NaBloPoMo # 14 – Dreamin

Hey there. SS23 here, guest blogging for Mamasoo. Ever since she asked me to post a day for her, I’ve been wracking my brain for what to write about. See, I’ve got my own blog and all, but I’ve been seriously lax in updating it lately (as she was kind enough to remind me of when I asked if I could link my own blog). I’ve been sidetracked with life and a wife and fun neighbors and not-so-fun neighbors and a stupid soap opera I’ve become a little scarily obsessed with, so I haven’t really been writing all that much. So yeah, I’ve been apprehensive about what to write about. Alas, I needn’t have worried because my inspiration came to me, literally, in a dream.

So, I had kind of a crappy day yesterday and I hadn’t been sleeping all that well earlier in the week, (Thanks, Not-so-fun neighbors!) and I just wanted to go to sleep early. So I did. 9:45 and I’m in my bed. Sweet, right? Well, it was, for a time. I slept pretty soundly, but I had one of those dreams. You know the kind. The ones that feel SO absolutely real that you are 100% convinced that it actually happened. Yeah, that kind.

So my dream started out with me in a tattoo shop. Par for the course, considering Mamasoo’s recent topics. Now to give a little background that’s required to understand what happened in my dream, I have two fairly large tattoos on my back. The smaller of the two is in the traditional ‘tramp-stamp’ location and is a claddagh design with my late grandmothers’ initials in the center of the heart. The larger of the two is an Amy Brown fairy design called Fire Dance and is located between my shoulder blades. It comes in at about 8” x 8” so its kinda big. However, I got this one three years ago and I wanted it without a black outline to maintain the feminine look of it. Little did I know, tattoos without a proper black outline will eventually seep out and sort of blend the colors together. My father now jokes at what a nice wine stain I have on my back. So, I am going to get the whole thing redone in the proper way while the design is still visible enough to fix. Hence, why I’m dreaming about tattoos. Now, background all set, back to the dream.

So, I’m in the shop and I’m showing the guy my tattoo and a picture of the real design and telling him what I want it to look like and we’re all in agreement. He understands me, I understand him. We’re all set. I get in the chair and the pain begins. I’m lucky enough to block out however long it actually takes him to do the tattoo and magically, I’m all done and he’s asking me if I’m ready to see it. I’m all sorts of excited and I go over to the full length mirror and I turn around and…..HORROR. From the bottom of my neck to the very top of my butt, he has crafted a humongous Egyptian style Dog-Pharaoh like THING, done entirely in blocks of red and black ink, done in Picasso’s cubism style, effectively covering both of my preexisting tattoos. The tattoo guy sees the look of utter disgust on my face and goes on the defensive, “What? You don’t like it?”

I must give him my bestest look of death ever, cause he backs up a step. Then I proceed to yell at him like I’ve never yelled at anyone in my life before. I’m just in complete and utter disbelief. I ask him if he was conscious when we had our pre-tattoo conversation. I don’t understand how on earth he thought that “make my fairy pretty again” meant “do whatever the hell you want with my ENTIRE freaking back”!!! At this point, I break down crying and sobbing and how much is the tattoo removal services for this going to cost me?? He’s still insisting that I pay for this atrocity, so I basically slap him upside his head and leave.

(Disclaimer: The entire section above beginning from the “What? You don’t like it?” until now was worded much more strongly and colorfully in my dream, cause that’s me. But since this is Mamasoo’s site, I’ll refrain from posting all the profanities that came out of me during this time. Thank you.)

So, when I actually wake up out of this nightmare, I actually run to the bathroom, whip off my shirt and make sure that there is no huge red and black pharaoh-dog on my back. Thank god there wasn’t. However, me not really being a chipper morning person, my wife realized the speed with which I got out of bed and asked what had gotten into me. I told her all about the dream and she started laughing. I wasn’t really finding anything funny at the moment, but she explained to me that she had come to bed around midnight. I was already asleep, but she said I was kind of twitching about and making generally angry sounding noises so she figured that I was having a bad dream. The only recognizable word I had uttered in my sleep was a resounding “DAMMIT”, which I found comical, considering all the other possible words that could have come out. I suppose I censor myself better in sleep than I do during the day!

Alright, that’s my little story for the day. Hope you enjoyed!