ZoeNox

Well, I got a tattoo, but I still don’t think I’ve toughened up enough. I’m still a wuss, just less so than before. Bit by bit, I’m getting there.

My husband got a tattoo at the beginning of the summer, and was I ever jealous. I love tattoos, but am a ginormous wuss (you know ginormous is a word when it’s used in Scientific American…or was it Newsweek?) and didn’t think I’d be able to get one anytime soon. Then a couple of weeks later my mum got one, and I really felt pathetic. I mean, even my mother has a tattoo and I can’t face a little pain and get one?! Argh! This semester I made a mass of new friends, and I discovered that a lot of them had tattoos, too. Last straw! I’d been wanting one for years, and I had just the perfect thing to help me start out small but meaningful. My family gives my mom a lot of crap for being Baha’i and some have told me they won’t help me with college if I am one. I had to make a moral compromise for the sake of my daughter, my marriage, and our financial security and tell them I wasn’t Baha’i, even though I had recently declared, and accept their help (i.e., money). So on a whim, I found a beautiful nine-pointed star design that looks a little like a flower and went in to see how much it would cost me, and they wanted to do it right then and there. My husband told me to go for it and not put it off any longer, so I did it. I nearly passed out from the adrenaline my brain was telling my body to pump out of fear (I have a mild blood and needles phobia that I’m trying to force myself to grow out of) and the guy got sort of impatient with me for having to pause a two-minute tattoo job, but in the end I walked out with an arm that surprisingly didn’t hurt at all and a new pride in myself for having made myself face my fear for something I wanted.

Those plastic bin things are a life saver. In the closet, in the kitchen, under the bed, as shelves in the bedroom and living room; these things help me get organized and get stuff out of the way while keeping it accessible. As a mom I need something affordable and child-safe, and those plastic bin storage-shelves on wheels help a lot. Maybe they don’t look as nice as my cherry wood book shelves or antique china cabinet, but they’re practical, safe, mobile, and easy.