My mother has a tattoo. Don’t worry, she didn’t have a Raging Granny fit and have Fred Astaire in a top hat engraved on her bosom; it’s the merest few dots for the siting of the radiation. My father has now had occasion to ask an uncaring universe why it is that he is now sleeping with a tattooed grandmother. Age spares us no indignity, as a great man once remarked.
Daughter Katie’s new tat is immense. Pics when it’s done, unless she gets all weird and shy on me.
On a different note, one of my neighbours only goes down the hall at running speed. I bounced out the door after the noise one time and found it was a white girl in her late teens/early twenties, running in freakin heels, if you can believe it. (This woman had been running down the hall like an elephant with a howdah full of brass band – pretty well every day for WEEKS). I’d be sitting in the bathtub thinking, “Earthquake?” to myself before the vibration resolved into a clear image of an elephant booking it down the hall. Now I know, I know for a fact that you couldn’t get an elephant down that hall, with those elephant sized grocery bags they hang on either side so you have a brass band to go with the infernal thudding – it wouldn’t fit. So thinking, I gave her a hate stare made of death rays from a Japanese monster flick but she tossed my glance aside and stomped onto the elevator. Zow. Like the attitude, baybee.
Anyway, I cheered up in the last 24. I wrote three sentences of maudlin adoration for my friends, and carefully backspaced over all of it….
Cookies sold well. I will take more in tomorrow for the fortunate ones. What I do is hit the cafeteria and distribute about half out at random. Then I hit the hot spots, and if you’re not at your desk and I really like you and trust your coworkers not to pinch it, I will leave it on your desk. But mostly I want to give it to you in person so I can enjoy that bit as it’s meant to be enjoyed.
Tonight I actually cooked dinner for myself from scratch. It was amazing. It was as good as anything I’ve ever eaten in a less than ten bucks a plate entree kinda restaurant, and all I did was throw things at a saucepan. Eight chicken thighs. Dumped in some water. Some chili – actually for me a LOT of chili. Some coarse ground black pepper. Celery salt – a cheat, but one I’m very fond of. Half a tablespoon of sugar, bout half a teaspoon of hand rubbed oregano and fresh ground (okay, day old ground) cardomom, of all things (I had hand ground it for the biscotti). Garlic powder. I stared at it for a while feeling sorry for myself because it was simply not right, and then I remembered, ha ha, that I had a can of coconut milk, which both hides sins and makes the saintly divine, at least in certain styles of cooking. No other fat but the coconut milk fat. Simmer simmer simmer until the smell ’bout drives you mad and devour with whatever veg and or starch you feel like throwing beside it. Damn, that was some good eatin’. I can hardly wait to share it with whoever is mad enough to take me on as a room mate. Yup, I’m officially done with living by myself, or will be shortly. I’ve established to my satisfaction that a) I can and b) I don’t want to.
I must confess to some disappointment; Fred Astaire in a top hat sounded way more interesting. Although for technique, getting a tattoo from a radiation zapper in a mad scientist’s lair gets style points for sure.
Unfortunately, from past experience I tend to associate tattoos with people who have been in prison or an asylum or both.
Loki’s bias notwithstanding, I AM tempted to enlarge on my first tattoo experience. I wonder. Cthulthu, perhaps? The radiation zappers in the mad scientist’s lair, however, were no fun at all. When I tried to lighten the situation they asked me to wait with the humor until they didn’t have to concentrate so hard. Chastened, I waited, but not until I had fired off a shot about their being unable to multitask, to which one of them responded simply, “We’re guys.”
Makes you think.