Tattoo Session Two: Electric Bugaloo

I spent last evening getting all of the flowers of my new tattoo shaded and colored in. I was there from 6:00 to 9:30 and three solid hours of that were spent under the needle. Last time it took about two and a half hours and let me tell you, that last half hour makes a difference. Especially when most of it is spent tattooing right over the achilles tendon.

Since this was my second session and therefore not quite as novel and exciting as the first, and because I had to schedule it for dinner time and basically the minute BD walks in the door from work, I wasn't sure I'd have any company. I thought BD might come for a while as SAM had offered to watch the kids so he could at least be there for part of the time, but he felt too guilty about leaving her with six kids (our four, her two) to accept her offer. So it was just me and my book.

When Tony first started working, I didn't want to distract him so I focused on reading. I was happy with the level of distraction my book provided and spent most of the first hour immersed in it. Tony was working very quickly in order to be able to finish in one session, and we took no breaks. Once after two hours he went for paper towels and I ran to the bathroom, but that was it. After a while we started talking and I learned that my tattoo artist is quite the bibliophile, reading a lot about memetics, among other things. In addition to painting, his hobby is tracing the origins of fairy tales as far back as possible, and linking them to their various versions around the world. It sounds like his book collection at home may rival ours for sheer numbers. It was interesting chatting with him and getting to know a little bit about him.

The final hour got pretty intense. The fact that I'd had a ham and cheese sandwich at 11:00 that morning, followed only by a few handfuls of movie popcorn and a box of chocolate-covered almonds at the second-run showing of "Horton Hears a Who" that afternoon was beginning to tell. Hunger and pain combined to make me jittery and I just wanted it to be over. The last half hour was spent with me lying on my stomach with Tony firmly holding my leg down to keep my foot from twitching and jumping involuntarily as he completed the last large flower and a few small ones peeking out from beneath it. I focused on my book as well as I could and bit down on my thumb. Finally we finished, wrapped it up, and I was on my way home to the burritos I'd started for dinner before leaving.

It's hard to capture all the details through the sheen of A&D ointment, but here are some pictures of the finished product.

Sleeping Ugly

Is it possible for a toddler to get too much sleep? For the past several weeks, Genevieve's naturally spunky personality has been peppered with fits of extreme clinginess, bossiness, and random contrariness. Not that this is unusual behavior for a two year old, but the fact that she's able to sustain a mounting level of two-ness until well after 11:00 pm is exhausting.

For most of the summer, she has woken up between 8:30 and 9:00 in the morning, napped for about two hours in the afternoon, and then, regardless of whether those two hours were from 1:00 to 3:00 or 3:00 to 5:00, she refuses to bed down for the night until well after the eleventh hour. And believe me, that expression is appropriate because the situation becomes dire. At that point in the day, I. Have. Had. Enough.

So today, she missed her nap. We were helping a friend tackle some largish regrouping and rearranging projects at her house for most of the day, and for most of that time Genevieve played happily with the other kids. Sure she had her moments, but she was mostly pretty good. At one point we rode to Germantown to pick Somerset up from her cousin's house, and I hoped she might take a quick doze and then wake up refreshed but ready to turn in at a decent hour. Instead, she talked the whole time, as she does now in the car. As she did all the way to Dauphin Island and then back to Memphis. So she never napped, but she lasted beautifully even through a restaurant meal involving three adults and six children!

When we got home, she played with her brothers and sister some more, requested and took a bath, and then went easily to bed at around 8:00. Eight O'Clock! I don't quite know what to do with myself! I'm sure that somewhere around 10:00 she'll wake up, but I feel fairly confident that she'll just nurse and fall back asleep.

Is it possible that naps have been making my baby into the bad seed?

Post-Beach reality

As I was saying, we're back from the beach. I wanted to tell you I was going, or send you a little post card from Dauphin Island, but BD thought that was a bad idea. I suppose it would be a bit dangerous for me to say, for example, "We're leaving for a week and I'm taking all our photo albums and anything of sentimental value with us so that on the off chance the house should burn down while no one is here who could possibly get hurt, it wouldn't be such a terrible thing." wink wink

The house did not burn down. The dishwasher had the decency to break the night before we left, and the new one I purchased upon our return arrived today. It was supposed to be installed, but for some unfathomable reason, they only carry one standard sized hose kit on the truck. It was too short, even though our dishwasher is only one cabinet away from the sink. After I told the installers that was unacceptable and then bitched out a customer service rep at Home Depot, I still ended up with the old broken dishwasher still in place and the new one in a box in the middle of the floor. At least they're refunding the install fee and the cost of the too-short kit, which is about $80. Stupid Home Depot.

As for the trip itself, it was wonderful. Genevieve was not quite the beach lover she was last year, but she did ok as long as she stayed supplied with snacks she could cover with sand before shoving into her mouth. And I found that I wasn't as sad to leave this year as I was last time. As I pondered the absence of parting tears, I realized that we brought a little bit of the beach alive in our daily life after last year's trip. Our weekly cocktail hours and occasional monkeyless nights out have made it a little easier to end a full week with our friends. Sure, it was still hard, but I'm pretty happy with the life I got to come home to.

Here are some of our pictures from the trip. And here and here are some more. These are the family portraits in the obligatory white shirts, in which the wind made my hair look like the stupidest hair ever.

Wish I were here

We're back from the beach. Back from the beach sucks. See a few more pictures here.

You Like Me, You Really Like Me!

Rita the Bookworm was kind enough to award me this lovely Arte y Pico a while back and I have alternated between slacking and forgetting to thank her and post it up. Thanks Rita!

Rules:
1) Pick 5 blogs that you consider deserving of this award based upon creativity, design, interesting material, and contribution to the blogger community, regardless of language.

2) Each award recipient has to display the name of the author and a link to his or her blog.

3) Each award winner has to display the award itself and a link to the blog whose author presented the award.

4) The winner must provide a link to the arte y pico blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.

5) These rules must be displayed.

My five blogs:

Urf!
Secret Agent Mom
Fertile Ground
Chockley Blog
All Adither

How could I forget?

BD, as Genevieve tries to snatch something from him: "You will rue the day, little girl."
G: "No, you'll rue the day!" Proceeds to go around pointing at everyone in the house and saying "You'll rue the day! You'll rue the day!"

Genevieve-ese

Genevieve: "Me hunny mommy."
Me: "You're hungry? What would you like to eat?"
G: "Me want Talaloes" (Much mush-mouthed rolling of the L sounds)
Me: "Tangeloes?"
G: "No! Talaloes. TAL-al-loes!"
Calvin tries: "Marshmallows?"
G: "No! Talaloes. Talaloes. TALALoes!!
Somerset gives it a shot: "Pillows?"
Calvin: "She doesn't want to eat pillows, dummy."
G, clearly exasperated: "Like rolley-rolleys. Talaloes."
Me: "Oh, Spaghettios?"
G: "Yes! Talaloes!"

Me: "Genevieve, are you going to play in the baby pool while the boys have swimming lessons?" (All humans larger than she is are boys.)
G: "Yeah, me fwim my tummy, and me jump! And me...um uh, what else..."

Me: "I love you Genevieve."
G: "Me wuv-ou, Mommy."
BD: "I love you, Genevieve."
G: "No, me wuving mommy!"
A few seconds later, with a big grin: "Me wuv OU Daddy!"

**Insert shameless plug** Vote for me!

Anti-Dentite

I did something this afternoon that I haven't done for eight years. I went to the dentist for a routine cleaning and checkup.

I realize that some of you will find it scandalous that I went so long without a checkup. Even more scandalous? It had been six years between that visit and the one before it. I can even remember the logic behind each visit: I figured I should go before we left Panama City for, allegedly, Taos, because I didn't know when I'd have the money, time, or inclination to go again. Who knows how long it had been before that one. Six years later, I went when I was planning my second pregnancy. And now, eight years later, I went because I took all my kids a few weeks ago and thought "Hey, I haven't been to the dentist since before Joshua was conceived, and he's seven!"

I don't hate the dentist or anything. I just am not a maintenance kind of girl. I am bad about not getting the oil changed in my car until it's been three times as long as recommended. I never go to the doctor unless I'm really, really sick. Or pregnant, which is a more frequent occurance. And I never think to go to the dentist because I never have any problems with my teeth.

Or at least, I never used to. That's right...duh DUH duuuuh...I have a cavity. Gasp! I have never had a cavity in any of my permanent teeth! But now I have a tiny one in the grinding surface of my third molar on the upper right side. They sprung it on me right at the end, too! After all the scraping. Oh, the scraping. It went on so long and was so disgusting and mildly painful. My mind drfted to that genius who is running the ads for something called "sedation dentistry." Before, I scoffed at the pansies who would need such a thing, but now...

It's not that I'm now scared of the dentist. It's just so unpleasant, with the tiny metal gaffs and the holding your mouth wide open for upwards of half an hour at a time, and the unfortunate timing of opening your eyes just as the hygenist's bloodstained latex hand is passing in front of them. And the bib. Oh my god, the bib! That they wipe the crud from the little hooks on. There hasn't been any advance in dental technology since the advent of the bib? Really?

It wasn't scary, and it wasn't even very painful. It was just. So. Gross. Thank goodness I don't have to go back for at least six years!