picture this -

(italy, 1937)

Here's a picture, post-outline, pre-color, all lovely.



It makes me intensively, extensively happy. But I am disappointed that I stopped before even the shading, and a little mad at myself. He asked me, "do you want to take a break?" and I said "yes oh yes please thanks! uh huh." And I felt like my crew of tattoo-cheerer-ons had been arranged around the tattoo studio, watching me sit and occasionally wince, for entirely too long. Stretches of time that end way out beyond the borders of Friendship and deep in the desert of "do I know you?"

Tattoo-getting may be rife with soul-searing pain and blood and etcetera, but it is remarkably uninteresting in execution.

So since I chickened out, tuckered out, courteously bowed out of further tattooation, I now have to wait 10 days to three weeks (three weeks!) before I can get it finished up. I enjoy looking at it now, because it is lovely, but I am impatient to see it complete.

And it will be good to have a real reason to be accidentally waving my forearm around in peoples' faces, and acting all surprised and pleased when they notice my fancy new ink.

ratta tat tat

And then, I got a tattoo. On the inside of my forearm. Lovely and emblematic and also badass, for I am a badass. Especially when I eat Oreos, hooray.

I examined it critically, post-outline, turning my arm this way and that, lifting it, shifting around, enjoying it aesthetically and also viscerally (because ow). And then I turned to Guy and said, perfectly seriously, "Hey - does this make my arm look fat?"

And he said, "That's got to be the weirdest iteration of that question ever in the history of that question."

"But does it?"

"No. No, it does not, and hush."

My tattoo is pretty, and so's my forearm. Hooray!

naked

I cut my hair, and now the back of my neck is naked. The back of my neck has not been naked in three years. Maybe more than that. My hair just kept growing, as hair does, and I kept letting it grow, down past my shoulder blades and longer, and then all I did with it was dye it various shades of red and keep it in a ponytail.

Ponytails are exciting! No they're not.

Which is why I cut bangs. I look, as I have previously noted, like an asshole in bangs. Especially swoopy porn star bangs. Which I hacked short in a fit of oh my god I have swoopy porn star bangs.

That didn't work out so well. And neither did my attempt at Betty Paging it up. Oh, my.

But now, they are professionally short, and so is the rest of my hair, and the identity I had all wrapped up in having long wavy sex-hair, spilling over my shoulders all dramatic-like and making me feel pretty despite however else the rest of me looked, that is gone, and the best I think I am mustering is somewhere around cute.

Round-cheeked, knobby-chinned, art-student-glasses cute, and I am still trying to get used to it, to figure out how to bring myself, all the parts of me, disparate, clanging, discordant, together.

hey, this sounds familiar

It is remarkable, the way not losing weight, and ignoring all things health-related, makes you not want to write in your weight loss blog. Just crazy!

I joined eDiets, I printed out the meal plan, I printed out the grocery list, I started doing things that weren't shopping, or eating fruit cocktail from a can, or going to the gym. Funny how that happened.

I walk, and I don't weigh myself, and I say certainly we can share the molten fudge enrobed chocolate wet dream cake for dessert, dear! I ask for skim milk in my coffee, though. I've got that going for me.

But I am not thinking about my body, in terms of what I need to do to get in shape. It's been a long time since I've thought about my body. And trying to do it now – it's a tremendous amount of effort, and all my effort, of late, has been focused in other directions – school, writing, my relationship. Definitely not laundry. Sometimes TiVo. Stupid TiVo.

I am not sure where to go from here. There are the easy answers, and then there is the easy thing to do.

you ain't got no alibi

I got sick again. Yes, again. With the grossness and the dying. And then I got busy. And I was busy and sick at the same time. And sick of being busy, and busy being sick. And so on. It is as interesting to write about as I am sure it is interesting for you to be reading.

Dietetically speaking, all that went in my face for two weeks was orange juice and bits of toast soaked in tea. And then when I emerged from my quarantine, I found that there was nothing left in the house but bits of hard cheese, a freezer-burnt popsicle, and the fixings for peanut butter and jelly (miraculously, I always seem to have pb&j fixings. It is a Gift), and so I lived off of those for a few weeks.

And now I am weak as a kitten with the muscle tone of a pudding cup, but I have stayed within the same three pound range, and I am going to go ahead and call that a victory, cheering faintly. Hurrah.

Cough.

So once again, frustratingly, never-endingly, I have to Get Back On Track and Get to Getting and Keep on Chunging and You Know, Stuff. Because I am tired of the Stupid Pants and I am tired of being tired and I am tired of being tired of being tired and Where Will It End? Woe! Etcetera.

So I joined eDiets today (thank you for the suggestion, Kelly) which is just my style, what with the Exciting Structure and the Meal Plans and the Shopping Lists. But which also features fucking cottage fucking cheese, for fuck's sake (p.s. fuck). And I don't know what exactly they want me to be eating with that cottage cheese, but I don't look forward to asking for it at the grocery store:



Hi, I'm twelve! (Cough.)

But anyway, thanks for all the huzzah! comments in my last entry, which were very, very appreciated, and here's to full speed ahead and all that good stuff. And someday, burning the stupid pants.