Tatts

I got my first when the divorce became final thirteen years ago as a celebratory endorsement of single life. Everyone said it hurt like hell to get one but since going through childbirth--I don't mean to scare anyone, you will heal--a needle filled with ink is nothing like having a grapefruit sized head come out your birth canal. It really isn't; it's more like the tattoo artist digs out the area with a fork. I had to gasp, in spite of a romanticized conviction that I was joining a circle begun when men wore antlers.

The first was a seahorse on my midback, two years later another seahorse facing that one so that I now look like a violin from the rear. And, I'm done. No more body art for this little duck unless it comes in a box that says L'Oreal No. 56 on it.

I need a dose of ocean, it's been two years since, this has to be planned thoughtfully and I will never take a train again unless in my coffin. To get to Boston from Buffalo, you sit on your arse for most of the fifteen hours it takes. Fifteen hours, people! AmTrak does not own the rails, the freight systems do, so that when a freighter wants to pass, the AmTrak pulls over to the side and waits. Waaaaaiiittts. I knit a dishcloth, wrote a five page story and illustrated a journal with portraits of the cats during the time. I thought it couldn't possibly be that bad. It was.

Plane. If I take a plane to Boston, I can visit for two days, go down to DC to visit my son, and dream on girl, maybe get to the Gulfside of Florida. But that would be very expensive in boarding Marsh, who gets two shots a day of insulin. And plane fare. And food. And and and. The box of fishsticks in the freezer may be as close to seaside as I get. Last year was a broke-down year, so I vicariously went to Japan. Interesting but empty of experience unless you count the first swallow of natto, which triggered a gag reflex that brought up stuff I hadn't seen since 1975.

Well, it will work out. I have invitations to stay at each of the three points on the compass, east, south, and souther. The sky is clear, the afternoon has become early evening all up and down the Eastern seaboard, from Maine to the Keys. People are thinking of supper, maybe the seahorses are too. Swim little fish, swim.