Sorry, went into hiding after the last tattoo.  I was so busy admiring it’s beauty that I forgot about the world that lives on my computer.

Ok that is complete bull but it makes me feel better so I’m going to go with it.  I really have nothing constructive to post at this time so I’m just going to do a bunch of meaningless little update things.

The lizard returneth:  My arm tattoo healed beautifully, but my leg has taken on that lizard quality.  Not to mention the fuzzy kitten quality.  It’s still to raw to shave even though I’m starting to think that shaving it might rid it of some of it’s lizardness.  It itches like hell too, but as Toaist once said, I’m not sure if it’s because of the tattoo or the hair growing in on my leg.  My husband has taken to petting my leg when we are sitting next to each other while saying “good kitty.”  F**king smart ass.

Dumb move of the day:  My dad and my step mother know that the quickest way to my heart is by giving me the gift of books.  Twice a year I receive a Barnes & Noble gift card; Christmas and my birthday (luckily they are six months apart from each other) for $250 a pop.  These tend to last until the next fix arrives, sometimes there is a gap if I don’t pace myself but for the most part I’m good.  Usually I go online and buy the books that I have heard about or noticed from random browsing.  This keeps me from going overboard.  Today I decided that I needed to go to the actual store for my fix.  Upon arriving at the B&N, I was putting my keys and phone back in my purse and discovered…no wallet.  I got really freakin lucky because I was speeding the whole ten miles from my home to the store.  Would have been bad if I had been busted.  I don’t think any amount of cleavage would have gotten me out of that one.  Luckily my husband had still been home when I left and had to kind of go the direction of the area that I was in in order to get to his job.  He brought me my wallet, and I was humbled on my drive home.  It also helps that I had books with me, these tend to tame the savage beast.  For my husbands efforts, I bought a book for him.

Why it’s good that my husband works nights, at least for one week of every month:  Due to the surprise arrival of the crimson tide, I have absolutely no interest in real food.  The nice people at Target are aware of this too since my shopping cart was filled with toilet paper, female hygiene products, chocolate, puffy Cheetos, chocolate and more chocolate.  I have absolutely no interest in making any of the nice healthy things that I bought at the grocery store last week and will instead enjoy my dinner of Cheetos and chocolate.  If my husband were here, I can assure you that he would be fending for himself this week and also hiding from me in another room.

Red, white and Blues:  Every year I go to a parade and fireworks show with my girlfriend and her family.  It’s always fun because who doesn’t love a good local parade?  The fireworks show this year was absolutely spectacular.  My husband was with me and I was having a good time.  Now, like I said it was my girlfriend and her family.  I turned around at one point to ask my girlfriends sister a question (she is also pregnant, actually four days apart from my girlfriend) and noticed that my ex and his wife were also there.  There is a very long story involved with why he was there and I promise that one day I will write about it, but this night was awkward and suddenly very uncomfortable for me and my husband.  My husband mostly because he wanted to bring physical harm upon my ex.  That night shook me up so badly that I didn’t want to go to my girlfriends family party the next day (the fourth) because I was afraid that it would happen again, only my ex wouldn’t be there with me.  My girlfriend was too tired and too pregnant to  keep insisting , and I ended up sitting at home all night watching fireworks from my balcony.

A book a day:  Ok, it wasn’t a book a day but I did manage to read four within a week.  It was mostly Chick lit so I therefore have nothing to really recommend unless you like this kind of thing.  In no particular order:

1. This Charming Man by Marian Keyes:  I was able to relate to this book.  It’s basically about four women who were all involved with the same man.  I don’t want to blow the whole thing, but it involves domestic violence.  It was really good and I was kind of (ok, remember it’s the week of cheetos and chocolate) sad.  I was crying at the end, but that was because it was a nice tidy ending.  Marian Keyes is one of my favorite authors.  She has the right amount of humor and seriousness.  I highly recommend this book and for that matter all of her books.
2. The Beach House by Jane Green:  She is also one of my favorite authors.  This book is about a woman who opens her house to a group of people for the summer.  I must really have an issue with summerzing books because I can’t think of a way to describe this book without blowing the plot and the ending.  Regardless, it was a good book.  I had a hard time putting it down, but at times I had a hard time picking it up too.  It was a little slow and hard to read at times. 
3. Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk:  Um yeah, it’s about porn basically.  There isn’t any real sex, but it’s about a porn queen who is ready to retire so she sets up a 600 guy gang bang.  You don’t actually read about the sex acts, it’s more about a few of the guys who are awaiting their turn.  Keeping in mind that this is the guy who wrote Fight Club, it was a good book.  Weird as hell, but good.  I managed to read this one in about a day.  It was light and had short chapters.  If you can handle weird and at times a little bit graphic, then this is a good book.
4. Don’t Hex with Texas by Shanna Swendson:  I’m really ashamed of this one.  I loved it, but it is so obviously Chick Lit that I’m a little bit embarrassed.  It’s book four of a series, and it’s predictable and mushy.  Yet despite all of it’s flaws, I love it.  These are easy to follow and quick to read.  Good for vacation reading.

I just started reading Stori Telling by Tori Spelling and I’m already enjoying it.  I have been a fan of Tori Spelling for awhile.  She tends to be such a bad actor that I love her.  I watch her show on Oxygen because I genuinely like her and I think when someone has their own reality show then it should be watched.  I do tend to ignore what I see in tabloids about her, but how do you ignore anything that has the name Spelling involved in it?

That is what my Grandma said to me when I made the mistake of whining about turning 30.  You think I would know better than to whine about 30 to an 83 year old woman.  Turning 30 is better than being dead.  I guess I still have lot of learning to do.

The birthday was, well, it was actually good.  I’m surprised because of all the crying I did about it beforehand.  I honestly believed that I wouldn’t be capable of doing anything today because I would be mourning the loss of my 20’s.  I guess I didn’t

My husband ended up working two overtime shifts today so I really didn’t see him at all, and while I am sad disappointed about it I don’t think that I will be when he receives the paycheck that all of this overtime is on.  Besides, I was barely even home so it wouldn’t have even mattered if he had only worked one overtime shift.  I’m babbling now. 

I ended up going over to my girlfriends house and asked her husband to try to fix either my door lock on  my car or my radio.  Both have been non-functional for over a year.  Her husband was only able to fix the door lock but he thinks he could probably fix the radio after he talks to a friend of his who actually installs stereos.

My girlfriend went with me to get my new tattoo.  This is the first time that I have ever had a tattoo specifically designed for me.  Usually I go into a shop and pick a piece of Flash off the walls or out of a book and have slight alterations made so that it doesn’t look like Flash.  I had gone into the shop on Monday afternoon to talk to someone about what I wanted and how I wanted to blend it into the tattoo that I already had on my arm.  In case you couldn’t tell, I really put thought into this one.  The guy looked at my already existing tattoo (a butterfly that I got when I turned 21) and told me he would touch it up and blend the new tattoo in with it so that it all flowed together.  I’m loving the outcome. 

It’s a little red, and a lot swollen.  Doing the butterfly hurt like hell because of the scar tissue, but if you had seen it before you would think that it was a completely different tattoo.  I absolutely love the way the stars came out.  The big one is a black and green nautical star and the smaller stars are multi-colored.  The guy did some pink to show motion.  I’ll post some more pictures once it’s healed and the colors are all set and everything.  I feel really good about this, but am worried that my mom will use this as an excuse to disown me.  Then again, if she can look at it as a whole instead of two separate pieces than I think I can fool her for awhile. 

The guy who did my tattoo was a little sick and twisted, but in a really good way.  He may have found it slightly unnerving that I didn’t whine or cry at all about the pain while he was doing the tattoo.  Apparently a lot of girls that he’s done work on need to keep taking breaks because they have no pain threshold.  I definitely like the work he did.  He even gave me a fun little nickname (Kitten) and shamelessly flirted with me.  He did have a kind of weird preoccupation with his wiener, but I naturally assume that most men do.  His wiener talk isn’t enough to keep from going back there though.  It takes a lot more than a guy talking about his member to embarrass or offend me.  Plus the proximity of this place to my home is wonderful, I could walk there if I felt so inclined.  The prices didn’t hurt either.  

In all I spent $200 for this experience.  I think that my new found happiness is totally worth the $200.   After the tattoo experience my girlfriend and I went on our bi-annual trip to Olive Garden for dinner (her birthday in January and mine obviously in June). 

So as we can see, it was a good day. 

I’m turning 30 in a little less than a week now.  I’m not going to go on and on about how hard it’s been for me, because let’s face it, my problems are petty when compared to the problems of others.  Let me just say, that I would be much happier if this was 31 instead of 30 because at least then I would be over this daunting hump.

Anyway, my husband is a good guy who listens to me when I really wish he wouldn’t.

My sister in law (his sister) also turned 30 this year, back in February.  Her husband had thrown her a surprise party for this occasion.  I was jealous because the last time I had a birthday party I think I was turning one or two.  My birthday is at the beginning of summer when people tend to go out of town for vacations, so my friends were usually gone and there was no party to be had.  I’m also an only child so I never really knew what I was missing until I went to friends birthday parties.  It sucked a little to realize that I didn’t get to have something like that, but at the same time I was never prepared to have that much attention thrust upon me so I was thankful that I never had a party.  The point is though, that I told my husband that I was jealous. 

Back when we found out that my brother in law was throwing a party for my sister in law, the green eyed monster game out for a visit.  I wanted a party too dammit.  I’m turning 30, why should she have everything?  I should have mentioned that I would have liked to have been clued in on these details, because my husband managed to throw together a surprise party.  Damn him. 

Since my husband started his new job, I kind of stopped wondering about what was going on.  He had plausible excuses for everything.  He asked about my favorite colors (weird) but had a good reason for why he was doing so.  My girlfriend who is getting married a week from Friday called him at one point and left a message.  My wonderful husband who thought he had nothing to hide from me, was listening to his voice-mail messages on his speaker phone.  I heard the familiar phone number being recited by the voice-mail woman and then my girlfriends distinctive voice saying hello to my husband.  He immediately deleted the message without listening to it.  When I asked what she wanted, he looked at me and asked me how he should know.  I spent two hours saying he might know if he had listened to the message.  He finally called her back in front of me and told me it was because of the wedding, she hadn’t received our RSVP yet and wanted to know if we would be at the wedding.  Weird that she would call him instead of me, but we had gotten new cell phone numbers and maybe I transposed whose number was whose when I sent an email stating that we got new numbers.  Plausible. 

My hair dresser was determined to get me into the salon to get my hair cut and colored before Father’s Day.  Weird.  My mom was insistent that I come over on Father’s Day because my husband was working and her husband would be spending the day at a baseball card show.  Neither of these woman would relent in my wanting to get together on a different day.  I’m now incredibly grateful to my hairdresser, apparently she knew the shame I would feel at being photographed with about 2 inches of growth showing. 

What gave it away was seeing my girlfriend and her fiancee walking into the place where the party was being held.  She saw me, I saw her and she ran away from me.  Curious.  I then started to look at the cars in the parking lot, and asked my mom why my in laws van was there, and why my other girlfriends truck was there.  At that point I knew for certain what was going on.  My mom had to drag me into the building.  I’ve never been so embarrassed in my whole life, and this includes the time that I told my psychology teacher that I had to go to the bathroom because my tampon was leaking down my leg.

All in all it was sweet and it was nice to have all of my favorite people in one room.  I wish my one girlfriend would have kept her trap shut and not taken it upon herself to complain about my in laws (that is my right, and my right only), but all in all it was nice.  It felt awkward as hell to have that much attention on me, but it was nice to be able to deflect some of it to the father’s in the room. 

I’m also very grateful that the hangover that I acquired from the night of drinking tequila shots the night before decided to take leave and let me have a semi normal day, you know, free of the pounding headaches and queasy-ness. 

Curiosity got the best of me and I ended up calling the friend back.  Wouldn’t you know it, before I even got to say hello she was launching into what mess her life is.  She told me about a car accident that she got into, she went on about how bad her cramps were this month and about how she has managed to go through yet another job.  Of course she never asked how I was feeling or doing or about how my husbands new job was going.  As a matter of fact she never even mentioned me.  She put me on hold 3 times, and when she put me on hold the third time I got annoyed and hung up.  She then called me back and proceeded to attempt to tear me a new one for hanging up, because her phone plan has free incoming but she has to pay for outgoing and why would I hang up when I know this.  Well, I hung up because I basically have the same plan and she had already put me on hold two other times for about 2-3 minutes each time.  I was fed up, pissed off and I really didn’t feel like talking about her anymore and her dysfunctional life.  When she started to sense that the end of the conversation was imminent, she finally laid it on me.  She needed money, do I have any she could borrow?  The answer was most likely the most resounding no that I have ever stated in my entire life of saying no.  She was so shocked (I think) that she hung up on me and I haven’t heard from her since. 

This was on Thursday for the record.  If this friendship is over then I’m not really sure on who’s terms they ended on, but if I’m right and it’s over then at least I can say that I’m done.  I know it’s immature, but caller ID was developed for this reason I think. 

I finally gave up on Stephen King for now.  I have way too many books and I feel like reading things that I know I can get through quickly.  So, I’m bringing on the Chick Lit (Emily Giffin’s new book and Jennifer Weiner’s new book).  I enjoy them and I know I won’t be able to put them down so I should cruise through those quickly enough.

I did pick up a fun little book though called I before E except after C.  It’s basically all about mnemonic devices.  I actually started reading that one today.  So far I’m enjoying it because who couldn’t use a little help remembering stuff?  

My husband is no longer working for the bank.  Now he is working for Diebold.  Basically he will be the guy who is standing outside or wherever trying and hopefully succeeding in fixing the ATM’s.  He felt the need to start a new job because the bank he was working for basically told him that he would never be promoted unless someone quit or died.  There is nothing encouraging about that kind of environment and quite frankly he was getting bored at the bank job.  He was doing the same thing day in and day out, and it was not working with his hands like he enjoys doing. 

I find it a little scary that he will be responsible for fixing a machine that dispenses cash and not because of the money part.  He’s dealt with greater sums of money than what is available in an ATM at any given moment.  No, what bothers me is that when something goes wrong with the computers at home, he freezes and I’m the one who has to fix them.  If it’s technological, it’s my job to fix them around here.  And he’s going to be responsible for fixing an ATM?

 And on another bright note:  my other girlfriend (the stable married one) is pregnant and expecting their second child in October.  I’ve known about this for quite some time now but seeing as how it isn’t me that’s knocked up I have neglected to mention it. 

On Mother’s Day I had sent her a text message to wish her a happy Mother’s Day because, well because I like her.  She had asked me where I was when I was sending the message and I really thought nothing of it.  I told her I was over at my mom’s and we continued to send messages for another couple minutes.  Finally I told her to go enjoy her Mother’s Day and 10 minutes later my mom’s doorbell rang. 

It was my girlfriend who had come over, because according to her it had to be done on Mother’s Day, to ask me if I would be the second child’s Godmother.  Of course I said yes!  It was actually a little funny (to me at least) the way she phrased it.  She said  “I know that you aren’t really religious (kind of true) but would you be the baby’s Godmother?”  Seriously, who can resist that?  So of course for the rest of the day/night I was walking around saying random quotes from the Godfather movies and doing my best female Marlon Brando impersonation. 

It would seem that I’m a whore to other peoples emotions. 

Since quitting my job a year ago, I rarely wake up in bad moods anymore.  I tend to wake up nowaday’s and feel pretty positive.  Hormones tend to take me in a different direction every once in awhile, but for the most part, I feel good!

Yesterday was no different, I woke up and I felt good.  I got my husband off to work, and even he was in a pretty good mood (he is so not a morning person, whereas I am).  I made my coffee, I ate my breakfast, I watched my morning shows.  Things were good.

I went to take my shower so that I could start getting ready for my day, and I guess that’s where things started to go downhill.  The shower was good, I love showers.  I get the water as hot as I can stand it and I stand there and let it beat on my back (I have lower back issues that may be inherited or it could just be the lifestyle that I have lived).  I don’t wash my hair everyday, but I do straighten it.  If it isn’t a day to wash my hair, I use a flat iron to straighten my hair into submission, so that was plugged in and heating up.

I got my make up on, I got dressed and was going back into the bathroom to do my hair when the phone rang.  So, I check the caller ID and see that it’s a friend of mine (name being withheld because I don’t know how often or even if she Googles her friends names to see if they’re talking about her) so I choose to answer the phone.

Big mistake.

She’s in a bad mood, and says as much when I answer the phone.  I think “Oh great” but withhold comments because she just needs to vent.  I’m quiet and I guess people tend to take that to mean “sounding-board.”  Usually this doens’t bother me, but I’m already worried about the snow on the ground from the night before, and we know how I feel about snow.

So, she starts to bitch and moan and I guess I finally had enough.  I made up a reason to hang up with her, because I’m starting to feel even more agitated because she was complaining about other people’s ability to drive in the snow.  I start to complain about what I have ahead of me for the day because now I feel the need to complain a little.  As I’m hanging up with her she has the nerve to say to me “Well, aren’t you in a bad mood?”

Tell. me. she. is. kidding! 

At this point I head into the bathroom to finish the beauty torture trials ritual, only to find out that the flat iron that I just got for Christmas isn’t hot.  Hmm, weird.  The power is on, the heat is up to the right temperature and it’s been heating up for about 20-30 minutes.  Fantastic, this means that it’s dead.  So, now I have to spray down my hair so that I can blow dry it into the correct style.  Should have just washed it.*

What’s funny is, if I hadn’t answered the phone to listen to her bad mood, I would have taken the dead flat iron in stride.  It wouldn’t have been an issue.  But, because it happend after someone who puts me in a bad mood, tells me I’m in a bad mood…I turned into the Incredible Hulk.

Yeah, Hulk smash flat iron.

I’m feeling much better today though.

*It should be noted that I have red colored hair.  Any hairdresser will tell you that red is the hardest color to maintain, therefore I don’t wash it everyday.  Even wetting it down with a spray bottle tends to make the color run and fade.