Man, Juliana, that's gorgeous. I mean, it sounded nice from the description - cool theme - but it's WAY more lovely than the picture I'd vaguely conjured up.

I've been perusing the Tattoo magazines and, by George, there are a lot of ugly tattoos in the world. And some really stunningly gorgeous ones. I'm hoping my own will fall into the latter category - Juliana's most certainly does. Lovely.

So last night I bought a sketch pad and a gazillion coloured pencils and went looking for photos of peacock feathers on Google. Then I copied one. Then I fiddled with it a bit. Then today I went to the Tattoo Parlour, talked to the nice lady, showed her my design and made an appointment to get it rendered in ink. I'm going for all colour, no outline, as naturalistic and non-stylised as possible. I'd braced myself for paying up to 300 quid, with it being a great big picture in a gazillion colours, and I can just about afford this, and that's what she quoted me - 15,000 - 18,000 baht, which is about 270-300 quid. She says we should be able to get it all done in one day, over two sessions. She also says, with me never having had any tattoos before and deciding to pop my cherry with a honking great back piece that goes from my right shoulder to my left hip, that I should go out and buy a local anaesthetic cream, to minimize the screaming. This is good, as I'd been kind of expecting to have to bite on a bit of wood, or my knuckles, or something. The chap she was working on at the time had been using this stuff, and he wasn't screaming. ('Course, he may have been wincing in manly pain, but I couldn't see 'cause he was in the next room.)

I am a total pussy when it comes to pain tolerance. Wuss wuss wuss. So this isn't my cleverest idea ever, and I am MOST IMPRESSED by Juliana's cojones. But yay for pain reducing cream stuff. (I'll still likely be screaming and biting things, but a bit less so than otherwise.)

Holy cow! 12 noon on May 12th I'll be getting my body permanently changed. Blimey.

I think that this is a good thing, because mostly I just really don't like my body and try to ignore it. But prettifying it in a way I find thoroughly cool and meaningful may just encourage me to get my wobbly arse back down to the gym, in a 'hey, I like my body after all!' kinda way - and the nature of the design is such that I think it will be fairly forgiving of any shifts in body shape.

VERY EXCITED!!!!

(I am not getting a tattoo in the supposition it will make me suddenly go back to the gym, obviously. But it does mark a bit of a paradigm shift for me.)

ion, my Mum will be horrified. As and when she eventually finds out about it, I hope that maybe she likes the design, though.

Eee, Fay, that IS very exciting!! There must be pictures, or we will hunt you down and take them ourselves!

Wait...I"m not sure that last bit is really incentive to post pictures...

I'm never here in the morning, because I leave for work as soon as I'm ready (which is never early enough). But today, am waiting for a girl I'm giving a ride to, and was afraid she'd show up early and I wouldn't be ready...so instead, I'm waiting, and she's not here yet. But she promised to bring me coffee in exchange for giving her a ride! Yay!

HOLD up...how do *I* have first morning post when it's not even that early here? What happened to the morning crew??

HOLD up...how do *I* have first morning post when it's not even that early here? What happened to the morning crew??

My kids cut me some slack and let me sleep until 7. I've been doing some cleaning, running the diswasher, changing diapers, getting little people dressed.

Amazing what 7 hours of sleep can do for you.

Well, this member of the morning crew was up twice during the night to do nebulizer treatments, so she slept in.

I'm trying to wake up enough to get dressed and make the bed before the people show up for the showing of the apartment.

I've been waking up around 3am for quite a few days, and refusing to get up. I fall back to sleep around 5:00 and then have to drag myself out of bed at 7:00 or 7:30. The next hour is prime hustle-everyone-out-the-door while sucking-down-half-caf time.

I increased my Celexa by 5mg a few days ago. The weird sleeping patterns seem to have come with that increase. Now by increase, I mean I finally made it up to a whole pill, mind you. It seems 3/4 of a pill may be my magic number. It really isn't handling all the anxiety though, so I'm giving the full pill a few more days before I cut back down. Besides, I got a new shape pill with my refill (oval this time, instead of round) and it's harder to split into quarters.

HOLD up...how do *I* have first morning post when it's not even that early here? What happened to the morning crew??

I appear to be having an unusually dark morning, but c'est la vie. Oh! I saw my doctor today, he of the fraud fine, and found out what happened to the medical clinic to make it close. All things considered, I probably shouldn't post the tale publicly, but it was quite a bit more interesting than just "it'd been losing money for the last year and just couldn't keep going".

In other news, I have organised that the mext meeting of my Toastmasters club, on this Monday, will have an international theme. I've been looking forward to it. And now work is sending me to Sydney for a week and I'll miss it! Well, buggeration.

HOLD up...how do *I* have first morning post when it's not even that early here? What happened to the morning crew??

Personally, the Red Line had a power outtage this a.m. and left me stranded at Ft. Totten. Hurrah for a DH without a job who came to my (and a co-worker's) rescue!

eta: Fay, that tatt sounds amazing. Someone needs to document Buffista's body art somehow.

I just really don't like my body and try to ignore it

but the rest of us really do and don't ignore it at all sighs blissfully remembering Fay snugglage