so busy, you'd think it would also take care of the colds...so why did that stop happening?  Could my immune system be returning to "normal"?  Could it be getting worse?  Who knows?  Certainly not any doctors I've talked to, though they all like to think they know.  The fact is that I baffle the neurologists and family doctors alike.  My neurologist says I shouldn't be able to walk by now and my family doctor can't believe that I'm not taking more morphine.  I guess my point in all of this is to try to make myself feel better that maybe this constant viral attack by common colds is a sign that I'm getting better!  Nice logic eh? :)  Hey, I choose my illusion!

I doubt I'll be up for too much longer.  My husband is playing with the Xbox 360 so he's totally happy in his wrold.  I may sneak off to bed soon to get some rest.  If I can get rid of this headache I won't have to lie down in the dark, but right now the monitor light is making me feel like I might be ill.  I'm waiting for a Tylenol to kick in and hopefully give me a break.

I've been totally infatuated with Cafepress.com lately.  They have so many great T-shirts.  I like the retro looking ones with the contrasting sleeves.  They also allow you to design your own t-shirts which totally rocks.  I was thinking that I'd design some on my PC and then create and order them at Cafepress.  I want to make T-shirts eventually that will advertise my tattoo shop...you know, the one I don't have yet!  I would include the website address and a nice image on the front.  The idea would be to have a website, a cell phone and a tattoo machine and start there.  Once there was enough demand on a constant and predictable basis then I'd open up a shop with my husband to manage it.  I don't really want to be a shop owner, but there aren't too many ways for a tattoist to work part-time except to be the boss.  Owning a shop would probably be a long time away but having the t-shirts in advance would be very helpful in establishing the company name before it even existed.

Burning Man

01.12.07 (3:38 pm)   [edit]

So I read about the Burning Man Project in Skin Deep magazine this week.  I was "vaguely aware" of Burning Man and its troupe of hippies, but I had never seen photos of it until now.  What an amazing event.  The purpose of the whole thing is to involve community in the catalyst of burning an ephigy of a giant man.  The burning man is literally a force or power of nature.  The "project" as it is rightly called is to see what happens if a whole community of people come together for the purpose of burning this one ephigy.  Everyone can assign their own power or meanings to the event, and everyone basically sets up a city for an entire week surrounding the concept of burning this man.  For a week everyone parties, celebrates and finds community in the whole event and then on the second to last night they actually burn the ephigy.  It's a big celebration that is designed to be an affirmation of life.  It really looks cool.  It actually reminds me of Stonehenge.

Why was Skin Deep, a tattoo magazine, at a hippy-surfer event like Burning Man?  Because of the tattoos!  The whole purpose was to photograph the tattoos at Burning Man, because there are a lot of them there.  Hippies like tattoos too!  I guess the idea was to hopefully showcase some of the different ways people use tattoos as a way to express themselves.  The tattoos were a lot less scary looking than you would get in a normal cross-section of tattooed people.  They were more arstistic and more "earth-based" in nature and less aggressive looking than some.  I would love to go to Burning Man as a tattoo artist.  It would be a totally different style of clientele than you'd see here.  It seems like a project I can get behind, and I think my husband would LOVE it!  I think that's one of those "things I should probably do before I die".  I am not much into big outdoor concerts (a la Woodstock) but I am totally into a big bonfire in the name of community.  That would rock!

When I was younger I went to a local bluegrass festival on the outskirts of town.  It was a 3 day event called "Blueskies Bluegrass Festival".  Wow, that was a lot of fun.  I was pretty much a pothead back then so I spent most of my time high and giggling and listening to music.  The music didn't actually float my boat too much but the event was so much fun.  It was like a cross between camping and clubbing!  You would spend your time just going to different campfires and meeting people.  It was so much fun and though there was a central stage of weird and bizarre artsy musicians, the best music was to be had around people's campfires where they would be playing guitars and bongo drums and getting into a groove.  All in all a weird and magical three days of which I have almost no recollection, other than I had a great time!  I am so glad I did it though because otherwise I'd have no understanding of how much fun an outdoor festival can be.  They're a blast!  So I am totally down with Burning Man!  It's one of our modern "stone circle" type gatherings.  Very powerful.

I've been thinking about tattoos a lot lately and that has also got me thinking about my own tattoos and their layout.  I would like to plan out a proper back piece at some point that deals with the fact that I put a tiny bat on my back years ago and ruined a perfect canvas!  Instead of wishing I hadn't put the tattoo there, I am always the first to say how much I loved that tattoo when I got it and how much I still like it, but wish it was on my arm or someplace smaller.  Since I did put it on my back, I now see it as a challenge to do the rest of my back properly.  I have a small heart tattoo on my lower back and I think I'll add some wrought iron style filigree to either side of that heart next year.  Then from there I was originally thinking I'd like some ocelot print at the top of my neck going down my back in a sort of rough V shape.  However, this week I saw a photo of a tattoo that was so beautiful and I thought "Hmmm...maybe that's more my style." 

I think I'll change my mind a few times as I gel on the final tattoo idea, but I do know I want the heart tattoo surrounded with wrought iron so that will be fine.  I guess this is what everyone goes through looking for that "right tattoo".  You keep thinking you know what you want and then you change your mind!  I settle on what I know I want and then I add to those elements as I become sure about what I like.  I guess I'm overly cautious, but I really want to make sure I don't "waste" any more canvas space with "small piddly shit" as my tattooist calls it!

I have really white skin...like pasty white.  And so blackwork looks awesome on really white skin.  I am now thinking that instead of the ocelot (leopard) print down my back I'd like to stick with black and grey work and maybe go with a really hauntingly beautiful scene with spanish moss and wrought iron gates and an angel...yup, that seems more suited to a back than a pattern of cat print.  I'll definitely have to draw it all out myself so I will take my time with it and plan it in my head first.  Then I'll figure out how to incorporate that old skool bat!

Pain in the Brain

01.11.07 (3:18 pm)   [edit]

My head's a bit sore today.  I have a cold and the cold is all stuffed up into my sinuses.  It's also making my froaty sore.  Basically I'm all yucky with some horrible rhinovirus and wishing I could pass it on to someone really perky.

I finished my Skin Deep tattoo magazine and am waiting for "Tattoo" to arrive.  That's an American publication.  America is the world's largest consumer of tattoos.  They also have a reasonably recent but very distinct style all of their own.  It is actually part of the "American Culture" if you will.  So it only seems natural to have the most popular American tattoo magazine arriving at my door each month along with the most popular British tattoo mag.  I hope to learn tons about the trade from these publications.  I also feel my style preferences coming out already.  I'm not as into Japanese style tattoos as most tattoo artists seem to be.  I like the Old Skool look. I also really like realistic looking stuff...things that look real.  I guess I like blackwork, but I'm not as into tribal stuff and I don't really like abstract styles that much either, though I would probably have fun doing them.  I bet the things you like the look of are not always the things that are the most fun to do!

Wow I can actually feel my throat getting tighter and tighter from the cold.  I wonder if I'm losing my voice.  I am definitely getting sleepy from the cold medication I took.  I had a miso soup for lunch and that helped.  I then followed it up with an After Eight leftover from Winter Solstice and that helped...mmm...mentholated.  Anyway, since I don't think any more After Eight's will help I will probably need to take a nap in a little while. 

My husband is very close to leaving his job.  He is being courted by a company that is here in town but does a fair bit of work in Toronto and out west as well.  He would go from being a full-time employee with benefits to a consultant who is a contract employee with no benefits but making about twice as much money.  It's not a small amount of money either.  We are covered by my benefits plan so that even if he decides to leave work it isn't even really a big concern. 

Since companies have no loyalty to their employees anymore, all high-tech employees are only as secure in their jobs as they are in their knowledge of technical stuff.  Someone who is really technical will always have work.  Someone who is only a little technical will not.  My husband is really technical.  He is also really personable.  That is almost unheard of in high-tech.  That will carry him far.  He has unlimited potential and so I totally support his decision to leave and get a much higher paying job :)  I'm so supportive! ;)

Skin Deep

01.10.07 (11:16 pm)   [edit]

Well it didn't take long for my "Skin Deep" tattoo magazine to arrive from the UK.  I got it today, w hich is funny because I only mentioned it earlier today in my blog.  We subscribed a few weeks ago so I guess it was just how long it took them to mail it out.  I am curious to see if "Tattoo Magazine" comes soon.  That doesn't have to cross the ocean or anything, just come up from the US.  We'll see how long it takes.  In the meantime, Skin Deep is a great magazine.  I've learned so much already.  I am learning about "the scene"...you can't just become a tattooist and not get a little bit of a taste of the "scene".  Of course that doesn't mean you have to be into all the names and masters but that information is helpful to know as well.  If it interests me I might as well learn about it right?

I'm going to try and go to some conventions, probably the annual Montreal Tattoo Convention...I think we could swing that one eventually.  It's hard with a dog that can't be boarded in a kennel (he gets too stressed out).  We can't easily travel.  However, eventually we'll go to the conventions.  For now I'm going to concentrate on learning the actual craft.  It's amazing to me how well-guarded the industry is from people who want to get into it.  In Skin Deep they were saying that it is the current trend to be selfish with knowledge and as the old masters move on, the current generation of tattooists is not as interested in learning, they're interested in money.  You can't make money if you have too much competition, but if you're worried about your competition you're in the wrong business.  Tattooists are artists, well the good ones are artists.  The shitty ones are butchers.  The point is that the real pursuit should be to perfect your art and make people happy.  Money will come if you are good.  My goal is to love it.  I want to enjoy every minute of tattooing or not bother at all.  I won't care about the money as long as I am enjoying the actual craft and if I'm not enjoying the craft all the money in the world won't keep me doing it.

I already have a job if you will.  I am paid as a Technical Writer.  I am on disability because I have Multiple Sclerosis.  Tattooing will be a hobby of mine at best, but if it's something I really enjoy and feel creative about, I believe I can make decent money at it as a hobby.  My husband wants for us to eventually run a small tattoo shop as a business that we would enjoy running together (with me as a tattooist).  He'd take care of all the paperwork and crap and the computers and network and I would take care of the tattooing.  Of course before we can do that we want to get ourselves set up so that we don't actually have to rely on any income from the store.  The goal will be to have our investments work for us while we enjoy the shop for ourselves, not because we want to make money. 

Why bother when I'm alreaedy making a decent living as a retired, disabled Technical Worker?  Because I can't stop being creative and feeling productive.  I want to learn something new and feel rejuvenated by it.  I want to be creative and even if I only ever end up doing one tattoo a week, just for a hobby, I will only do it if I love it.  I want to love it.  I really hope I enjoy it. 

What would it all mean to me?  It would mean that I finally chose a living that I wanted and not one in business or law or computers...it would be in art, as I always wanted when I was a teenager...and if I'm good at it, it would mean that I finally found my "true calling"...something I've been searching for lo these past 20 years or so. 

Ever since I started working in the real world I have wondered what job I would love to do.  I never found one before I got MS and had to stop working.  I did well as a computer person, but I never felt like a "true geek".  I think that this is my last stab at really doing something that I think I will enjoy.  I would never have had this opportunity before because as a healthy individual I would be expected to have a career that my parents could be proud of.  Since I got that career and am now retired from it (on disability) because of MS, I have done what my parents would have wanted in working in the real world of corporate boredom.  Because I'm now unable to do that job, I am in effect free to choose a passtime that is artistic and fun.  My parents still won't like it, but they won't see it as a problem if it's not my "job" because now they don't have to tell their friends.  They can say that their daughter is no longer working, because that is the truth.  If I start tattooing as a hobby they just might forget to bring it up at the next dinner party.  If it was my job they'd have to pony up.

My husband is at the Evanescence concert tonight.  His old roommate invited him to the boxed seat because he won the tickets from work.  Nice.  I can't wait to hear about the event.  I think he's home now, time to log off! :)

Wednesday

01.10.07 (11:19 am)   [edit]

I woke up this morning with a full blown cold.  I have the hoarse throat, the runny nose, the whole enchilada.  I had pain in my legs last night and today I have pain in my arms.  I am going to take some pot spray (Sativex) under my tongue later to try to help get rid of the pain.  The pot spray can make a chest infection worse though so I must be careful not to inhale any of the pot into my lungs. 

Because THC is not water-soluable, if you get the spray in your lungs it doesn't get "washed" out by the lungs' natural cleansing process (coughing) and it sticks to the cilia inside the lungs to cause infection.  It can cause pneumonia in a way that normal water-soluable irritants cannot usually manage to do.  You have to be careful when you take pot spray...and it tastes worse than anything I've ever tasted willingly in my whole life!

It snowed here and it's finally staying on the ground.  It's "normal" outside for the time being.  Winter is back for today.  I hope it stays but it's been so warm that it's hard to trust that it will.  For now though, things are white and crisp and cold.  It's awesome.  I love the cold weather even though I can't go out in it very often.  I get chills from my medication that make me go into convulsions if I'm not careful.  But even with the chills I still love winter.  It's a great time of year and I really can't imagine being without it.

On the tattoo front, I'm waiting for my new tattoo magazines to arrive.  I got subscriptions to two magazines from my husband this year for Winter Solstice.  The magazines are "Skin Deep", a UK publication; and "Tattoo Magazine", from the US.  They are both the most "mainstream" tattoo magazines of their perspective countries and so they cover the "mainstream" tattooing world (funny that there's even a "hardcore" among the tattooed!) 

There are hardcore publications as well, such as "Savage" magazine that my husband would like to get...maybe in the future, but for now I want to see what "most" tattooists are doing.  Then maybe I can see what the fringe is up to.  I don't expect to get much "fringe" style work (genitals, faces, heads) but I do expect to get it almost ALL in the form of requests for black light tattoos. 

Black light tattoos done in white only are almost invisible to the naked eye, but they glow in the dark under black lights.  Facial tattoos will become popular in this type of tatto because it will be possible to have your face completely tattooed without anyone noticing it too much under normal light.  As soon as I know how to do one of these tattoos I'm giving myself a palm pentacle and a bar code!

Sleepy

01.09.07 (12:12 pm)   [edit]

Wow I am sleepy today.  I have had to take extra THC for the past couple of days and it's really causing me some drowsiness.  The migraine is under control for now and so it's worth the extra sleepiness to not feel the pain, but man I am laaaaaay-zeeeeeeee today!

I was just thinking about how much I daydream.  I daydream all day long.  I wonder if this is a good thing!  I tend to view it as my brain's way of entertaining myself throughout the day.  Many years ago I worked in a grocery store as a clerk and during that time I would have long periods of quiet, customer-free stretches where I could not leave my post but as long as the workspace was clean I had nothing to do.  I would entertain myself by daydreaming.  I would literally see if I could slide into a trance and just daydream away some of the day.  It worked like a charm and it made working the "quiet shifts" my favourite time.  Everyone else liked the busy shifts because the time went faster.  I found the busy shifts felt like an eternity because I didn't get a chance to mentally recharge in the form of daydreaming. 

Daydreaming has been something that I believe has made it hard for me to sleep at night.  My subconscious mind gets a lot of rest just from daydreaming and I can't help but wonder if it lessens my need for sleep because my mind is more rested and so it's not demanding sleep.  All I know is that I am often running several imaginary scenarios through my head on any given day.  Lately all of them spin around the idea of me working again in some capacity.  Next month I'll probably be daydreaming about being a famous dancer!

I think that a good imagination can be a double-edged sword...you can spend a lot of time imagining a lot of things but when does retreating into your imagination become dangerous?  When is it healthy? 

I know a guy who has created an online world for himself in an RPG and he rarely wants to leave that world.  Is that a healthy use of imagination?  I don't know.  Is it hurting him in other ways?  Yes...it is preventing him from getting outside, getting a life and it is wasting his time in many ways.  He sometimes stays home from work to play this game.  How is that a good use of imagination?  Maybe he can use the skills he learns in this game to help him with life?  I don't imagine that's true, but stranger things have happened. 

All I'm saying is that there comes a point at which your imagination must always be recognized to be a very handy tool of the id...the inner child.  At some point, if you use your imagination too much, to indulge your inner child you can become too much of an "outer child".  You can imagine yourself as a fantastic hero living in an unbelievable world so that you can avoid dealing with reality.  It's pathetic.  So at what point does daydreaming lapse into pathetic fantasy?

I believe the answer is that as long as your daydreams and wishes continue to propell your forward in the real world they are productive and healthy.  I believe that as soon as they just become a way for you to escape from thinking you need to do anything, or try in the real world, you have lost yourself to your fantasies.  I think that as long as your "fantasy world" continues to improve the real you, you're doing well.  I don't mean that it improves your hand-eye coordination either!  I mean that if something your daydreams make you strive for happens, they can now be called "Goals" and goals that we reach are successes.  Daydreams can be turned into successes with a little effort and energy, fantasies cannot.

Up Early

01.08.07 (11:24 am)   [edit]

I was up very early this morning compared to usual.  I haven't gone back to sleep because I thought I'd stay up with the parrot and just enjoy looking out at the snow we finally got.  It's not much and it's pretty wet and sloppy but it's enough to keep the bears and chipmunks asleep (hopefully) and if we can just keep things white for the next few months we'll be fine.

I had a migraine last night.  I still have it today.  However today I have myself medicated to deal with it.  That means I've already taken the THC and so things are pretty much under control.  Later I'll have to take another extra THC before bed.  I will not remember much about the next couple of days.  However the good news is that I'll feel better than I did before and when you have a migraine you don't want to remember it so that works out well.

You know what I want?  I don't often say I want something, but I want more land.  I want to live on a bigger more rural piece of land in an even more secluded place than we do now.  Such a hermit!  It's not that I'm a hermit, it's just that I love animals and the forest and water and trees.  I don't really like people that much so why not move some place where there are less of them?  I mean I love to socialize but when I'm at home I do not miss people.  I enjoy the animals going by outside and I watch the birds at the feeders.  I don't sit here thinking about people.  I have lots of people in my life and I plan to encounter lots more when I start tattooing for a hobby.  So really what I'd like is a house about the same size as the one we have now, but maybe much older and maybe 20 acres of land instead of 1.5. 

I want to be able to have horses or llamas or some other "flock" of animals...maybe a wolf sanctuary.  All I'm saying is that in a perfect world I would have slightly more land to enjoy and to care for.  Of course I'd also REALLY like to live in an old converted church too.  That's really the goal...an old Victorian church converted into a nice big home with maybe 10 acres of treed, hilltop land.  But even if we couldn't find a church to convert it would still need to be an older home or a home that was built to look like an older home.  Really I want to live someplace mildly haunted. :)

Quiet day two

01.07.07 (8:59 pm)   [edit]

I have a migraine today.  I'm just taking it easy and resting...stupid weather triggers a stupid migraine.  Global warming is hurting my brain literally.  Back to bed.

G'night! :)

A very quiet Saturday afternoon

01.06.07 (3:08 pm)   [edit]

It's very dark and gloomy here today.  The weather is insane and the rain is falling like crazy.  I am sitting in the living room typing with the parrot on my right, falling asleep on a fuzzy blanket as I type.  She says "Hello" Laughing

I'm not going to rant today about the weather.  I am almost in tears every day now as I think about the way this is going to screw up things.  Animals are coming out of hibernation.  This is really bad.  Bears will soon be roaming the area with no food, looking for bird feeders and garbage and anything they can get their paws on.  The poor things will be starving and confused.  They will have to go back into hibernation once it gets cold again and they won't be able to survive winter if they don't have all their fat from sleeping.  This is very bad.   But I won't rant about it today because I rant about it every day to someone and it's not doing anything.

We're planning on buying a windmill.  Our government has a plan for people who wish to sell electricity back to the grid by running their own windmill.  It means that you can contribute to "green" energy sources for the whole country to use.  We are going to find out more and then get one installed.  It would greatly reduce our electricity bill and even maybe make some money back for us.  The purpose would be to use this windmill to offset the cost of "bullfrog power".  The government has an option where you can say you want to only use energy from green sources (no pollution and no greenhouse gases) and they set you up so that you only draw from certain sources.  But those sources are really expensive.  The idea is that if you contribute with a windmill, you are putting more energy into those green sources and will eventually (if enough people do it) reduce the cost of green electricity for everyone.  Then everyone can afford to say that they only want and will only pay for green energy.  It will still cost more than the "dirty" version, but it will be a great peace of mind knowing we're not killing all the polar bears.

My husband is asleep right now.  He was up all night playing on the Xbox 360.  His latest game is Gears of War.  He loves that game and so he took one of my "wakey" pills (yes he took one of my prescription drugs) and stayed up all night playing!  Now he's totally crashed out.  He will wake up soon though and take another pill to keep him awake until bedtime.  Terrible!  Not really...it's a pretty cool drug that doesn't string you out and doesn't make you hyper.  It's not the kind of drug that would keep you awake if you were totally lacking sleep, but it's like caffeine in that it can keep you up.  The difference is that caffeine can make you jittery and edgy...this stuff doesn't do that.  I take it daily just to try and keep myself at the same energy level as "normal" people but if I take too much I cannot sleep at bedtime, so I don't take a full dose.  So because I don't take a full dose, I end up with "extra" and he takes these extra once in a while so he can game away the night!  Silly man.

The drugs I take are pretty crazy actually.  I take that drug, Modifinil, for keeping me awake, and I take Trazodone to make me sleep.  I take synthetic THC and cannabis to alleviate neuropathi c pain and I take blood pressure medication for the migraines I get.  When I experience muscle pain I take morphine and when I get migraines I take even more THC.  I'm pretty baked most of the time, but it does allow me to see things differently than other people.  It's not so much "enhanced"  ;vision, because I am oblivious to things going on around me now, but it's more like I have a changed perspective and see things from completely new angles and in that way it has enhanced my vision.  But these drugs have also made me completely oblivious and forgetful to what is going on physically around me.  I can't remember things I did ten minutes ago or yesterday, but I can see what someone is thinking and feeling when they talk to me.  It's like I can see too much of some things and not enough of others.  Like selectively seeing the world through new eyes.  I am completely uninterested in so many things I used to be interested in but I'm vastly interested in artistic pursuits, much more than I used to be.  What's funny is that the more I "change" the more I feel like my old self...like from when I was a kid.  I remember how I felt about things and how time and social pressure has made me forget those things, but the feelings and memories are coming back, like I'm actually becoming myself again. 

I have a theory that we are born knowing all we need to know and that we gradually have all of that "information" removed from us by our own hand. (I actually believe this is stolen from the Kabbalistic Judaism, but shhhh.) We are the ones that build up these worlds around ourselves and get caught up in the daily "crap" that isn't important.  We are the ones that decide to pull ourselves away from nature and devote ourselves to the pursuit of the ego.  I feel like being on these medications has made me more like my true self than I've been in over twenty years.  In that way they can be very positive for me. 

In another way, I feel like these drugs waken me to a point where I feel a little disjointed and disconnected from a lot of people.  It's hard to describe but it's like everyone is moving too fast and too erratically and when I talk to people now I find myself feeling like they're going a hundred miles an hour...like they're spinning in circles and going as fast as they can so they don't stop and see what's really going on around them.  It's weird.  I guess I used to do it too, but now that I don't work and I'm on these drugs I'm feeling like I finally "get it".  I finally understand how to be happy and how to enjoy life.  It's not about "having" at all, it's about savouring and enjoying.  Life should be sensual and fun and calm.  We should enjoy simplicity, revel in the natural world around us and participate in its upkeep and care.  We should stop "consuming " so much and start just slowing down.  The speed at which most people live life is crazy.  I think the world would be a much happier and mellower place if everyone smoked a joint every few days or so.  That's just my thinking, based on my experience as a person who takes THC as a medication. 

A little more research

01.05.07 (8:37 pm)   [edit]
A little more reading tells me that the ink they use for black light tattoos is "not as stable" and may be carcinogenic in some colours.  I will wait until I can be sure of the ink's safety levels before I do black light tattoos, but I will definitely do some more investigating on getting inks that aren't carcinogenic.  Since there are very few rules in Canada about tattoo inks, I want to be sure that I know I'm using good quality, safe inks.  I don't need to get my ass sued!  However, assuming I can find a brand of ink that is safe to use, I will definitely be including black light tattoos in my repertoire.

Did Nothing

01.05.07 (6:05 pm)   [edit]

Today I did nothing.  I mean I probably did something, but right now I'm drawing a blank!

Last night I finished reading my tattoo book.  It was filled with outdated practices, but it was still a great book because it's one of the only ones out there!  What I mean is that nobody seems to really want to tell you the mechanics of tattooing and so ANY information, even outdated stuff, is better than nothing.  I sifted through quite a few outdated ideas like "reusing needles"...something you simply don't do now.  There were a few other outdated practices that I noticed but that one screamed out at me.  It was good to read about the list of steps from setup to tear down and what is actually involved in a tattooist's day.

I've decided that when I start tattooing that right off the bat I'm going to use blacklight ink for as many tattoos as I can.  I want to offer blacklight tattoos as a specialty of mine because nobody in this town offers them.  That right there is a big boon to my business.  If the other tattoo shops offer them, they don't advertise it so it would be something exclusive to my shop.  I will make sure I use black light ink on most of my husband's tattoos...when I start tattooing him!  He loves the idea.  Blacklight ink shows up flourescent in the dark with a black light.  The ink is three times more expensive than regular ink (which is also not cheap) and so black light tattoos are more expensive to do.  The colour is bright and intense even when the tattoo is not under black light, but when it is, the look is incredible.  I think I can definitely make a lot of people happy doing these tattoos.

Tattoo book

01.04.07 (7:08 pm)   [edit]

I started reading my tattooing book today.  Until I get the machines I won't quite know what they're talking about with regard to the machine itself, but the other information in the book is already extremely interesting.  It's a Huck Spaulding book...not particularly new or well-written but it is one of the few complete books on Tattooing out there.  I don't mean there aren't a lot of books on tattooing, I mean there are not very many about how to do it...the mechanics of tattooing and all the procedures that should be followed.  There are tons of tattooing picture books and books of flash art and that kind of thing, but the books about how to actually do the tattooing...it seems that tattoo artists guard their secrets well.

My husband bought me a DVD of over 7000 flash designs.  "Flash" designs refer to the generic artwork that is generally offered by tattoo parlours and is often displayed on the walls for your perusal.  "Flash" is a required tool of the trade not so that people can just copy them (which they sometimes do) but also so that elements can be combined or customized.  The true goal is to give everyone a unique tattoo that nobody else has, but the reality is that a lot of people like skulls!

Sunny day in Canada

01.04.07 (4:15 pm)   [edit]

It was a sunny and almost springlike day in the Ottawa region...you barely needed a jacket to go outside this afternoon.  Weird.  I don't like it.  It's not wintery enough outside.  I should be freezing and snow should be everywhere.  I miss winter.

You know what occurred to me today?  If we don't take down the Christmas tree this weekend, we run the risk of being "Christmas weirdoes"...you know the people who leave their tree up until February...they have Christmas crap in every corner of their house and Christmas isn't a holiday to them, it's one or two full seasons of the year!  I don't want people to see our tree in three weeks from now and think "Wow they sure love Christmas!"  I want them to think "Wow, they sure are lazy!"  That would work a lot better for me. 

I'm pretty conflicted about Christmas.  On the one hand, I can't stand "Christianity" because it's responsible for so much evil in the world, right down to the oppression of women and abuse of children...but on the other hand, I love my family and they sure are big on Christmas.  I consider Winter Solstice to be a much more inclusive (as in EVERYONE can participate) holiday and it's much less focussed on family...which means you don't have to have one to enjoy it.  I reconcile some of the conflicted feelings by saying that when I celebrate Christmas with my family, we're all just celebrating Winter Solstice and that it has its roots in Pagan traditions...I wish I didn't have to do all of this thinking! 

I wish that people were totally open to the idea of not celebrating Christmas and instead celebrating "winter" but too many people would be outraged.  I personally have to wonder why they feel the need to have their deepest most personal religious beliefs embraced and forced on us by Wal-Mart, but it seems to be really important to Christians that not only they celebrate Christmas, but that the rest of us see them celebrate it too.  That's the part I hate...the forcing of Christianity right down my throat.  It's lame.  It makes me wonder why they can't just observe their holiday in quiet dignity like the Muslims or Jews do.  Why all the tinsel and window dressing?  Why all the gifts and fuss?  It's a big distraction and it greases the wheels of our economy, but it really means nothing. 

I mean let's face it, Christ's actual birthday was on April 6, not in the winter.  If you want to celebrate his birth, why not do it on his birthday?  I'm all for dignified church services and meaningful tributes to Christ if that's your thing, but I really take exception to people who only grace the steps of a church once a year going to Wal-Mart and DEMANDING that they use the word CHRISTMAS everywhere, just to once again notify all the non-Christians that yes, once again we'd like you to feel like the minority.  It's lame and I hate the way they call it the "war on Christmas".  Christmas is supposed to be in your heart.  As long as it's in your heart you can't ever lose the feeling, no matter what they write on a store window.  What's the matter with people that they want to enforce this tradition when they themselves don't listen to any of Christ's actual teachings or behave in a way that is at all Christ-like.  I don't like the church, but I think Christ was a smart dude for his time...why is it that the people who profess to be his greatest followers don't know how to make the whole world feel like a part of their celebration?  Why guard it so jealously when you didn't even create it?  Christmas was "Winter Solstice" for 4 thousand years BEFORE Christ was even born.  It's still a pagan celebration, so stop trying to make everyone feel like they can ONLY celebrate it if they're baptized...shit it was the pagans who introduced it to you guys!

As far as I'm concerned it would be so great if everyone would just wish people a warm and wonderful winter.  How nice would that be?  You could send them a scarf and some mittens and say "Hey, have a warm and wonderful winter (solstice)!"  That would be so much more friendly for everyone.

Belly grumbles

01.03.07 (1:27 pm)   [edit]

Well today I'm still feeling quite unwell because of the gut problems.  I wonder if it was the garlic roasted potatoes that did me in.  I don't usually eat garlic because it makes me feel a little gross...maybe it's that in combination with the oil and starch...who knows.  All I know is that I really look forward to this being over so I can get back to feeling like myself.

It's warm and drippy here today...stupid global warming.  I want winter back!  I may need to start complaining to members of parliament that we aren't doing enough about the environment.  I don't want to whine, but it seems like we're all going to have to start making noise or they'll just continue with ineffectual targets and goals.  Sure it's fine to say we can lower emissions by 2050, but by then the planet will be drowning in the polar ice caps.  I think we need to do something NOW.

Yesterday my mom came by, even though I wasn't really feeling well.  She left some leftovers from the Christmas dinners and took some of the leftover potatoes to eat!  I hope her gall bladder doesn't act up in response to them!

I did some research and I believe I've found the right tattoo machines for me.  They are made by Time Machine.  They are called "Flatline" and they look small enough and simple enough for me to use.  I don't want something with a huge handgrip because it will be too big for my hands.  I wanted to call the company and ask "What's a good ladies tattoo machine?" to see what they'd say!  I mean because of the size of my hands and the strength required to use it.  MS has turned me into a bit of a weakling so I suspect I need a smaller set of machines.  I will need the liner and the shader and a power supply and foot switch and a clip cord and a kit for repairing the machines.  Basically that's nothing compared to the cost of an autoclave which I will also need to buy.  All in due time.  But for now, I am waiting for some books to arrive that are about tattooing technique and preparations and that sort of thing.  I want to be well-educated before I even go to my course.

Do you know that for the first time today I'm actually comfortable?  I'm all slumped over on the couch in the living room with the laptop on my lap and my tummy is not bothering me as much right now...which is giving me a well-needed break.  I'm still having horrible rotten egg smelling burps (how disgusting is that) but I'm not in as much gut-wrenching pain as I was.  I hope I can get rid of whatever I ate that is making me so sick or that I can calm the problem somehow.  One article I read said that it was associated with stress as well, which would make sense since I didn't really want to go to the get together in the first place and was a little stressed about making that many potatoes.  Whatever the cause, most people agree that until the offensive food is passed, the body acts a little like that food is poisonous and sort of expells it in any way it can.  Joy.

So once I'm feeling better I'm hoping to get back to reading my books.  Remember how before the holidays I was reading "Human Personality and it's survival of Bodily Death"?  Well I am still trying to finish it.  The problem I'm having is that it's dreadfully boring!  It's got a lot of really GREAT information in it but it reads like stereo instructions and it's just incredibly boring.  It's also a 400 page book, so it's not a quick read like some of the other books I've been reading.  The book I'm going to read after this book is about Handwriting analysis.  Should be very interesting, unless it too was written by a long-winded Brit!

Eggy Tummy

01.02.07 (9:08 pm)   [edit]

I don't know if you've ever had this problem, but it's an ongoing issue in my world.  I get periodic bouts of gas (burps) that smell like sulfur (eggs)...it's horrible and I've read that it's basically a stomach problem where your food is literally rotting somewhere in your digestive tract.  Nice.  It usually leads to worse and worse burps until my stomach actually turns or I have horrible diarrhea.  The problem is that there are several different reasons that this can happen and all of them are bad news for my gut.  Literally, my gut is what is the problem.  The chi of my gut is off!  By that I mean that I need to do something to rebuild up the "good bacteria" in my tummy.  Yoghourt sounds like the ticket.  We don't have any here so until we can get some I'm going to have to take some ginger to settle things (hopefully) and keep the little food I ate down.

All I want to say is that if you ever get this type of gas, I totally know what you're going through...it's extremely unpleasant and it's one of the most common things too!  I read all over the net of different people who have this problem for different reasons that range from gas to gall bladder illness to parasites.  All the stories come down to this....if I want relief from it I have to talk to a doctor and I've already done that a few times.  They tell me it's "probably a gall bladder issue" but the only thing that helps me is to avoid eating anything with fat and anything dairy and anything with flavour...it sucks.  I hate it, but I will definitely lose more weight.  In the meantime stay away from my face, it smells like eggs!

Follow-up

01.02.07 (2:58 pm)   [edit]
I did figure out the spacing problem...it WAS the laptop...I hadn't changed to advanced view in the laptop.  It caches your choice so you don't have to do it again and I just forgot I needed to be in advanced view to add paragraphs.  :)

Spacing

01.02.07 (11:07 am)   [edit]

I'm having problems it seems with the spacing.  Some of my posts don't have any paragraphs!  I have put the spacing in, but tblog has stripped it when it gets posted.  I don't know how to fix it so I'll just leave it, but as a total stickler for sentence and paragraph structure, I really object to losing that spacing.  It's probably something I'm doing wrong on m