OnyxRose

Glad your back recovered well! We always had cheap store-bought costumes when I was a kid, but my children are somewhat spoiled there, because their mama likes to go all out for costumes. And they're usually handmade, because their mama is also a stickler for detail and possibly also a masochist. I couldn't find a storebought costume that was detailed enough for Daughter's (she wants to be a specific Disney princess), and none of the available sewing patterns were just right, so this year I even drafted an entire pattern for hers. Wearing a costume is half the fun for me. Guess I just haven't outgrown it yet :) I just don't like the sewing part.

It just takes once, @pidjones. I got out of bed one day and threw a hip out of place. My lower back has never been the same since. Lately I'm sewing and sewing and SEWING... Halloween's coming up and while it's my second-favorite holiday, I HATE costume prep. Cardboard is a terrible medium to work with, but it's the easiest way to costume a wheelchair - oldest child is non-mobile. This year he wants to be a Dalek, and it took me all week to get the cardboard parts to stay together. (Lesson learned: glue first, then paint, and that way there is no sewing cardboard bits together with yarn.) His will be finished tomorrow, and then I get to start on the younger child's costume. There may or may not be time to finish mine by Friday, but as long as the kids' are done, I'll be happy.

Okay, so what do you do when you realize several days after that you didn't tip *enough*? My tattoo cost a little more than I had in cash on me, so I paid the much-smaller balance via Paypal. I clicked the "add tip" button on the Paypal screen, but I was so busy talking with the artist that I didn't realize that I had clicked the automatic 20% tip button on just the card payment, which turned out to only be something like 3% of the total amount. Oops. I won't be going in for another tattoo for another year at least (got some other things need doing around the house first) and this one doesn't need any immediate touchup work. Should I just go back in next payday with the rest of the tip amount and explain what happened?

@pidjones I've still got the tonsils (well, obviously, you can't get tonsillitis without 'em) but they aren't a chronic problem. This is only my fifth tonsillitis issue in my whole life. My problem was always ears as a kid. I had ear infections left and right, but my tonsils very seldom give me any trouble! - - - Updated - - - @KBeee I'm pretty sure it was an actual bug; it's been weeks and I'm still dealing with some sinus-related stuff that never went away, but the worst of it was gone within a week. But I won't know for sure till next time if it's how I react or if it was just bad timing. I tend to catch one or two of the bugs my kids bring home every year, but I was perfectly healthy the day of the appointment, no hint of any sick at all. Can't hurt to add immune system support for next time, though.

According to the Boyfriend, the bicep is the worst place. That may be owing to the circumstances in which he got it. He got hammered off base while out of country a decade ago, and let "a piss-drunk one-eyed British guy in a local bar" tattoo him. Now, this is a man who's been shot, stabbed, beaten, blown up, and injured in various other ways on the job, and who has a fairly high pain tolerance. He says he "screamed like a little bitch" getting the devil on his bicep, and I told him that was probably more because he let a piss-drunk one-eyed guy in a bar do it while he was drunk himself. He has ideas to get that one touched up (it's pretty badly faded and some lines have disappeared altogether), plus something on the other bicep, and I intend to steer him in the direction of an actual tattooer this time. Not like we're lacking for those around here; there are probably 15 in this city, and at least a few whose work is good. I can vouch for two, anyway, having personal experience with one and knowing a handful of people who have gotten good tattoos from the other.

I was talking with my tattoo-shop-owner neighbor this morning, and he mentioned that the tattoo looks like it's healing up well. I told him I was glad for that, since I was gotten sick a couple days after getting it and was concerned that it wouldn't heal nicely. I'm pretty sure I had a bug my child brought home from school (it was mostly sinus, but also tonsillitis with a cough; Son didn't have it, but his teacher had the same thing right before I did), but Neighbor said he gets sinus issues almost every time he gets work done. It made me curious. Is this something other people experience regularly, or something anyone else has heard of? No one else I know personally who has tattoos has ever mentioned getting sick afterward, so maybe it just isn't a common reaction? I guess I'll find out next time if this was just a bug I caught or if it's part of my healing process. Sure hope it isn't, because I don't want to be stuck in bed for two days and sick for a week and a half every time I get a new tattoo. (Also, I wasn't sure if this was the right forum to post this in. If not, do I move it or do mods move it?)

I have a bad back, courtesy of a hip that threw itself out twice when I was 26, and since then if I stay in one position for too long my lower back gets locked up and really sore. Most days I take some ibuprofen or naproxen to help with the pain and stiffness, but the day of my tattoo appointment I didn't take any because I'd read all over the place not to take painkillers in advance. While the tattoo did hurt (I mean... hello, getting jabbed with needles a few thousand times hurts!), by the end of the session my back was much more sore than getting the tattoo had been. It was only an hour and a half long sitting, but I had to lie almost perfectly flat on my back the whole time, only had a couple minutes break when he switched machines for the shading. Next time I expect that the session will be longer, so I'll take my painkillers in advance to prevent my back from getting cranky, and maybe to help with the needle pain too (though that would be secondary). I did happen to muse about that when I was talking to my tattooer afterward, and he said he nearly always takes a couple Advil before he gets tattooed. He said it helps take the edge off and didn't seem to cause any trouble with excess bleeding in his experience.

You could always go with a more traditional swastika. I mean, the shape would still be recognizable for what it is, but it may not look as... Aggressive? Maybe not so much like a symbol of hatred? The difference between the Indian one and the Nazi one, as it was explained to me by the Indian (as in, emigrated from India) Hindu people I know, is mainly the color and the angle of the symbol. The religious swastika is usually shown with the top and bottom arms parallel to the “floor,” so to speak, is usually red and/or yellow (these being auspicious colors in the Hindu faith) and has dots in the arms, like so: The Nazi swastika is black (an inauspicious, negative color by itself, to Hindus), has no dots, and is angled at 45 degrees instead of straight. They used the religious symbol as the basis for their flag, just altered its position and color, put it on a white circle over a red rectangle, and adulterated its symbolism for most of the world. To the point that many people don’t even know that it ever had good connotations - I was certainly never taught where the swastika originated. I was an adult before I learned that it was thousands of years old and was an important symbol in at least three Eastern religions. In fact, the only reason I even really learned as much as I did was because I was engaged to an Indian man who has Hindu parents and his mother gave me absolute hell because I refused to include a swastika in any of our wedding stuff. She took it upon herself to educate me in the history and symbolism of the swastika. (In the end it didn't matter, because I caught him sleeping with other women and I left him, so there never was a wedding.)

That's what the music was for, to help me get into that zone. I have trouble focusing past pain without it, and talking/listening to someone else talk just for the sake of talking when I'm trying to get through something painful doesn't help at all, it just makes me irritable. Better to get the chitchat done before and near the end than to force myself to be chatty during most of it, for me. I did make sure to keep the volume at a low enough level that I could hear any directions or questions. The book was really because I had gotten to a good part in the story and finding time to read is rare around here. But I found it was too annoying to have to hold it up and turn pages without moving my other arm at all. Next time I won't bother with the book.

Most people probably don't know you can tattoo over solid black. I didn't, until just now when I read your post, and I'm almost willing to bet that I'm not the only person on this site who didn't know that before you said it.

Sister has two tattoos, and says her outer ankle (right above the bone) was worse than her shoulderblade (about halfway between shoulderblade and spine). I've only got one and apparently I picked an "easy" spot, so I can't speak from experience on multiple tattoos. But I figured going in if I could get through unmedicated (yes, on purpose) childbirth, then I could manage a tattoo. Childbirth was way worse. About the same duration, but the tattoo was nothing worse than a cat scratch compared to baby-birthing. I did, however, have the benefit of distraction while getting the tattoo; my kids were very impatient about being born so there wasn't anything else for me to focus on, but I went in for the tattoo with an iPod. I didn't start to get chatty with the artist until the last ten minutes when all that was left was a little bit of shading and a couple lines that couldn't be done at the beginning. I brought a book too; that lasted all of three pages and I gave up.

You're welcome. He did a great job. It honestly looks like the lion could turn his head and look at you; he's almost 3D with the angle of that photo.

An open letter to my puppy: I know the lotion smells weird and not like me. But please kindly refrain from attempting to lick it off the tattoo. I am SURE that dog spit is not part of the recommended aftercare routine for tattoo healing. Love, Your Person.

That's breathtaking.

I have occasionally had bookstore employees ask me what the cover looked like if I couldn't remember the title or author of the book I was after. But if the title or author escaped me, I could nearly always tell them the genre at least, so there was something of a starting point. I haven't worked in a bookstore, but I can imagine how frustrating it is to hear things like that all day.