Time for Tat?

So I got this tattoo the other day with skyler, who got a swashbuckling pirate dude in the same spot. We got them to celebrate a very portland sort of day, and also the fact that skyler scheduled his surgery for April, something he has been waiting to do for many many years. It was great, so I commemorated the occasion with this delightfully classic anchor being strangled boa-style by a very non-boa-type cobra snake.

It is starting to flake off around the head. Skyler's bubbled up and started falling off within hours, because he has hairy arms, and apparently the 25-cent type tattoos don't like to be applied over all that fuzz.

Jed thought it was real. Apparently he thinks I am the sort of person who enjoys anchor-strangling cobras. Our friendship is now in question.

But here's the thing. The more it sits there in my peripheral vision, the more I wish I did have an awesome tattoo right there. It looks good with this half-sleeve sweater. I could put something pretty right there instead of a serpentine sailor. Now I just have to figure out what.
Of course, now that my tattoo-artist buddy who lived here last year (and who did mercedes' octobiker) moved out to Minneapolis, there is no way in hell that I am going to get a tattoo in New Haven. The goal is to have an idea/design by my next visit to Portland.

Any suggestions?

Tragedy Strikes! Triply!

Tragedy #1: The case of the overambitious haircut

I wanted it to be like last time I cut it, when I thought it was too short but then actually it was cute, and like this:
But instead of accidentally doing a great job while stoned and having no idea what it would look like (see picture above, again), I was sober, thought I was totally in control, and ended up overcutting it so it's short n fluffy, like this:I mean, it's OK, in a third-grade-teacher-who-wears-turquoise kind of way. Even though it's just as choppy-layered as exhibit a, because it's too short it just adds to the fluff factor. Fortunately, hair is the kind of thing that grows.

Tragedy #2: I have no left arm

So I woke up last night around 4am in the middle of some kind of funny dream, and when I woke up I remembered the dream, but then I was distracted by the fact that I had woken up because something seemed to be wrong with my left arm. Specifically, it wasn't there. I couldn't feel it, at all.

I sat up, and looked over and it was to my surprise still attached, but I couldn't move it, and when I reached across to grab it with my right hand, I didn't feel my own fingers around my forearm. It was like a disgusting rubbery fake arm attached to my body, all limp and panic-inducing.

So I sat there for a minute and concentrated really hard on wiggling my fingers, which started to work, and then I could move my wrist around, and then my arm came back to me, slowly. After a couple of minutes I got some pins and needles in my hand, and could once again feel things all up and down my arm.

I think I must have been sleeping in such a way as to have pinched off the nerve, somehow, because even when the circulation is gone you still get the pins and needles business, but this was just dead. And terrifying.

My arm still feels a little funny today, just the slightest little tingle all up and down itself, as if it had a bit of champagne with breakfast.

I was scared to go back to sleep.

Tragedy #3: Sahlins got a big ol' butt

Apparently too big for his catbox, because he keeps peeing over the edge. Repeetedly. Like, every time.

All of this is taking place in my lovely new room, with its lovely wood floors, which now smell like lovely sahlins urine.

I am going to go shell out for one of those walled-in monstrosities, fer my little pissmonster. I loves the aminals, but jesuchristo sometimes they are a pain in the big ol' butt.

Shhhhh... don't tell

I give up. Sahlins has been blogging for a year now, and after finally giving in to the pressure and promising to write a travel-type blog about the Guateventures, I find myself wanting first to write about my new house, etc... The travelog will have a different address, and I'll just link to those postings from here whenever I add something to it, because that one will be accessible to a much wider circle (eg. my mom, eg. my mom's entire address book), and there are some stories (like the Tono saga) that don't necessarily need to be read by everybody whose sister ever changed my diapers.

So, New House News: we have named it Portland, and it is complete with Powell's bridge poster and an absurd number of feet running around. We are happily located in the closest thing that New Haven has to offer in terms of a NoPo or Felony Flats-ish neighborhood, with folks that ain't just rich and white, and who sit on their porches and yell out to ask you if you have a lighter as you bike by. Also 1.5 blocks from the only natural food grocery store in town... hello, fresh bulk tofu! Still have to drive out to Hamden to hit the TJ's, but such is life in the 'netty.

"netty" is my new name for Connecticut. I just made it up.

Skyler and I have an ikea date today. Last night we had an all-you-can-eat sushi date, which was both delicious and painful. It was good sushi, best I've had here yet, and for $18 you get to order whatever sushis and normal rolls and fancy rolls you like, even though the fancy rolls are listed in the menu for $10-12 each. They make it all fresh to order, and then you die because you order a second round when the first one is finished, and then realize that actually you are getting fuller and fuller just sitting and waiting for the second gigantic plate of lobster-mango-sweet chili sauce and crunchy eel rolls... and then after all of it, when you can no longer possibly eat another bite, you get the tempura-fried bananas and red bean ice cream for dessert, because dessert is included and everybody knows that if you pay $18 for an all-you-can-eat meal, you must consume at least $50 worth of food.

And then we had to bike home. oof.

We both passed out in our respective Lay-Z-Boyz in front of Batman. I think that this will be a good year.

It's strange how quickly I get used to being back here. At first when I left Paso Caballos I was disgusted and angry at how much food there was on my plates at the restaurants - every meal was as much as I ate in a day out in Paso, or more. And now here I am stuffing myself to the gills and happy as fresh red clam sashimi. Where are the tortillas? Why am I allowed to have all this money and comfort and easiness? Why do I get to leave that hard place, leaving everybody else behind to sweat and grow their milpa and fight to feed their eight kids?



When can I go back?