Now and Then

Sometime between when I turned 30 in February of 2004 and marrying for the second time in August of 2006, I:

• Got my first tattoo at Infinity Tattoo in Portland, Oregon, recommended and accompanied by my friend Lisa*. Why Oregon? Because here in South Carolina, tattooing was still illegal in 2004 (yes, seriously) and I very much felt a need to mark my 30th year in a visible and indelible way. 
• Cut off most of my waist-length hair, dying it varying shades from orange to magenta and firecracker red.
• Changed careers
• Pierced my nose
• Took up a major aquaria hobby (one 5 gallon tank with 2 fish somehow became a 60 gallon show tank)
• Got a second and third tattoo.
• Decided "I'm going to be Witty Geek Shirt Girl!" I would collect funny t-shirts! Friends would think of me as the awkward but endearingly funny gal! They could always count on to turn up wearing an amusing t-shirt! Some of my favorite shirts were a vintage Mr. Yuk, a pretty-much-only-okay-in-South-Carolina tribute to the UofSC COCKS, a Flying Spaghetti Monster logo, and the highly controversial Pirates Are Way Cooler Than Ninjas. 
• Among my favorites, this:

I really do.

I stopped wearing this particular shirt when those mysterious little washing machine holes began to turn up, and a couple years later had to take it away from my husband (who thought it perfectly fine to keep right on wearing a shirt with a big hole where the collar was ripping away in front, in public).

By the end of 2006 I realized that I was not really much of a t-shirts-all-the-time person at all, and most of them went off to live in places like husband's closet or the Goodwill. This morning, halfway through July 2014, I happened across the talk nerdy shirt while packing my yoga bag before work. I allllmost passed it by again, but then paused, thinking of how cutting out the torn crew collar and trimming down most of the sleeve length might turn this old friend into a great top to for yoga class. I did, it did, and I wore it for tonight's power hour class set to the music of Rush! RUSH!! \m/

As for the rest of it, well, by 2009 that huge aquarium was drained and moved to a storage shed, where it still sits as of this writing.** My nostril piercing has closed, but now I have (and totally love) two tragus piercings. My hair is relatively short, but what was once "holy crap red" could now rightly be called "salt & pepper". I sat for a fourth tattoo not long after the third, but since then I have felt exactly zero artistic inspiration for a new one. Next month I'll have been at my "new" career for 9 entire years, and mostly I think I do a good job at it. I am pretty sure I know who I am these days, at age 40. I'm still not much of a crewneck t-shirt person, and tin only aquariums I'm interested in are ones I pay to visit and then get to leave. I am strong(ish), capable(ish), I can do hardcore(ish) yoga (I never saw that coming), and I enjoyed the hell out of yoga class tonight, in my newly trimmed shirt. Because for all the other changes, I do indeed still love it when one talks nerdy.


* Lisa, you're a footnote! Hah! Everybody else who is not Lisa: Are you in Portlandia? Stop! Drop whatever it is you are upcycling or composting! Go directly to the Peculiarium on NW Thurmond, and tell Lisa I sent you! She will induct you into the Insectatarian Club, introduce you to Bigfoot, and even show you an extraterrestrial dissection! Act now! 

** Just wait until an 8 inch long freshwater shark leaps right out of the tank flying directly AT YOUR HEAD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT (I just wanted to go to the bathroom!) and see how much longer you want to keep fish.