Needles and ink and flesh, oh my

My gift to M for his birthday back in July was that I'd pay for him to get a tattoo. I was surprised at how far ahead the studio was booked; his appointment was today, which is almost three weeks after his birthday. But the boy got himself a tattoo, and he is walking around grinning like a monkey with six bananas. I'm glad he's happy. It's a good feeling to give someone a gift that they are not pretending to like, that they obviously and genuinely are thrilled to death with.

So here it is, all fresh and gooey. I'll take more pictures of it once it isn't so fresh and gooey and shiny and kinda yech. He said it hurt less than he thought it would. The tail will stick out the sleeve of his sheriff uniform in the summer when they wear the short-sleeved shirts. I imagine it will be uncomfortable for the next few days; those shirts are made of the shittiest polyester on earth. When I got my ball-of-the-arm tattoo, I wore sleeveless shirts until it scabbed over, and when I got the two on my neck, I just wanted to walk around naked all the time because it hurt to touch them.

I feel less la-la today, but more like my mind is closer to the ground. My mind is supposed to be at my height, but yesterday it was in the clouds and today it's hovering somewhere around my knees. My body feels heavy and tired. I don't know why. It's not really bad, necessarily, just kinda...weird. I took a whole bunch of pictures tonight and that made me feel better. I'll have to organize them and get them up on Flickr at some point but not tonight.

The moon is large--almost full. I love to look at the moon. I've taken pictures of it every day this week, which means I've wound up with a folder full of moon pics on my desktop and I can make a little animation of its phases if I want to. This camera is incredible. You can see the moon's belly button with it.

God, what would I do if I couldn't take pictures? I shudder to think. It's becoming an obsession.