It has been a busy while for us around here. No excuse really since Kim has been able to not only update her blog, but update her second blog as well. Yeah, I’m slacking, but here I come with a couple of new posts!!
First up, my new tattoo. Kim and I both like tattoos. Okay, I think it is safe to say that I love tattoos. With the addition of my newest one I now have twelve tattoos. Granted, I have 4 rather small ones, the others aren’t tiny. So, in order of appearance:
1) My partial lunar eclipse came first. There is a meaning behind it, but I don’t tell people. Kim may be the only one that actually knows the meaning beyond me. This picture was taken by the tattooist just after completion.
2) My dragon. I don’t have a picture of this one. This was a going away present from a few good friends at the car dealership. Only regret I have is that I didn’t get it done bigger. I’m going to see if Sean can work something in around it to bulk it up so that it is closer in size to the Koi.
3) The next time I got tattooed was when I flew back to Oregon when Rob got back from the Middle East. I didn’t mess around. I got five tattoos done in one sitting. It helps that most of them were small. I got my ring finger tattooed with the word “Family”. I don’t wear my wedding ring so this was my permanent ring. I also had a Scooby Doo tattoo done for my Grandma Vivienne. She always used to send UPC’s away for things, and one time she sent away for a pair of Scooby Doo underwear for me. For that reason, I own a pair of Scooby Doo’s now. His tag usually has “SD” on it, but the tattooist changed it to “VS” for my Grandmother’s initials. I also had a spider tattooed for my Grandma Madge. She used to play this game with her hand as a spider and it would run across the counter at us. We’d smack the “spider” and squash it. My kids LOVE this game with me now. I had “MN” put on the body of the spider for Grandma’s initials. Next was a couple of Chinese characters. I’ve had them verified by a co-worker that was in the USA on a work/student Visa from China. They do indeed say what they were supposed to. On my right top-wrist I have the character for “Family”. Obviously, family is important to me. Then on the inner part of my left upper arm (near the tickle zone) I have the character for “Love”. This one is about six inches tall and on a “sensitive” spot. I felt a couple pinches, but mainly just had fun watching her work.
4) I took a little break in between tattoos, but rest assured, I was chomping at the bit to get back in there. This is also where Kim and I met Sean at Blackcat. He is the only one that will ever tattoo me again as long as he doesn’t retire or move. Next up came my older two kids’ names. I found a font that I really liked on Word 2002. Once I had found the font I liked and printed up a copy of the kids’ names in it I started to canvas the tattoo shops around here. I hadn’t been tattooed here, and I wasn’t too thrilled with the guy that did Kim’s Celtic bracelet. Yes, it turned out great (we had my tattooist in Ashland draw it up for Kim) but the guy was just off. He had obviously smoked about a million too many bowls of weed too many. Not only that, but when I took in the names to show him what I wanted he kept pushing me to not use that font and to let him do the names in graffiti style. Now, when I was 18 I would have said, “Sweet! Let’s do it!”, but I’ve grown up since then. I didn’t want my kids’ names to look like they’d been tagged on me. I wanted them to look nice to show the respect my kids deserve. We had driven to most of the shops before Kim’s tattoo, so we knew where NOT to go. Then we stumbled upon this little shop. It is like a hole-in-the-wall restaurant. They aren’t the biggest, or the fanciest (one here had a Koi pond in the shop), but most of the time you’re going to get the best service and product available anywhere. Blackcat Tattoo and the owner Sean have earned out business for as long as he is in business…and we have blank skin. He took one look at the names in the font I liked and said, “I like this font! This will be easy to work around if you want to add things to it later.” So, our relationship with the shop started. 
Next up came the nurse. I had been trying to decide what to get next, but hadn’t quite figured it out. Then, Kim shocked me. She said, “Why not get a nurse pin-up tattoo?” I love my wife. I always liked pin-up’s (what guy doesn’t???) but didn’t think I’d get one out of respect for my wife. But since she suggested it….okay! I already knew which one I wanted…I just had to find a picture. Once I found the picture, I printed it and took it to Sean to setup my appointment. I found out that, for the first time ever, I was going to have to break up my tattoo into two appointments. One for line work, and one for the color. First trip was about three hours, and it looked like this…
After a couple weeks of healing, I went back for another 2 1/2 hours for the color work. I’d like to say that coloring the hair sucked. Up in the knee area it is apparently a little tender (???) and he had to make multiple passes with the color. He said he would put the needles in, drag them up and outward as he went to shading? I don’t recall exactly, but it sucked. In the end, it was worth it to me though. I made her a “strawberry blonde” because, well, who doesn’t like a redhead? Kim agrees.
Then, came Finn. Tank joined us last March and I knew I had to get his name added as soon as possible. Called up Sean and he enlarged the font to compensate for being on my leg. I wanted to make sure that Finn’s name took up a good portion of my leg since Aiden and Paige’s names took up a good portion of my arms. I was able to get Finn’s name tattooed in less than 2 weeks after his birth. I should have timed it better however since I got snipped the next day (no more kids for me!) and couldn’t lotion it very well. Not smart, I know, but it still looks great!
Finally, Christmas 2009 rolled around. Kim gave me money for tattoo work for Christmas. Told you she was awesome. I decided to go with the Koi that I’ve wanted for a while, and after debating, it ended up on my upper arm. My right arm was feeling a little naked compared to my left, so it was time. Again, Sean informed me that we had to break up the work into a line day and coloring day. The crappy part is that because of his schedule I had to wait a month between the appointments! At the end of day one, my arm was sore, but not horrible…and it looked great even without the color!
And just a few days ago, I got to go down and get it all colored in. I’m thrilled with it (hence the long ass post about my tattoos) and again would like to confirm that Sean is the sole tattooist for this family. I would also like to thank Kim again for this present. I LOVE IT!!!!
I really was going to post another blog today, but I think I’ll wait until tomorrow. This one is long enough on its own!!
