Lion and Magic Boy

Wow. If you had told me how affected I would be by the receipt of one simple email, I would not have believed you. But wow. I did and I was. And since everything is connected in life, my response spilled over into other areas of my life too. How could it not? Everything, and I mean everything, is connected.

Hmm, by now some of you are wondering, Was it me? Was it my email that sent Karen into a tailspin of self-doubt?

And the answer is: I’m not going to tell you.

Actually, the whole thing was really connected to my frustrations with “Wonderful” WordPress and Damned Dreamhost (who did come through in the end with a random suggestion that ended up working, but I WOULD HAVE FOUND IT ANYWAY but the whole thing was their fault anyway so it’s only right that they came up with the fix. Sort of. I so would have found it anyway.) And now I am having the fun of trying to figure out why I cannot upload a 78mb file when it clearly says I can upload anything up to 2GB, so what’s the problem? And plus I can’t seem to install a simple plugin that will allow me to post and play mp3′s on the new blog I’m launching.

Oooh! New blog?? Sorry, not ready to post about that one yet, although the Curiously Missing Post and all the WordPress problems to begin with were all due to the new blog thankyouverymuch, which is a totally auspicious beginning. Way to go!

So. What else have I done this week, you ask?

Well, to begin with I’ve written some rather kickass posts over at Strollerderby this week. There was this one about immunizations, and this one about homeschooling, and of course this one about compassion. And for fun I wrote about vaginas and baby carrots. Ooh! Versatile!

Sorry. Had to take a pee break there. (Oh, is that TMI?) Something about this Unintentional Coffee Fast I’m on today. And then I had to stop to gaze in the mirror for a bit at my new tattoo.

Nice segue there! Actually, I’m not going to talk about the tattoo yet, so you’ll just have to keep reading if you want to know about it, but hello, I haven’t actually told anyone about it yet, so hi! People who might one day see me naked, I guess you know now!

Nope, what I really want to talk about now is cleaning. I spent 2 hours cleaning my house this morning so I’m damned well going to talk about it, and talk about, for instance, how my kitchen table looks without any fewer papers on it. There used to be a big pile (do these things spawn overnight or what? I’m afraid to get the mail anymore!), and now there are three much smaller piles. So that’s progress. Next I need someone to come and do the bathrooms, because I’ve become distracted with writing about cleaning and no longer feel like doing it.

The other thing I did this week was get a new driver’s license. Along with the Divorce That Is Taking Forever came the opportunity to change my last name. Hey, I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to do that for a long time, and even jumped the gun and chose one at random two years ago, which is why most of you know me as Karen Murphy. Which isn’t even my name, at least not legally. See, someone told me that with divorce you can change your name to anything, and I believed that! Turns out it’s not quite true. To legally change my name to Murphy I’d have to go through a legal name-change process like anyone else, and I’m happy just playing with names, thank you. So that left my birth name, because I didn’t want to be Karen Divorcinghusbandname anymore. I was so happy at the age of 19 to move from being Karen Birthname to being Karen Marriednamefirsttime and leave the person that I thought was Karen Birthname behind, and all this time I’ve been running from that person, running from being Karen Birthname.

But you know what? Earlier this year I discovered that I’ve dealt with a lot of the issues surrounding who I thought Karen Birthname was, so I decided to take a leap and be Karen Birthname again and see how that feels. I’ve had five different last names including that one and each one brought out different facets of myself (there can be so much symbolism in a name!), but it really feels like it’s time to be Karen Birthname again and allow that to coax out whatever’s left inside waiting to shine forth.

But to do that meant I had to visit the DMV, which is so helpfully called something entirely different here in Pennsylvania, something like “Official Place Where You Get Your Driver’s License Stuff Done While Waiting a Very Very Long Time” but not only is that very long and tedious to type but I can totally say “DMV” and you know what I’m talking about, right? Lots of hard chairs arranged in rows, so comfortable for sitting in for long periods? And bring your laptop to maybe do some writing, which is sure to make everyone stare at you, because this is Pennsylvania for crying out loud, and who ever heard of bringing a laptop to the DMV! No, you should wait and stare into space with a blank look on your face like everyone else!

So now I have a new license. I was so hoping they’d take a new picture as well, because the picture they took a year ago when I moved back to PA totally sucked ass because I was angry and bitter about moving, and you could totally tell that from the photo even though I was smiling, but the new picture sucks ass way worse because I thought I would try a new thing and smile differently and even though I PRACTICED THIS IN A MIRROR I still failed miserably and now I am stuck with a picture that totally sucks. Yay!

But now I have ID as Karen Birthname which means I will have to go fight with my bank and sit there for hours while they whisper to each other about what to do with this oh-so-complicated situation of changing my name on this account and that account and order new checks and by the way, when did stupid checks become so expensive? I hardly write any. And then I’ll have to sign my name on a new signature card, and don’t they know it takes YEARS to perfect a signature such as mine, essentially a squiggle but completely unreproducible by anyone except me, which means I’m totally covered against forgers, but what they don’t know is that the signature came from having to sign REALLYREALLYQUICKLY because otherwise Eric, who was always in my arms for the first 3 years of his life, would grab the pen out of my hand.

But the tattoo. You are totally wanting to know about this, I can tell.

So I walked into the place, the walls of which were painted black, of course (is there any other appropriate color?) and I was greeted by a girl with a lot of metal stuck to her face in various places and lots of tattoos: throat, hands, everywhere visible. Cool. I was in the right place.

She also had gigantic holes in her ears, big enough to fit, say, a sausage through. Or two of them. Or a…oh.

But I didn’t notice that at first because I was rather distracted by what was going on with her visually and I also had to converse intelligently while not seeming like I’m Staring At Her Tattoos, the irony of which of course did not escape me because, after all, I was there to get a tattoo.

So we talked for a bit about what I was looking for, and she invited me to hang out a bit until The Artist was finished with whateverthehell he was doing back there in The Back.

Meanwhile two girls came in, whispering and giggling. One of them was there for a piercing of some sort. It’s a small shop, and eventually, while they were looking at sample books of various piercings (Piercing Girl wanted to have her ear done, which I thought was a bit pedestrian but oh well. She didn’t want to shock her mom too much, she said), conversation ensued about what I was there for.

It turns out that Piercing Girl’s Fat Friend was quite judgmental. She referred to my previous tattoo as a “tramp stamp”. Not having heard that term before (I am such a delicate flower), I could do nothing but laugh incredulously. Did she just say that, really?

Tattoo Girl gave me a look at that point. She was clearly bothered by the rudeness. Piercing Girl and Fat Friend continued looking through the book which I had already seen and was quite impressed by all the things you can evidently do with wires and holes in ears. Who knew! If my hair wasn’t long and mostly covering my own ears, I’d totally go for some of those things, as they were (to me, delicate flower that I am) quite unusual and interesting. I do like to stand out a bit from the crowd, and those would certainly help accomplish that. But the girls were all “Ewww! Gross!”, and with every fresh page they turned and exclaimed over, Tattoo Girl became more agitated.

Eventually The Artist came out and we talked a bit, looked in the mirror a bit, and I eventually completely changed my mind about what I was going to have done, and he disappeared again to make a drawing of what I was getting.

Meanwhile the girls were still hemming and hawing, and Tattoo Girl began asking Piercing Girl about what she wanted, wise questions I thought, all about which side she slept on and which side she used the phone on and measuring bits of her ear and all, and eventually they came up with a plan. And then Tattoo Guy, who was pretty quiet and almost invisible up until then, ordered dinner for him and Tattoo Girl (white pizza with crab, pasta with marinara, and a chicken caesar salad). Before that he mainly just communicated with eye contact and eyebrow raises, so I was pleased to see that his powers of speech hadn’t been affected by his tattoos or piercings (why don’t I see people like this in public around here?).

So I was finally ushered back into The Back by The Artist, who never actually told me his name or made any eye contact with me whatsoever, a fact I was somewhat discomfited by at first but after talking to him a bit I realized that he may be just a teeny bit on the autism spectrum and has trouble dealing with people. His main focus in life seemed to be becoming more “dope” in tattooing (I think that means “better”), and liberal politics. He said he was from Minnesota and I mentioned Paul Wellstone and I thought he was going to have an orgasm right there while holding a needle full of ink in my back. The Artist turned out to be quite an interesting guy, just maybe lacking a bit in Social Niceties, not rude or anything like that, but I imagine many people find him to be a bit…different. But I quite liked him and appreciated his passion about his work and asked him about some of his own tattoos, of which he had quite a few.

When I came out from The Back, Piercing Girl and Fat Friend were gone and the air was filled with the scent of white pizza with crab, and Tattoo Girl was apologetic about the “tramp stamp” comment, at the same time expressing her pain over the comments the girls were making about the piercing pictures in the book, which was essentially a portfolio of all the work Tattoo Girl has done. I told her that what she did was art and she seemed to feel better.

It is art, decorating the body. I may go back myself and see what she can do with my ear.

Anyway, the tattoo. I think it will look decent. Symbolic? I don’t see how it could be anything else.

I’m already planning my next one.

So is it weird that the major connections I had with people this week were with people I wouldn’t likely ever hang out with (though I quite liked all the Tattoo People), in seemingly random encounters? I don’t know, but I’m going to add it into the whole mix of the week and see what I come up with.

[tags]tattoos, name change, identity crisis[/tags]