Pungsnotded

Sweetness, all around! My brother bought this record for me a long time ago, when we lived in this magical place called Zippy House, Lawrence, Kansas. It fit well amongst the vast punk rock and heavy metal records, and I am honestly suprised it survived. Actually I am suprised any of us survived those days! Yay to those of us that made it! Zevon looks skeptical, but after a few songs she got into it!

This is my new Boat Dress that I just cut out and sewed together this afternoon. I used some cheesy Hillary Duff pattern and altered it slightly, who the heck has time for linings, anyway! I got the printed tricot while thrift shopping with my mother, and the pattern was from a $1 sale at the Hobby Lobby, so I think in total this dress cost me a whopping $3. Woo!

It is funny how some things stay in my head forever. One Mardi Gras I went to, in New Orleans, I remember clearly a punk rocker guy standing on the rocks down by the river, exclaiming, “Look at them boats!” A moment of clarity amongst the rest, I guess.

The noises were the same. The buzzing of the tattoo gun as it gets ready to burn lines onto my skin. The old, squinty eyes of a biker, as he imagines the pattern before it is seared into my ready flesh. I meet his eyes with mine, I hope he shares my vision. This is going to be different. This is going to be color.

I look around the room and inhale deeply. Something is not the same. This is clinical. The chair is draped in a white bleached cotton sheet. The room is so clean, even my clothing absorbes the smell, it glides and drapes around me as I wait. I remember this smell, but I cannot yet place it. Was it an exam? Was it a hospital? Oh yes, it is the same as the hospital, a few years back. A cardiologist poked a wire to my heart for something or other. It felt cold, that wire, I felt it float all the way to my heart. I want to explain this to my tattoo artist, but he is busy preparing all the inks.

Safely, sipping my coffee now, in the chaos of my own living room, I do not have the same understanding. I cannot explain to my dreaming self, that this entire situation is off-kilter. Catawampus, my father, the carpenter, would say. I had instructed this biker tattoo artist, the one who had Willie Nelson eyes, to tattoo my ankle. We discussed it and somehow he had convinced me to tattoo the color wheel on my inner,lower calf. I agreed, as long as he would put a black and white piece on the opposite leg. A yin yang, maybe.

I asked the artist if he ever wanted to eat the ink, in the way that I sometimes find the perfect shade of gouache, and I can only think to eat it. I don’t, of course, but it is the desire to, that fuels my brush. He doesn’t understand, no one really does. The assistants come in and out offering help, which the Willie Nelson eyed man, obviously does not need.

He shaves my skin and puts the stencil on, it is three times as large as I had intended. I had showed him the size making a circle with my thumb and my middle finger. This thing was about 6 inches in diameter. My bank account was going to suffer. He started with yellow. After buzzing along a bit, he asked me if I wanted to fill in some. Of course I did! I buzzed along on my own leg, while he worked the foot pedal for me.

It became glaringly obvious that the shade of yellow he had chosen was not going to work. It didn’t match up with the rest of the colors. Couldn’t we just mix some lavender on top of it, I asked him. We would talk about it later. He began to speak of Cancer. He wondered if I understood. I did my best to let him know that I knew about it, I understood loss. He hoped I did.

We flip from one tense to another, you see in dreams tense makes no difference. Things are not what they seem. This entire dream had Johnny Cash singing Cry,Cry,Cry in the background. Only faster. I wonder what interest dreams have to the person not seeing them. I remember sleeping in the bed next to Allen, early in the morning, minutes before he would jolt awake. Dude, he would smirk at me, I had the most FUCKED up dream last night. The next half an hour he would describe to me his jet plane alien infested dream, while I wondered how he even appeared rested.

I have been sewing pajama shorts today. I love sewing them, because I get to use up all of my crazy “why in the hell did I buy this?!” fabric. These are for my little guy. My favorite part is putting a ribbon tag in the back, so he knows which way to put them on. I am always on the prowl for printed ribbon that isn’t too feminine, and I find the best ones in the scrapbooking sections of stores.

This picture cracks me up, my sister is responsible for it! I think more people should send my things like this! I demand it!

Within the past 24 hours I have fallen twice.

First I tripped in the kitchen and fell straight into the trash can.

Then I miscalculated the steps, missing two and fell into the window on the landing, getting myself wrapped up in the miniblinds in the process.

It’s not easy being an idiot.