Yesterday was the first day of January of the year 2011 and one of my presents for Josh was for him to get a tattoo. This isn't just any tattoo it was meant to be a special tattoo just for him to honor the memory of his father who passed away in July. He designed his own tattoo which was a picture of A fish and over the top of it was the word dad and underneath it was his date of birth and his date of death. I'm going to try and post the picture on this website here so you can see it.
So at about one o'clock we headed over to a tattoo place that we went to last time when Josh got his big Dragon tattoo. This time we got someone else to do his tattoo and he decided to have it put on his upper left part of his shoulder.
I was trying to get a video of it but he was self-conscious so I just took some pictures. I'm not quite sure how long the whole process took for him maybe it was in an hour. or it Yesterday was the first day of January of the year 2011 and one of my presents for Josh was for him to get a tattoo. This isn't just any tattoo it was meant to be a special tattoo just for him to honor the memory of his father who passed away in July. He designed his own tattoo which was a picture of A fish and over the top of it was the word dad and underneath it was his date of birth and his date of death. I'm going to try and post the picture on this website here so you can see it.
So at about one o'clock we headed over to a tattoo place that we went to last time when Josh got his big Dragon tattoo. This time we got someone else to do his tattoo and he decided to have it put on his upper left part of his shoulder. It seems longer but that's because I was having not such of a great day. I been sick all day and I'm not sure what caused it. I wasn't sure if maybe the food from the night before caused it or maybe the Starbucks coffee I had caused it. However I was feeling really sick so it seemed like it was taking forever. As the process continued Josh stayed calm and handled it very well. He said that at some times he wouldn't even feel anything but then other times it was really sensitive and really hurt. When it was finished it looked really really good.
After he was done his sister Jamie had remarked on how good it looked and she indicated she really liked the writing that was above the fish and the writing that was below the fish. So her and Josh talked about it and she asked him if it would be okay if she took the writing from his tattoo and had that part placed over the picture of her tattoo which is of a Tweetie bird. Josh's dad really liked Tweety Bird so she wanted that writing around it as another memorial to him. Josh had no problem with that and so she went in right after him and got going.
Originally I wanted to get another tattoo with him at the same time but Josh told me back then that he wanted it to be a private occasion. So I decided to wait on that. But then after he had talked to Jamie, I asked if it would to be okay if I got another tattoo. I wanted to make sure that he was perfectly okay with it before I even thought about doing it. He said that would be okay and so I decided that I would get another tattoo. Earlier we had shown Ann, who's the owner, a tattoo of Betty Boop that I got last time. Everyone always commented that she looked a lot darker than she normally should be. So we asked her if she could redo the color. She looked at it and was surprised it was so dark. She then said that she wouldn't charge anything to fix it. Which was quite a relief for us.
Previously to this I always thought that I'd want to get a Chinese or Japanese symbol for the word teacher because that's kind of how I see myself. But as time went on I began wondering if there was another symbol or something else that might resemble closer to how I view myself. When I got there and started thinking about the new year, since it was January first, I thought about things that I should be doing for myself or things that are dear to me. I looked through the symbols that they had and found the symbol for the word balance. It was a two shaped tattoo and was very appealing to me somehow. I thought that would be a good choice for me because this year I really want to work on balancing my life.
As I was getting the tattoo done on my upper right shoulder, I thought maybe it would be cool to have the symbol outlined in black and then on the inside be filled with purple. I love purple, it's my favorite color, and so it just seems natural to fill it with purple as a way to symbolize balance with the things that I love.
As I was getting the tattoo done it was really similar to what Josh said. Sometimes it would feel like nothing was being done to me, and then sometimes there would be this one spot where, when it was touched, would just shoot pain up in my shoulder. They say that when you get a tattoo, the tracing, which is the outline, that always hurts the most but then the actual filling in of the tattoo doesn't hurt as much. I asked Ann what exactly that meant and why that was. I thought maybe it was because the needles were going deeper to get the tracing. She told me it was because the needles in the tattoo gun are closer together. This makes the actual puncture in the skin is a little more sensitive because you have more needles clustered together. I honestly didn't feel any difference whatsoever. The tattoo on my shoulder didn't really hurt as much as the one that I got on my leg when I got that done about six or seven months ago. It was the touching up of the Betty Boop that hurt the most. I thought it wasn't going to be that hard or painful but I was dead wrong. There were some spots where the needle would just touch it and it would shoot me through that area and was very very uncomfortable. I was so close to crying so many times when she was working on my leg. When she was working on my shoulder it totally didn't get to that point. But my leg was a totally different story. At one point I didn't know if I was going to make it the whole time, I thought I might need to take a break and then come back in a little bit just so that I can get through it. When it was done I was very very relieved.
I know, it probably sounds like I'm just being a big baby. Well maybe I am. But for the most part that's just how I felt. I really am impressed by the people who can sit there for hours and get massive amounts of art work done on them. To all of you I raise my glass to you because you are amazing.
Well that's all for now I have to close up shop and go to bed. It is way past my bedtime.
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