Aaahh, such beautiful sun! Unfortunately today, for some reason, blogger doesn't want me to add images to my post today. I was planning on giving you some photos of my garden and the glorious flowers in this morning sunlight. Today I am going to take a break from posting about my stories and the fight between publishers, and just enjoy the morning.

Today, at One o'clock, I am getting my first tattoo. I have been trypanophobic since I was about six years old. Trypanophobic essentially means that I have the extreme and irrational fear of needles. It's so bad that sitting in the same room with needles, any kind, causes me to go into a panic attack and hyperventilate. I have been working on overcoming this fear for several years now, and I'm usually able to handle sewing needles now. I still have trouble getting shots, and when my daughter was younger and getting all of those vaccines, that was a horrible experience for me. It caused her pain, which made my heart ache, but then adding in the needle thing and it was almost unbearable. I'm not sure who cried more during those appointments!

So this is the final step in my recovery. I made the appointment a week ago, and have had the whole week to back out. I haven't. I told the artist about my fears, and instead of brushing them off like most people do, more often than not, he showed me "the hot seat", his guns, the paints, and then showed me the needles that he would be using. Because my design is pretty small, and I'm getting it on my forearm, he doesn't have to use a large needle. He explained that his needles are shipped to him completely sterilized in individual packages, and that each one is actually like a paintbrush of needles, and by that I mean that each needle is actually lots of little ones squished together. The one that he said he would be using the most on me today is 18 needles in total, and because of that it feels more like a vibration across my skin instead of a single needle piercing over and over (even though I know it still goes into my skin).

This morning I woke up anxious, but that excited sort of anxiety. My friends Gemma and Coral will be there with me, Gemma having gotten her first tattoo about a month ago up in Bellingham, and Coral is still a "tattoo virgin" as the artist referred to us. It is now a game of hurry up and wait until one…

Keep writing and whatever it is that you do in this awesome sun!