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Through sheer luck I got a week of individual days off strung together, and then traded with a couple of people to get two more days. The plan was to get together with my brothers; Eightball lives in Arizona, and Hawk would fly there from Seattle.
It was going to just be siblings, but then Aunt S gets so excited to be included in family things, so long as her sister isn't, so Eightball invited her. But we had a special plan to make it special for siblings - we were going to get a tattoo together!
None of us have any tattoos, and oddly each of us had someone in our lives who didn't want us to do it. Eightball was all in immediately, even though his gf was not happy with it. Hawk said he was too self-critical and would dislike it for some reason no matter how well it was done, but when we got talking about designs he got won over. Later on I found out his daughter was having meltdowns to tears thinking about Daddy changing. Eor thought it wouldn't age well, it would blur around the edges. And that's true, I can't argue that, but I didn't care.
Before vaca we worked out a design we liked that seemed easy to do smallish, and Eightball made the appointment for Friday at noon, gave the design to the artist, and that was kind of that for the moment. I did get a little nervous that the artist was not responding with any concept designs, as I have a friend (ElvenGirl) who has a lot of tattoos and her favorite artist does text her his concepts. But I didn't want to say anything. I was trying to trust.
Anyhow, I went to Aunt S's for a couple of days at the beginning of my time off, to try to help her clean and pack stuff, because she's hoping to move, soon. And then Wednesday, as we're getting on the plane, literally doing a last check of the phones before we put them in airplane mode, she gets a text from someone letting her know that her pastor has COVID. She had been in a class which her pastor taught on Saturday, and nobody masked, apparently. Honestly, even knowing that I have to admit I didn't do a very good job of staying masked on the plane.
Hanging with my brothers was a delight, as always. We cooked huge breakfasts together every day, listened to music from our childhoods, swapped stories of old times, went for hikes, or one day we worked on Eightball's gabion wall project; absolutely super.
Saturday I didn't sleep well because I was so excited about going to get the tattoo, and we went to Sedona early because we were so excited, so we kicked around and looked at the extreme tourist section of town a bit, and I was really frikken cold and had a sore throat. I didn't complain of being cold because I assumed nearly everyone was, since my brothers also had shorts on - we were planning to get the tattoo on our calves. And I didn't want to think about the sore throat; I was hoping it was allergies, since we'd been out on a hike the day before and I had gotten quite thirsty.
Ascention Tattoo, just so you don't go there, or at least don't engage the artist known as Harley. He greeted us with a hearty handshake and immediately began to tell us why our design wouldn't work. He had on his electronic sketch board the tiny sketch I had made of vaguely what we wanted, and he had drawn a super elaborate tree with lots of branches and a lovely Celtic knot design in the roots, a lot of dark bold black and very little open space, and the rings too far apart and upside down from how I had drawn them, and then he just starts to go on about how this won't work in a 3-inch space, like we wanted, because the ink would bleed and fill in the spaces that needed to be blank. Well, they would, because he designed it too cluttered and didn't concentrate on the white spaces. Hawk took point and said it looked pretty good, but Harley should just remove some branches and reduce the Celtic knot stuff down a bit - and Harley looked at him like he had two heads, and told us we needed to sit down and try to search up something he could do.
We then spent an hour and a half searching, drawing, bringing our ideas to him and him just saying, "No, you need to find something, a simple thing, that I can do small." Finally we presented him with what we thought was a great concept of three protons spinning with no core, which looked a lot like a three-petaled flower - super simple - and asked him if he could try to draw this. He goes off and comes back with a sketch that pretty much completely fails. (I think here it began to dawn on me that he didn't want us to come up with anything new, he wanted something he could easily copy from some simple image on a phone.)
I was like, "They need to overlap in the center."
He stares at me, then says "Okay, I'll give it another shot."
Hawk says, "We're going to step out for some lunch then, while you're working on that," and when we got a block away he said, "we're not going back." So he pulls out his phone and calls them to let them know we're not going back and another of the artists there says Harley has gone out for lunch. Hawk hangs up and says, "That fucking guy! He had no intention of doing anything at all for us!"
Eightball, who had put down $40 for the appointment reservation and not gotten it back, was remarkably kind about it. He said this guy had been on the front of some tattoo magazine when he was in California, but maybe he's here in Sedona and finding he can't pay the rent and getting depressed, and just can't bring himself to work. Full marks for trying to see the other guy's point of view.
So, yeah, I was pissed and didn't sleep well Friday night. The sore throat got worse, and somewhere in there was a headache, and Sunday I was feeling like I was really getting sick. It took forEVER to ramp up. By Monday on the flight back I was in chills and fever, nose running like a sap spiel and just miserable, so Tuesday morning Aunt S and I did tests and got matching positive pink lines. I drove Aunt S home, and tried to do grocery shopping. (Lost two twelve-packs of soda; left them in the cart after paying for them, but managed to get the rest of the groceries home.) And mainly I've been sleeping 11 hours each night and reading all day since then. This is the longest I've sat at my computer, though I did scroll facebook a bit on my phone while my e-book was recharging.
And nobody else has gotten particularly sick at all. Aunt S felt a little worse than her normal allergies, Hawk got a bit of a sore throat, Eightball says he felt nothing from it. Even Hawk's inlaws, who we went to dinner with on Sunday evening (they happened to be in Sedona, it seemed like too amazing a piece of luck to pass up), have texted me to let me know that they are still feeling fine! Something is seriously off with my immune system these days. I used to be the last person to get sick and this past year has been nothing but one illness after another.
It was going to just be siblings, but then Aunt S gets so excited to be included in family things, so long as her sister isn't, so Eightball invited her. But we had a special plan to make it special for siblings - we were going to get a tattoo together!
None of us have any tattoos, and oddly each of us had someone in our lives who didn't want us to do it. Eightball was all in immediately, even though his gf was not happy with it. Hawk said he was too self-critical and would dislike it for some reason no matter how well it was done, but when we got talking about designs he got won over. Later on I found out his daughter was having meltdowns to tears thinking about Daddy changing. Eor thought it wouldn't age well, it would blur around the edges. And that's true, I can't argue that, but I didn't care.
Before vaca we worked out a design we liked that seemed easy to do smallish, and Eightball made the appointment for Friday at noon, gave the design to the artist, and that was kind of that for the moment. I did get a little nervous that the artist was not responding with any concept designs, as I have a friend (ElvenGirl) who has a lot of tattoos and her favorite artist does text her his concepts. But I didn't want to say anything. I was trying to trust.
Anyhow, I went to Aunt S's for a couple of days at the beginning of my time off, to try to help her clean and pack stuff, because she's hoping to move, soon. And then Wednesday, as we're getting on the plane, literally doing a last check of the phones before we put them in airplane mode, she gets a text from someone letting her know that her pastor has COVID. She had been in a class which her pastor taught on Saturday, and nobody masked, apparently. Honestly, even knowing that I have to admit I didn't do a very good job of staying masked on the plane.
Hanging with my brothers was a delight, as always. We cooked huge breakfasts together every day, listened to music from our childhoods, swapped stories of old times, went for hikes, or one day we worked on Eightball's gabion wall project; absolutely super.
Saturday I didn't sleep well because I was so excited about going to get the tattoo, and we went to Sedona early because we were so excited, so we kicked around and looked at the extreme tourist section of town a bit, and I was really frikken cold and had a sore throat. I didn't complain of being cold because I assumed nearly everyone was, since my brothers also had shorts on - we were planning to get the tattoo on our calves. And I didn't want to think about the sore throat; I was hoping it was allergies, since we'd been out on a hike the day before and I had gotten quite thirsty.
Ascention Tattoo, just so you don't go there, or at least don't engage the artist known as Harley. He greeted us with a hearty handshake and immediately began to tell us why our design wouldn't work. He had on his electronic sketch board the tiny sketch I had made of vaguely what we wanted, and he had drawn a super elaborate tree with lots of branches and a lovely Celtic knot design in the roots, a lot of dark bold black and very little open space, and the rings too far apart and upside down from how I had drawn them, and then he just starts to go on about how this won't work in a 3-inch space, like we wanted, because the ink would bleed and fill in the spaces that needed to be blank. Well, they would, because he designed it too cluttered and didn't concentrate on the white spaces. Hawk took point and said it looked pretty good, but Harley should just remove some branches and reduce the Celtic knot stuff down a bit - and Harley looked at him like he had two heads, and told us we needed to sit down and try to search up something he could do.
We then spent an hour and a half searching, drawing, bringing our ideas to him and him just saying, "No, you need to find something, a simple thing, that I can do small." Finally we presented him with what we thought was a great concept of three protons spinning with no core, which looked a lot like a three-petaled flower - super simple - and asked him if he could try to draw this. He goes off and comes back with a sketch that pretty much completely fails. (I think here it began to dawn on me that he didn't want us to come up with anything new, he wanted something he could easily copy from some simple image on a phone.)
I was like, "They need to overlap in the center."
He stares at me, then says "Okay, I'll give it another shot."
Hawk says, "We're going to step out for some lunch then, while you're working on that," and when we got a block away he said, "we're not going back." So he pulls out his phone and calls them to let them know we're not going back and another of the artists there says Harley has gone out for lunch. Hawk hangs up and says, "That fucking guy! He had no intention of doing anything at all for us!"
Eightball, who had put down $40 for the appointment reservation and not gotten it back, was remarkably kind about it. He said this guy had been on the front of some tattoo magazine when he was in California, but maybe he's here in Sedona and finding he can't pay the rent and getting depressed, and just can't bring himself to work. Full marks for trying to see the other guy's point of view.
So, yeah, I was pissed and didn't sleep well Friday night. The sore throat got worse, and somewhere in there was a headache, and Sunday I was feeling like I was really getting sick. It took forEVER to ramp up. By Monday on the flight back I was in chills and fever, nose running like a sap spiel and just miserable, so Tuesday morning Aunt S and I did tests and got matching positive pink lines. I drove Aunt S home, and tried to do grocery shopping. (Lost two twelve-packs of soda; left them in the cart after paying for them, but managed to get the rest of the groceries home.) And mainly I've been sleeping 11 hours each night and reading all day since then. This is the longest I've sat at my computer, though I did scroll facebook a bit on my phone while my e-book was recharging.
And nobody else has gotten particularly sick at all. Aunt S felt a little worse than her normal allergies, Hawk got a bit of a sore throat, Eightball says he felt nothing from it. Even Hawk's inlaws, who we went to dinner with on Sunday evening (they happened to be in Sedona, it seemed like too amazing a piece of luck to pass up), have texted me to let me know that they are still feeling fine! Something is seriously off with my immune system these days. I used to be the last person to get sick and this past year has been nothing but one illness after another.