While the adventures of Wubba continue - mostly with Wubba being in the back stairway whenever I come home - evidently the white, plastic cosmetic bag that normally lays on my carry-on bag in the downstairs hallway is traveling. Here it is by my front door when I got home the other day.
Thursday I had my six-month dental appointment. I love my dental group, they are so friendly and make you feel like they really care and are a part of a little family. Probably 8 out of 10 times Karen is the hygenist that works on me and I was hoping she would be who I was with for this appointment. She always asks about Butler and this time I would have to tell her about putting him down and all about Cruz. Well - the first words out of Karen's mouth when we got into her room were, "You look great! What have you been doing?" I'm like "Nothing......but thanks." :) We then had quite the talk about Butler and Cruz.
Then I had to be at Mid Air & Ink for my 6:30 tattoo appointment. I got downtown a little early so parked and walked around the Court Avenue district. I was amazed at all the loft living places that are down there now. Shortly after I went into Mid Air & Ink my friend Lori showed up. Lori had gone with me when I got my hibiscus for Mike so she was the first one I asked if she wanted to be there for Butler's tat and she said "yes".
I learned from last time when I handed Tattoo Dave (that's what I call him) my phone with a picture of my hibiscus saying this is what I want him to do. He looked at me and asked if I had any pictures printed out for him. I'm like nope, sorry, didn't know I had to do that. This time I had pictures to show him Butler's markings along with the greyhound bus logo that I wanted to be the basic design of this tat. Below are a few pictures from the experience.
I printed the greyhound bus logo out to the size I thought I wanted my tat and colored it in to be "Butler" and then taped it to my leg to see what I thought. I thought it looked ok but maybe a little too big - so I wanted to get Dave's opinion since he was the pro. Dave thought the size was perfect - any smaller and there wouldn't be much detail. I wanted to show Butler's markings where he was white but I didn't want him to have a real white face like he had when he was older.
I had decided how I had cut out the greyhound logo didn't work when I taped it to my leg so I cut more around the dog to get a better idea. Above is Dave starting to free-hand Butler on my leg.
Free-handing is all done - and three Sharpie colors too. Time for me to look at what Dave had drawn in the mirror to see if I liked it before this became permanent.
Here we go, first jab with the needle. Dave never lets you look at the tattoo while he's doing it so while I've got two tattoos, I've never seen a tattoo being done in person :) From the first poke to cleaning off the tat it was right at 30 minutes. Not too bad - my hibiscus took 2 1/2 hours. There were a few times when it really hurt but for the most part it was tolerable.
I think both tats look pretty good. Dave decided to do some purple highlighting in my hibiscus - he didn't tell me that until after it was done. I'm doing the two hot showers each day for five days right now - man that can sure sting when the hot water first hits the tats. Tuesday I'll be done with those. Today I started to put Lubriderm lotion on it. It will eventually itch like crazy and I can't scratch it - I have to slap it. And then if things go like they did with the hibiscus, I'll lose a very thin layer of skin like peeling from a sunburn. Dave was really pleased with how the color has held up for my hibiscus. It helps that neither tat get any sunshine - even when wearing shorts you don't see them.
Friday night when I made my usual run to WalMart after work and I was in the Health and Beauty section, I got a little melancholy when I realized I didn't need to buy any more Poise pads now that Butler was gone. While it was just a little embarassing to have the jumbo package of Poise pads in my cart - I would continue to buy them if Butler was able to be with me. And I realized I wasn't buying near the paper towels and Duct tape anymore either. Duct tape to tape his Speedo around him and paper towels to clean up his accidents.
After working 5+ hours at work yesterday I came home and decided it was time to attack all the leaves that were in my front yard from my neighbor's tree. Luckily his tree is almost bare and I gathered the leaves the lazy way - mowing with the bag on my mower :) I even got to use my rechargable blower to blow the leaves out of my planters. But even with doing the mower/bag deal I still had to do a lot of bending to pick up leaves to put in my lawn bags because of so many leaves in my driveway - three bags total for the front yard. Then this morning when I left for church - my tree in the parking decided to dump a bunch of its leaves last night in my front yard and driveway.....
I had brought White, Red and Yellow hibiscus inside my enclosed back porch the other night when we were going to have our first hard freeze. They are all three doing pretty good and enjoying being back outside for this afternoon. Unfortunately Pink didn't look too good, so she is in the dumpster. I also decided to bring in my solar fountain yesterday. Got the bowls all cleaned and stacked together and found a place for them to stay in the basement for the winter.
This morning I helped with one of our children's groups at church - Waves which are K-2nd grade. We learned about King Solomon's wisdom and how the Queen of Sheba traveled to meet Solomon and asked him lots of questions. The pictures below are the kidlets making their crowns so all the girls could be "Queens of Sheba" and the boys could be "King Solomons". There were quite a few kids missing today too. After church we took our annual church photo outside - I had hoped the pic woul be on LWF's Facebook page so I could save it and put it in my blog today - maybe next week.
Lastly Wednesday will be a little emotional for me - it would have been Mike's birthday. I can't believe this is the third one since he's been gone.
