Ahhh the Pain! The Glorious, Colorful, Pain! (But don't tell my parents!)

I have a unfinished half-sleeve dragon on my left arm that goes over my shoulder to just above my left breast, and on Sunday I whiled away the afternoon and early evening in the tattooist's chair, as he added more color to my arm. Now the dragon has blue scales, and a blue face ("sick" blue, as it has been dubbed. "Sick", as in "bad" or "dope" or "vivid and beautiful"). Next Jeremy will finish coloring the dragon (a bit more shading and depth), then the underbelly and fin-like apparata and tail will be colored orange, then he'll color the water sea green ("sick" green, of course, but not the green you might see on someone who is actually sick), then he'll do the final touch ups, then it will be done. Then perhaps we'll go on to octopuses, and just do the rest of my arm.
I forgot how much I really enjoy getting tattooed, and enjoy even more getting tattooed by my friend Jeremy. We don't get to hang out as much as we used to, so we had much catching up to do. The days before the appointment, on top of being grumpy for no discerable reason, I was a little anxious about getting tattooed. I'm not sure why, but a night of dancing and hanging out with just Bea helped that. It's definitely not about the pain. Well, it kind of is. My endorphins seem to flow fairly easily and quickly, and after about 20 minutes of tattooing, I was pretty high. But before hand, I think about the less pleasant areas to be tattooed, like right across the clavicle and under my arm. By the time he got to those areas, I was floating on my body's version of opoids (naturally, of course), with not a care in the world. I even developed an appreciation for the band Clutch. I love tattoos, especially really big ones, I love getting tattoos.
To my parents, this penchant for tattoos is very un-ladylike, and possibly indicative of a greater psychological problem. And even though I'm 36 years old, have two kids, am happily married, have steady legal employment, went to a good college, don't do drugs or smoke cigarettes, own a house, and have never been in trouble with the law, I can't bring myself to discuss the whole tattoo obsession with them. I think they just noticed that I have a tattoo on my chest, and possibly on my arm (I started getting work on it about 5 years ago). There's at least one other they don't know about (completed in 1993). And for now, I'm really content not to go there, and they seem to be too. There are lots of other cool things I talk about with my parents. They don't know about my blog either.
Maybe when it heals I'll put up some pictures, but don't count on it. Just in case someone in my family stumbles on this site....