Hipster Holidays and a Ducky New Year

Have a Merry Christmas or Emma will cut you.

It's Christmas Eve and I've been kind of blue this morning which is pretty normal for the holidays, but still unwelcomed. Part of my problem, I'm sure, is that I didn't take the day off. So I'm sitting at home, pretending to work, sending just enough emails to look like I shouldn't be fired.


I decided to skip out of the "office" to grab some necessities (yarn, chai, and groceries) and had the most pleasant experience. Sure, I love my local craft store and over-priced yarn, but today it felt warmer in there. While they were winding my yarn, I popped over for some chai at the hipster coffee shop. The barista looked at me just a little too long to be casual and made me blush.

I then ran over to my local Whole Foods which is smaller than your regular grocery store, and populated with the local punks and hippies from my neighborhood. I miraculously found a parking spot (I have been known to cry due to parking lot frustrations) and ran in to pick up the things I needed... which, also miraculously, I found easily. And then a cute man smiled at me a little longer than casual and I blushed again.

And that's it. Shopping on Christmas Eve was the change needed to swing my slightly-blue to red and green.

A few hours post torture.

Speaking of hipsters and Portlandia (which I wasn't), I totally put a bird on myself. Well, KC did, but I paid him. He spent 20 minutes trying to talk me out of a hand tattoo and then a bird tattoo which only made me want it more (see also "I might jump off a bridge if someone told me not to a whole bunch of times"). He did his job though, reminding me that next time I'm in front of a judge they'll think I'm a criminal, and I'll never get another new job.

But really, KC was awesome and we had a blast talking and telling jokes and since the tattoo only took about 7 minutes, I ended up sitting and talking with him about nothing-in-particular for another 20 minutes because he was so personable and interesting.

I hung out with the family Saturday morning, pre-tattoo, for my niece's 10th birthday. I told my folks I was getting a tattoo later that evening and while they're not pro-tattoo, they do know that their disdain only pleases me.

When I told my mom I was getting the tattoo on my right ring finger, she asked me, very quietly, if that's the finger gay people use when they get married. Her brain was recalling the horror of when my best guy friend in Junior High got his ear pierced and his mom was asking the other moms (mine included) which ear meant he was gay. I told her that I'm reasonably sure gay people used the same finger as straight people, but after some googling found this site which suggests that I may have just gay-married myself, or I'm a financially secure woman, or I'm possibly cheating on my spouse... if I wore an actual ring on my right ring finger and not just a tattoo'd bird on a stick. So, while I rolled my eyes are her, she wasn't totally off base. Don't tell her I said that.

Then yesterday she texted me:

Mom: How is the tattoo?
Me: Ready to slap your forehead?
Mom: Yes
(insert picture text of above)
Mom: Is it a pattern or something specific?
Me: It's a bird
Mom: Okay. I thought it looked like a duck, but I didn't want to offend the artist. Why a bird?

Now THAT was the perfect way to make me question my decision.... A duck? I wonder if amputation costs more than removal?

So that's my Christmas gift to me. The picture of Emma above is my Christmas gift to you. And the below is my handsome nephew drinking hot chocolate at an ice skating party for his sister.

Merry Christmas.