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‘Tis been a while since I posted any new tattoos. I figured I’d remedy that now!
I got this little piece kind of on a whim. I like fireflies, because they remind me of summer in Atlanta. I never saw fireflies as a kid because the mosquito spray that the city would release in our marshy neighborhood would kill the fireflies too. I can’t recall ever actually seeing one until I moved to Atlanta in 2006.
Tattoo #2 has a story, which I will tell you before showing you the picture.
So, my maternal grandmother passed away recently. I was explaining to some friends the day before the funeral that I always thought of my grandmother as the epitome of a Southern Lady. She was a goddess in the kitchen and a demon with a pistol. She kicked ass on the golf course, raised a pack of kids (and wrangled grandkids), traveled all over the world, and all the while remained poised and classy. My grandmother (and mother) are also where I get my artistic talent from; Grandmama painted like a mo’fo. Anyway, while at the funeral one of my uncles described her in EXACTLY the same way; “the perfect Southern Lady”. And then to add about a million more awesome points, he told us a story about how, back in the day, Grandmama used to be… wait for it…
A catfish noodler.
Yes.
I had to explain the concept of noodling to one of my yankee friends recently. It is a sport (using the term “sport” loosely, here) pretty much unheard of outside of the rural south, I think. Basically, how it works is catfish live in holes, and a noodler will get into the water (which is usually opaque; you can’t see a damn thing) and feel around with his or her bare hands until locating one of these holes. And then, the noodler will jam his or her fist into the hole, surprising the catfish and causing it to bite down onto the person’s hand. Once latched on, the catfish is then “reeled” out of the water.
Now, if this sounds stupid and dangerous to you, that’s because it kind of is, and it’s now illegal in all but 11 states. (Just one guess as to where most of those states are. God bless the South!)
The truly amazing thing is that my grandmother was a kid when she did this. I recalled an episode of “Dirty Jobs” where Mike went noodling with two big, burly good ol’ boys. Even Mike seemed pretty intimidated by it, and this is a man who is by no means weak in bodily constitution. Suffice to say, noodling is not something you’d normally expect a little girl to be doing.
Conclusion: My grandmother was a bona-fide bad ass. So I got this tattoo for her:
I named him Bubba.
These tattoos are by the talented and lovely Malia Reynolds, at Memorial Tattoo in Atlanta, GA.
Because…it’s hot, y’all.
‘The devil went down to Georgia’ and said, “Fuck this, it’s way too hot. I’m going home.”
I have lived here since 2006 and in all this time I have never felt heat so terrible. This weather is more like what I grew up with, and have tried to escape from by moving further north. July has brought temperatures over 110 degrees, and when you’re standing on boiling asphalt, it feels even hotter. During the day it’s absolutely miserable to be outside for any length of time, and the humidity makes the air so thick, you can practically chew it. Last week I attempted to go run on a Saturday afternoon. The heat index was 114 degrees, but I was feeling masochistic. About halfway through my run, I began hallucinating a breeze– the trees were definitely not moving, but I could feel the breeze. Isn’t that one of the signs of heatstroke?
And the best part: the air conditioning in my car stopped working. :(
It should be illegal to be this hot when the nearest body of water is the lake about 40 miles north of here. Thank goodness for nearby friends with pools.
Fortunately I won’t have to endure much longer, because in a week I will be leaving to spend a few weeks in the frozen slightly-less-cold Yankee North. During the first weekend in August, I will be in New York City to celebrate my lovely friend Justin turning 30. His birthday is the day before mine (the 9th and 10th, respectively) so it will be a joint celebration. Afterwards, I will be riding the train back to Boston, where I’ll be spending the week, including my actual birthday. The following weekend I’m flying to Madison, Wisconsin, for the Taste of the Midwest beer festival. Justin and another friend both got lucky and scored tickets to the festival (tickets are sold in a lottery system because demand exceeds supply). I never thought I would ever go to Wisconsin, but I can’t really think of a better reason than to sample beer.
And get away from the heat.
Let me tell y’all about the very bane of my existence. My most hated, most reviled, most loathed of all things on this earth. The very scourge of my innermost being.
Shoes.
I fuckin’ hate shoes, y’all.
And it’s not just because I’m country as cornbread. (One of my friends was affectionately calling me “trailer park feet” for a while.)
Ever since I was a kid, it has always felt unnatural to wrap my feet in these heavy, clunky things. It didn’t matter what kind of shoe it was, I always felt like I was wearing bricks on my feet. I felt stifled, like my toes were suffocating. It was weird to me when I couldn’t feel the ground as I was walking. Only later did I come to find out that wearing shoes is actually really bad for us, and we’re ruining millions of years of perfectly good natural selection by wearing shoes. Our feet evolved to function perfectly, and– as humans tend to do– we mess it all up by forcing them into weird shapes.
Allow me to pull out a visual aid:
My feet are shaped more like the ones on the left.
Shoes are shaped like the ones on the right.
Don’t you see a problem here? I only own one or two pairs of shoes that won’t give me blisters or make my feet hurt. (And don’t even get me started on high heels.)
My other problem is I have “morton’s toe”, a condition where my second toe is longer than my big toe. In my case it’s so long that it looks like I have an extra knuckle or something.
See?
I’ve been told morton’s toe means a lot of things: e.g. “you’re smart” (yes.) or “you’re good in bed” (yes.) but really it just means you can’t find shoes that don’t hurt.
I know a lot of people who own Vibram Five-Fingers, a.k.a. “those crazy toe shoes”, and love them. I’ve tried them on a few times, and really like them– it does feel more or less like being barefoot, while still protecting your feet from the hazards of modern civilization. But even Vibram seems to think everybody has the same foot, and doesn’t make shoes to accommodate those of us with freakishly long second toes. It’s sad when what could potentially be the most comfortable shoe in the world STILL hurts.
I hate winter, as you can imagine. Boots are my least favorite thing to wear, but losing a toe to frostbite would suck. One of my friends says you can tell the weather by what shoes I’m wearing; if I still have sandals on, it’s probably not that cold outside. Believe it or not, having cold, numb feet is still not as painful as wearing shoes.
I also hate going to work, because employees are always required to cover their feet. I got chastised at my last job several times for walking around the office barefoot. When I politely asked what the big deal was, my supervisor responded with, “germs”. Oh, right, because my clean feet carry more germs than the dirty shoes I walked in here wearing. This is why it confuses me when germaphobes won’t go barefoot in their own homes.
I should also point out that in all of my barefoot escapades, I’ve never stepped on anything sharp or rusty, never had an infection, and never had any pain in my arches, ankles, or knees. I know it might sound weird, but when your feet aren’t covered in thick rubbery soles, you end up paying more attention to where and how you’re stepping.
Since it will likely never be socially acceptable to go barefoot in public places (and yeah, there is that whole “winter” thing to contend with), the best I can hope for is more companies like Vibram creating shoes to fit the natural shape of our feet. The foot really is a marvel of human evolution, and I don’t think we give it enough credit.
Free the feet!
About two years ago I bought a bicycle. I hadn’t actively ridden a bike since I was probably in junior high– but when I took my shiny, new, pearly white Bianchi Milano fresh out of the store and onto the pavement, I rode home with such grand imaginings of the brand new lifestyle I was about to embark upon.
I wanted to be this person:
Glamorous and carefree! Yep, I had it all planned out.
…Instead, I became this person:
Angry. And tired.
For one, biking in Atlanta is like going into battle. I never fully realized it, but people in cars do everything– text, read the paper, shave, masturbate– everything BUT pay attention to the road. I felt like I was going to die every minute I was in traffic. Forget riding without a helmet and feeling the breeze through my hair; forget riding in sandals and a skirt to go meet a friend for brunch. On the bright side, I make it to brunch alive, but instead of showing up looking cute, I am wearing dirty athletic shoes, a ratty t-shirt, and cargo pants stuffed with everything that I can’t put in a purse because it’s hard to ride a bike with a purse. In addition, I’m turning red because my crackery complexion roasts in the sunlight, and sporting lovely underarm sweat marks on my shirt, due to the ridiculous heat which no amount of cancer-causing antiperspirant can abate. (They don’t call it “Hot-lanta” for nuthin’.) Neither glamorous nor particularly carefree– it is hard to enjoy a ride with a little voice in the back of my head screaming, “YOU WILL DIE.”
Atlanta’s traffic isn’t the only thing making it a very bike-unfriendly city– the geography itself is unfriendly. I find this is the problem with a lot of Southern cities, where everything is too spread out. Nobody wants to bike 20 or 30 miles (one-way!) to their office. Some neighborhoods in Atlanta are better than others, but the urban sprawl generally makes biking somewhat difficult. If the road is not sprawling horizontally, it’s probably sprawling vertically in a series of wave-like hills that never seem to get easier. At one point, during yet another sweaty, painful, not-at-all glamorous bout of sadly pushing my bike up one of Atlanta’s ludicrous inclines (who knew we had so many?) while being honked at by passing motorists (who generally just seem angry that someone deigns to take up road space with a strange, two-wheeled, engine-less vehicle), I wondered: when did biking stop being FUN? There is absolutely nothing fun about riding a bicycle up Moreland Avenue in rush-hour traffic and 95-degree heat. Or having to get off and push my bike up North Avenue because it is far too steep to pedal, especially after causing my leg muscles to turn to gelatin.
It’s rather unfortunate that I feel like in order to one day achieve my car-free lifestyle dream, I will have to relocate. I love Atlanta despite its flaws, but I don’t know many people who successfully get around without a car at least some of the time. With MARTA constantly cutting bus routes and removing trains from service, the few people I do know who don’t own a motor vehicle seem to spend a lot of time trying to get a ride somewhere. I would love to see Atlanta become more accommodating to people who don’t want to drive, and I would love to one day have a car be a luxury, not a necessity.
And I think with the recent disaster in the Gulf, perhaps those of us who ARE able to make the choice to go car-free have a duty to our planet to just not use so much fuckin’ oil.
Over the weekend, I migrated back to rural Southwest Georgia for my ten-year high school reunion… Talk about a surreal experience. For one, the campus where I went to school from 9th through 12th grade is now a middle school; the new high school campus looks like something out of a Disney movie. It’s ridiculously swanky– the art room is bigger and nicer than a few of the classrooms I worked in while at college.
Secondly, it was amazing to see how grown-up and successful everyone has become in the last decade. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, entrepreneurs; stories of military service, jail time, religious conversions, births of children… It was refreshing to encounter folks who I kind of thought didn’t like me when we were 17, but they gave me hugs and told me they were glad to see me. I feel like I really did not have much of a personality in high school (exacerbated by crippling introversion), so I did not have many close friends; however, it was nice to reconnect with familiar faces– since it’s a small town, a good percentage of my senior class was comprised of people I attended school with all the way up from kindergarten.
It was also quite surprising to find out a lot of my classmates read my blog. (Hey, y’all need to be leaving some comments up in here so I know people are actually paying attention to this!)
My dear, sweet, amazing friend Justin came all the way from Boston to attend this shindig with me– for which I am forever grateful because I was actually a little nervous and probably would have chickened out at the last minute if he wasn’t there. Also, it was fun to show him where I grew up, even if it’s really not all that interesting.
Hopefully at my 20-year reunion I will have some cool things to brag about, or at least some funny stories to tell. I’m kind of embarrassed that I had nothing interesting to share, but when I thought about it I realized I’ve still done quite a lot. Since graduating high school in 2000, I have…
earned 1 Bachelor’s degree
worked 4 jobs
had 12 different addresses (this amazes me to even think about)
lived in 3 cities in 2 states
visited 4 countries
lost about 30 pounds
put over 90,000 miles on my car
gotten 1 tattoo… then quickly lost count. :)
Who knows what will happen in the next ten years? I’m looking forward to it.
This BP oil leak debacle has broken my heart more than a lot of events in the last decade. For example, as bad as it sounds, I was very detached from 9/11, because at the time I had never even been to New York; I may as well have been watching a movie. Same with Hurricane Katrina; back then, to me New Orleans only existed in theory. But watching this is like being kicked in the stomach. The Gulf coast is like a second home to me. I was born in Tallahassee, FL, and grew up close to it; from the time I was a baby I spent every summer on the Florida panhandle. They are not the prettiest nor the most glamorous beaches in the country (in fact, Panama City is referred to as “the redneck Riviera”) and most people treat the coastal South with the kind of disdain reserved for the most backwater, podunk, culturally and economically stunted parts of the US. On the other hand, in my eyes the Gulf coast is absolutely beautiful, and has a special place in my heart– which is why this whole event is so painful to watch.
The green is Google maps’ tracking of where oil in the water has been reported. The star is Mexico Beach, where my family would always spend a few weeks every summer. When I was growing up, we’d find tar balls on the beach all the time, but they were always small (maybe at most 2 inches in diameter) and hard like rocks. Meanwhile, I have seen some still and video footage of the tar balls pulled out of the water near Pensacola in the last couple of days.
It makes me think of:
But seriously, y’all. Pensacola is only about 130 miles from Mexico Beach. How much longer before the entire panhandle is affected? I always thought that maybe when I’m old I would find a bungalow on some deserted stretch of sand along the Gulf, where I could spend my twilight years sunbathing, listening to the waves, and avoiding cold winters. Now I have to wonder what these beaches will look like when I’m in my 70’s. In four decades’ time, perhaps through human effort and the earth’s natural method of recycling, the oceans, estuaries, and bayous will have returned to something resembling “normal”– Conversely, in 40 years this planet may be so polluted to the point where this mess looks about as serious as a grease spot in your garage.
A lot of my friends have been supporting the “boycott BP” campaigns floating around, and while their hearts are in the right place, I don’t think simply avoiding BP gas stations is going to make much of an impact, especially when every other oil company has an equally bad track record of human rights violations and environmental destruction. I would love to simply stop buying gas altogether, but even if I could feasibly get around without a car (which is very difficult to do in the South)… Everything nowadays is made with some kind of petroleum byproduct. Everything. Plastic? Good luck boycotting that. I think the real issue here isn’t the oil spilling, but the fact that our society is so heavily based around oil to begin with.
I don’t think most Americans are going to be as outraged about this for the same reasons I did not have an emotional reaction to 9/11 or Katrina… This clusterfuck is not taking place in their backyard. I can’t honestly be too surprised if most people just don’t care. But for those of us who grew up in the coastal South, it’s like someone is taking a shit on our front lawn.
Besides not updating this blog. (Look, I will distract you with pictures!)
This is how my shoes typically look after running a trail. I’m tellin’ ya, we don’t play around. While there are hashes in varying degrees of lesser difficulty, this particular one is not for the faint of heart, afraid of dirt, or delicate of body. It also happens to be my favorite. :D In addition to our typical 4-6 miles WAY off the beaten path, this trail involved swimming across a small river, as well as a great deal of wading through knee-high mud and some various quagmires of uncertain constitution (read: swamp goo). But I love it, and lately never seem to be as happy as I am when running through the woods. I’d do it with or without the beer at the end. (Also it’s kinda nice when men find you attractive especially when you’re sweaty and covered in the aforementioned swamp goo.)
Shortly after coming back from New Orleans, I got this little guy to deflower my right arm, the last remaining limb without ink. My tattoo artist and I christened him “Jean Claude”. (Get it?… “Clawed”…?) There is also a story in there somewhere about a Cajun boy who stole my heart, but perhaps that is best left for another blog entry. ;) I cannot remember if I’ve mentioned this already, but I decided last year that I want to sleeve my right arm with meaningful, funny, memorable, or otherwise tattoo-worthy images representing my life in the south. Maybe this came about because I have been considering relocating back to Yankee land for a bit (well, this time it’s technically Red Sox land, since they don’t understand “Yankee” as a blanket term for everyone above the Mason-Dixon) and I want– nay, NEED– to have reminders of home, especially during those dark, cold, snowy months. I have so many ideas bouncing around in my headspace, I’m worried they’re not all going to fit on one arm! Since I am trying to be a responsible adult and carefully budget my money while jobless, I’m sticking with smaller, cheap-ish tattoos that I can have completed in one session.
Let’s play a game, children: “How many roofs can Sarah live under in 2010?” Aaaaand… go!
The count presently is at 4. And we’re only in April (well, I guess tomorrow will be May). Something tells me it’s gonna be a long year, kids. I haven’t been able to find a job, and I do not receive enough money from unemployment insurance to pay bills and have much, if anything, left over (although it’s amazing how far $300 a week will go when you don’t have rent or utilities), so I have been bouncing around since February. The only reason I have not moved back in with my parents (hi, mom! I love you too, which is why I’m not moving back in!) is because I have generous, amazing friends with couches and spare bedrooms, who don’t mind sheltering the homeless in exchange for clean dishes and laundry.
Truly, perhaps this is a sign from the universe that I need to just stop attempting to find another graphic design job, and instead move to a trailer park so that I can gather material with which to write a (hilarious!) book. I have a title and everything… I just need an advance from a publisher for the book, so that I may dedicate my time to writing. The advance will be supplemented, perhaps, by an equally redneck job, like cashier at a truck stop convenience mart– ooh, or Waffle House line cook! The great thing about Atlanta is I won’t have to go very far out of the city to find a trailer park filled with plenty of interesting folks to befriend and use as book fodder. (All names will be changed to protect the innocent. And the guilty.)
This is, needless to say, a very… unique time in my life. Homeless, jobless… but (shh, don’t tell anyone!) actually kind of enjoying myself, despite an ongoing existential crisis about getting closer to 30 and still having not a damn clue what direction my life is heading. I have met some amazing people that I wonder if I would have met, had I not lost my job. Perhaps I should write in more detail about my adventures on this blog.
Being unemployed, I’m always searching for a way to get out of town that doesn’t involve spending too much money. Funny enough, despite being so close to Tennessee, I never really go there on purpose. I’m always passing through on my way to other states. But I always swore, before I die or move out of the South (whichever happens first) I had to visit the Jack Daniel’s distillery. Kind of like a pilgrimage to Mecca… Except I worship at the altar of booze.
Because I hate being stuck in the car alone, I managed to convince my bartender friend to accompany me, citing the infinite educational value to be attained in learning about the whiskey distillation process. Early one Friday morning, we jumped in my car to make our journey to Lynchburg, TN. Now that I was actually paying attention to where I was driving, I realized: Tennessee is beautiful! Especially once you turn off the interstate for the final leg of the journey, traveling along winding country roads through dense forests and rolling hills. A blanket of fog lent the appearance of an impressionist painting with its hazy, muted colors.
Before making our way to the distillery, we made a pit stop at a liquor store. Know before you go: In a cruel twist of irony, the distillery is located in a dry county. You can buy commemorative bottles of Jack on site at the distillery, but there is nowhere in town to actually go get your drank on. However, on the bright side– the tour is 100% free. What surprised me was how far some of the other folks had come for this tour; California, Florida, even Canada… My friend and I had driven the shortest distance, and that was 3 hours!
The whole tour took about 90 minutes; it was extremely entertaining, despite the fact that we were not allowed to take photos of the most interesting parts (to keep some things a mystery, I reckon). By the end my brain was flooded with facts and trivia: For example, did you know Jack Daniel was only 5′2″? That’s my size!
(This statue was clearly modified to make Jack taller…)
At the end of the tour, we were given lemonade, which quickly became Lynchburg Lemonade after my friend busted out his flask full of JD Single Barrel. Hey– dry county or not– Jack would approve, and you know it.
Afterwards we drove into “downtown” Lynchburg… This is clearly an area that would dry up and blow away if not for the blessing of tourism. Every store in the town square was packed to the gills with Jack Daniels merchandise. If you can think of an item, it probably had the JD logo emblazoned on it: clothing, pool tables, dart boards, golf clubs, patio furniture, bar stools, barbecue grills, light switch covers…
And, of course:
Belt buckles! (In true redneck fashion, I have a collection.)
I never had a chance to visit New Orleans before the hurricane. I took my first trip two weeks ago for a Mardi Gras event with the Hash House Harriers. The revelry and hedonism of Mardi Gras was compounded by the Saints’ Superbowl victory, and the entire city was one giant party, practically from the minute I arrived.
True, the purpose of my trip was Mardi Gras, and that consumed a lot of my time. But when I was not drinking, running, drinking while running, tracking down a port-a-potty (as a result of the drinking), or avoiding concussions from flying beads (those suckers hurt!), I was consistently in awe of the city’s sheer beauty. I did encounter a fair share of abandoned neighborhoods, but the jazz-era flair of New Orleans is ever present; the buildings and streets practically ooze joie de vivre.
I was enthralled by the architecture, but moreover I was impressed by how beautiful the people are; the locals I encountered were genuinely friendly, gloriously optimistic folks, with a true sense of love and pride for their city and all it has been through. Although man-made structures are flimsy, man’s spirit is not something that can be destroyed by a flood.
New Orleans is definitely on my list of cities I’d consider moving to, whenever I get the urge for a change of scenery.
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