In search of some ink

I have a tattoo. Just one, on my shoulder, so I can easily cover it up. It was actually a birthday gift. My sister-in-law suggested it, and offered to pay, so we took a ride up to see a friend of ours who was working in a tattoo shop. I didn't know what I wanted, so I put my foot down on having anything done immediately - if I was going to have something etched permanently onto my body, I wanted it to be something of great meaning to me, not just a ladybug or a butterfly or anything like that. After some internet searching and the help of a talented and artistic friend, I ended up with this (please excuse my raggedy hair - it's not quite long enough for locks of love just yet, and forgive my messy bathroom, poor photography skills and ugly pajamas):

Mother and child, a tribute to my love of my vocation, my love for my children. A few months before I got the tattoo I had endured a miscarriage, so it had even more meaning for me. And I lost my mom while I was pregnant with Bella, so it could stand for my mother, her mother, anybody who is a mother or a child. I like it. And Bella likes it - she calls it 'our heart', since it's sort of heart shaped.


I have been feeling a hankering for a new tattoo for a while now. I'm not an ink addict - far from it, actually - I got the first tattoo about four years ago. I'd like to get another, so I'm trying to decide what I want to include in the design.



Disclaimer: I realize that some people dislike tattoos, and that some people dislike religious imagery in tattoo form. If so, you might be bothered by this post. The last thing I want to do is offend, so please consider this fair warning. I don't want any nasty e-mails, so please keep in mind that people can have differing opinions while still being respectful. If you would like an interesting perspective on the subject, browse over to this site: Religious Tattoos. The site is run by a Catholic father of four who happens to appreciate body art. Check out the tattoo pictures page, sorted by subject - it's fascinating, and if you visit the links page, you will find tattoo shops that tailor specifically to Christians.

My younger sister is one of the best Christians I know, and she has multiple tattoos. Some of which he had done while she was going through a bible college. She now has a bachelor's degree in theology.

My conversion to Catholicism was huge for me (as it is to everyone who does it, I'm sure). It was a big step, something I never thought I would do, and I discovered how much it meant to me and how much I wanted to do it when I was on the verge of not being allowed to move forward. I made it, though, and I want my tattoo to signify my faith, among other things. For starters:

I want a triquetra because it has all sorts of meaning - the Holy Trinity, obviously and mainly. Two sisters plus me equals three. I have two children with me and one I lost, for a total of three. I do realize that the triquetra can also be considered a pagan symbol, but that's not a problem for me because I look at it this way: it is going to be on my body, so what matters is what the symbol means to me. Both my sisters have triquetra tattoos, and we have long talked about all three of us having one, so I'm pretty sure my next inking will be of a triquetra in some way, shape or form:

BUT - I don't know if I want a thin line, a thicker line (like the one above), a double, or if I want the circled version. That's one decision to make.


Throughout my conversion to Catholicism I found myself drawn to the Holy Spirit, for a myriad of reasons, a lot of which are rather private. I wear a Holy Spirit medallion, all the time. So I would like to include a dove. I know, I know, the trinity symbol includes the Holy Spirit, but I'm giving an extra little shout-out. Maybe like one of the doves below:



So I have to decide which dove, and then where to put the dove. Inside the symbol? Outside? Above, below? Another decision. I'm thinking, though, that I would like the dove inside the lower left side of the triquetra.


I would also like to have something that represents the Blessed Mother and all that she represents. I can't decide on that one - maybe a fleur-de-lis, or the initials and crown, one of the two, as seen below:
I don't know which. Or where. Another decision. But I'm leaning towards a fleur-de-lis in the lower right hand section of the design - I like the blue and white one, above.

In the top section of the triquetra, I would like something for my kids - maybe little stars, maybe circles - one in pink (for Bella), one in blue (Bubba), and one in white (for the baby I lost).

And that leaves the center. Hmm...what's a girl to do? I could leave it blank. I was thinking I would like to do something for my mother, but I'm just not sure. And this is all up in the air, of course, because I could get this sketched out and it could look busy and terrible, or it would have to be huge to fit all that stuff inside of it and I'm not looking for a huge tattoo. Who knows, I might end up just doing the triquetra. So that's what I've been up to lately, mulling over tattoo options. You know, because I just don't have enough to do already. :-)

Happy weekend to all!

Come Tuesday...

So I'm at work today, working with a customer on the phone, when I see a gentleman strolling to the back of the store with my boss. He looks familiar, but I can't place him, and I was trying to both help the customer on the phone AND wrack my brain to try and figure out who he was, when my boss says, "Hey, you guys, it's Jimmy Buffett!". Ahh, THAT would be why he was familiar.

He shook hands with everybody, and was looking at guitar tuners - you know, since he needed a tuner for his stratocaster because he's going to start working on an album tomorrow, and stuff. He talked with everyone, while I was still stuck on the phone with the same customer. I wanted to say, "Jimmy Buffett is here! Can I call you back?" but I didn't. He was getting ready to leave when I finally got off the phone, and he was shaking hands one last time so I snuck in. Everyone else was talking about where or when they had seen him play live, but I had never seen him play live, so when he shook my hand all I could say was, "I've read your books". It's true, I have.

He was busy contributing to the local economy, apparently, because he had a huge shopping bag from the jewelry store across the street (I mean huge - I wouldn't think a jewelry store would have a bag that big - I mean, it's jewelry). He had to leave in a hurry because he was meeting his sister for lunch and didn't want to be late. So there you go!

That was my brush with fame today. Well, that and speaking with Mrs. Fetterman (widow of Admiral Fetterman, and somewhat famous locally), who was telling a charming story about her friend Tom Benson, who just happens to own the New Orleans Saints.

I love this town sometimes, I really do.

It's been a while

Hasn't it? I apologize to my few readers. I haven't been all that busy, but I have been enjoying the lack of school and girl scouts. Bella has been enjoying it, as well, and has been staying up far too late. She seems to have a knack for knowing just when I'm about to tell her to go to bed, and when she senses that coming she'll come up to me, give me a big hug and say, "Mom, I think we need to have some girl time right now". How can I argue with that? So we play Wii - usually Cooking Mama, and some Lego Star Wars, but the player perspective on Lego Star Wars makes me queasy after ten or fifteen minutes. Sometimes she reads to me, sometimes we just snuggle on the couch and watch TV, or we will do some needlepointing or some crafts. Lots of fun.


I am feeling a little blue, my friends. I think I'm a bit depressed. I've been trying to address it myself before I seek medical intervention - changing my diet around a little, trying to make sure I get more/enough sleep, get some exercise, things like that. I'm hoping those steps work.


I took Bella to the bookstore yesterday with her summer reading assignment and let her pick out books. We picked a few books off her assigned list, and then I told her she could pick out one other book of her choosing, as long as it was a chapter book. She browsed through the beginning chapter readers, and after a moment exclaimed, "Everything is fairies and princesses! I have lots of those already!". She didn't want more Junie B. Jones books or Magic Tree House books, so I was helping her try to find something and we came across the Franny K. Stein series, about a little girl mad scientist. Much to my amusement, she opted for one of those books. And she loved it! She is planning on 'reviewing' it on her website tonight, since she finished it in the car on the way home. She laughed out loud more than once while reading it, and actually read a couple of the more amusing passages out loud to us. I read it, too, after we got home, and I liked it. It had a great message about staying true to yourself, even if you're a little different. And parts of it made me laugh out loud, like this:

She was just about to tell the girls how Chompalina could bite the heads
off their dolls when she noticed something. Their dolls were all kind of...sweet
and pretty. They all had long hair and flowery dresses. Not a single one of them
oozed uck. They didn't ooze anything. Franny made a note to herself: Pretty,
non-head biting dolls, it said. And less oozing.

Or this one, possibly Bella's favorite passage in the whole book:

The kids just stood there. They didn't know how to help. A few tried
crying. A few tried screaming. One tried wetting his pants, although later on he
admitted he had no idea why he thought that might help.

That's funny stuff, especially if you're seven.


Summer is in full force here in rainy Florida, where the temperature is in the nineties by 9am and the humidity makes you feel like you're stepping into a hot tub everytime you step outside. You can't go outside during the afternoon because it's too hot, and you can't go outside in the evenings because you get eaten alive by mosquitos. My little stretch of porch is alive with nature, and by nature I mean angry stinging insects that chase you back inside the second you step out. I sprayed a couple of wasps' nests a couple of weeks ago, and we already have four more. The joy of swamp living. All this and hurricanes, too! I should write ads for the department of tourism.

I hope everyone has a lovely summer weekend!

Thoughts and prayers

I've been visiting a blog written by the mother of a little girl named Faith Hope, who was born with an anencephaly. Most anencephalic babies die a within minutes of birth, if they survive the birth process at all. Her little girl just recently passed away, at the age of three months. If you pray, maybe you could say a prayer for them.

Uniformly Crazy

Bella's school has gone insane over uniforms. They have flip-flopped multiple times over logos and styles and some parents who went ahead and ordered based on the initial requirements are ticked. Below are the notices we have received, just regarding sweatshirts (which are fairly inconsequential around here, since they wear them for about two months):



Notice: Regular or zippered sweatshirts are allowed but they cannot have a hood and must have the embroidered school logo.

Notice: Sweatshirts can have a hood but they must not have a zipper and must have the embroidered school logo.

Notice: Only plain sweatshirts without hoods or zippers will be permitted and must have the embroidered school logo.

Notice: Any sweatshirt style will be allowed but it must have the embroidered school logo.


And finally, coming in AFTER the uniform session at the school where many people purchased an official sweatshirt bearing the embroidered school logo:

Notice: The embroidered logo sweatshirts will only be allowed for 09/10 school year. After that all sweatshirts must have the silk-screened school logo. Anyone not wearing this style after the 09/10 school year will be considered out of uniform.



I'm not kidding! I am thinking about starting a polite stink about the uniform situation. You are only allowed to purchase uniforms from one source, and they do not have a store in town. You have to drive an hour into Alabama to purchase uniforms (it's 47 miles away from my house - I just checked), or pay a shipping rate that starts at $12 and goes up from there. And the real kick in the teeth comes when you realize that the jumper you are driving an hour to buy (or paying $12 to ship) costs $34.95 at the shop the school uses, but you can buy it on frenchtoast.com for $14.95. Seriously. But you are not allowed to purchase it from french toast - all over the uniform page it is specified that uniforms MUST be purchased at the specific retailer. I wonder if they go around checking tags during the school year, to make certain. Surely not.


I understand the logo issue, make me buy anything with a logo from the 'local' store, but jumpers and shorts and pants? Let me get them for more than half off somewhere else. At least give us one other option. It's hard enough to come up with tuition, much less driving for an hour to buy overpriced uniform pieces. I understand the point of uniforms is to be, well, uniform, but adding one more option that is more affordable and is selling the exact same items...I don't see what the problem is.

However, I am not good at starting a stink. I am too afraid of offending, and the parish priest and the sisters running the school have too much to worry about without me getting up in their business about uniforms. I don't want to start an offensive stink, understand, but I would like for them to honestly consider the idea. I think I'm going to check out the other Catholic schools in the area and see what they do, and then talk to a few parents to see if they agree with me, and then come up with some facts and a thoughtfully worded presentation. It might all come to nothing, but it's worth a try. Look out - woman on a mission!

Look out internet!

Bella's grades have dropped a little this term - not a whole lot, and not so much that I am very concerned, but I would rather nip issues in the bud before we have a big problem. We had a serious discussion in the car this evening about how important it is to do well in school, and to do the very best job you can, even if it seems hard, and so on and so forth.

I have been wracking my brain lately, trying to come up with ideas to make her summer reading more enjoyable for her and other ways to keep her reading and writing skills fresh over the summer. I was working on a blog post earlier and she came over to the computer and started asking questions about what I was doing and why, etc. Then she said, "I wish I could have a blog." I had an aha moment (don't sue me, Mutual of Omaha!) and told her that she could -thus, Bella on Books was born.

She was so excited about the idea that she hurried up and finished the book she was reading so she could write her first 'review'. I told her that she needs to write out her posts longhand first, so she will know what to type. So she will read (hooray!), she will write (awesome!) and she will type (woohoo!). All skills she can use when school starts again.

She helped me with the setup - she chose the template, and she ever-so-slowly pecked out the wording for her greeting. She even wrote her first review tonight. I am very interested to see how her writing will progress over the summer - if you look at the blog, her first post is perfunctory at best. But it was also a rush job, since she wanted to get it done before showering and bed.

She seems really excited about it, and if that is what it takes for her to get excited about reading and writing, then fine by me.

Speaking of school, Bella found the new year's tuition notice from her school. It was in her homework folder, and she thought it was for her and opened it. She asked me to explain it, so I did, telling her the number at the bottom was how much we paid per month for her to go to school. She was aghast, and then she said, "I can't believe you pay that much, mom! That is so much money!" (It's not THAT expensive, but any dollar amount greater than $5 is a lot of money to her). She then said, "Well, I wouldn't pay that much money". I told her she gets a very good education, and that combined with the religious education she is receiving makes it very much worth it to her father and I. She still wasn't convinced, but I told her she was worth every penny. Her reply? "That's an awful lot of pennies."

What's eating you?

Because something is eating Bubba. Mosquitoes, specifically. We live in swamp, so we are used to mosquitoes, but these are persistent mosquitoes who snuck into the house somehow. We don't leave the door open, but they sneak in on our clothing, or hurriedly fly in while we are coming or going. I should check our phone bill - I bet while we're out of the house they're making long distance phone calls and eating all of our Easter candy. Stupid bugs.

Bubba seems to be getting the worst of the bites, and they have been bad:

You can't really tell from this angle, but he has a bug bite on his eyelid that made his eye swell almost shut. You can see it better in the photo below:

It was HORRIBLE. He won't keep ice or a cold compress on it (which is really the only thing we can do at this point). Please ignore my messy fridge and my husband's overgrown goatee.

He has about six bites on the back of his neck. They seem to be going down rather quickly, giving me hope that the bite over his eye will settle down just as fast. And yes, he does need a haircut. But it will hurt me a little bit to cut off those curls.

He has another 5 or 6 bites on his torso, and one on each arm. This has all happened inside my house. That makes me feel terrible.

I made a desperate trip to Wal-Mart last night and picked up a couple of indoor pest repellent things that plug into the wall. I'm hoping those will work. And I have become very strict about the opening and closing of the front door or our sliding door. We open the door, dash out and close it quickly again, or vice versa. This morning Bella wanted to check the weather, and she was headed to the door when I said, "That's why we have the internet and the weather channel! Don't open the door!".

This, too, shall pass, I'm sure. As long as I stay vigilant about the doors we should be OK. This is just another reason to add the the already long list of reasons that I can't wait to get out of this apartment. In the meantime, if anyone can offer any advice for...

• keeping mosquitoes out of your home
• doing something about mosquitoes once they get inside your home
• natural anti-itch remedies
• a way to keep an ice pack or cold compress on a wriggly, stubborn 15-month old

...I would appreciate it. In the meantime we will make do. In an itchy kind of way.