I’m getting a tattoo for my birthday.

Theoretically, I could go get one now.  Nothing is really stopping me, other than the fact that it’s the middle of the night and it’s storming so bad out there that I’m a bit nervous of the flagpole on the balcony that could come crashing into my lobby at any moment from the 50mph wind gusts outside.

But I figure if I wait until my birthday, not only will it make a most excellent birthday present that Andy can take credit for without feeling guilty, I will have time to firmly decide on where I want to put it since it will go with me to my grave.

If you don’t have a tattoo, you either have absolutely no desire to get one or you are nervous about getting one.  If you DO have one, you cannot WAIT to get the next one.  They’re addictive.  The pain is relative and easily forgotten.


Did you know that the parts of your brain that process pain and pleasure are right next to each other?  That could explain why so many people find pleasure in pain.  The pain is being processed so close to the pleasure center of the brain…one can’t tell the difference.

I wonder if we follow that same theory, would it explain why so many people thrive on drama?  

For example: (I’m guilty of doing this myself from time to time.  I think everyone is.)
Say there is someone in your life that you thoroughly dislike, or has done you wrong.  At every turn, this person does nothing but screw your life up even more.  Everything they say and do pisses you off royally.  And for some reason, you can’t leave them alone.  

You keep track of everything they do, getting more and more pissed.  You read everything they have to say in their asinine blogs on the internet, and every time they post something, you are right on top of it.  Knowing that it’s going to ruin your entire day, you MUST know everything they say.

After all, they just might say something about you.

Is it really so hard to ignore toxic people?  Could the pleasure and pain centers in your brain be having some technical difficulties?  

Pain is relative and easily forgotten.


Moms, remember the day you gave birth to your first child?  Dear holy Jesus in heaven that was some messed up shit.  No one told you it was going to hurt that bad, did they?  Sure, you had every female that had ever given birth before give you their own personal experience with the event, not that you cared AT ALL, and they probably told you that it wasn’t that bad.  You would be just fine.  

They lied.

I know you remember laying in that hospital bed, sweating through that contraction, thinking that any minute now, you were going to shoot a jumbo sized pumpkin out of your uterus and hoping that you didn’t make too much of a mess on the floor before you died a horrible, painful, terrifying, and humiliating death.

That shit hurts.

Mom was the only person that could accurately describe the pain to me before I went into labor.  She said it would feel like my menstrual cramps, only 1000x worse.  Well that’s just great.  At least I knew what to expect.  It still took me by surprise.

The thing is…even though it’s been a while since I felt those labor pains, the worst physical pain I have ever experienced in my ENTIRE life, I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.  No hesitation.  Because it wasn’t really that bad.  I did just fine.

Pain is relative and easily forgotten.


When I got the tattoo on my leg, the tattoo guy asked me if I was okay.  I told him it felt like he was slicing my leg open, slowly, with a butter knife.  He told me that, in essence, he was.

I CAN’T WAIT to do it again.

hehe