I should start off by saying that my grandma and I were always very close, she used to look after me while my mom was at work when I was younger and only lived a block away from my mom and I. When I was about ten years old my grandma decided that she wanted a puppy and began looking for one in the paper. Just as luck had it there was an ad for daschunds, just outside of our city during that summer and when my grandma went to get her puppy I had the opportunity to go along. For the next five years my grandma's puppy, Finnigan, was more than just a dog, he was more than just her dog, he was our dog, and more importantly he was out friend.
At A Glance Author Bondage-Kit Contact maygin_nothing@hotmail.com IAM Bondage-Kit When A month ago Artist Carly Studio Soul Survivors Location Winnipeg, Manitoba The tragedy happened at night. I awoke to the phone ringing and from the way my mother was talking I knew that it was my gramma and something was very wrong. As soon as she was finished on the phone my mom told me that Finnigan had thrown his back out while playing with a toy. We went over to her house as fast as we could and the three of us took him to the animal hospital downtown. I was really worried but it didn't hit, it was like I knew that everything was going to be okay so I didn't worry, I couldn't worry. The intensity of Finnigan's injuries was so seirous that it didn't even seem real. I can't remember what the vet did, but we were there for quite sometime even though the hospital was closed. We went home around 5:30am and I went to school in the morning as if nothing ever happened.
My mom and gramma picked me up from school that evening. My mom was the one who told me that they had Finnigan put down.
A year after that my gramma moved to the other side of the country. To me it's not like Finnigan is gone, it's just like he's gone away with my gramma. I still have dreams about him today, about three years after it all. But in all honesty, he'll never be gone.
I've been contemplating getting some sort of memorial tattoo for him for quite some time now. Not anything big and fancy but something none the less, to ease my mind. Finally, I decided that I would cary out my tattoo plan and carry the memory of him with me forever. It wouldn't be my first tattoo, but I was looking forward to it just the same.
I had my second tattoo appointment made at Soul Survivors for December 19th, it was to be the word "Enlightenment" between my shoulder blades in a script similar to that on my ankle. I soon realized that since it's that magical Christmassy time of the year and I have two almost full time jobs I'm not exactly going to have time to properly take care of my tattoo as specially one on my upper back. The next time that I went into Soul Survivors I changed the tattoo to the word "Finni", on my left ankle. It fit, I wanted it for Finnigan. For all the times he had been running around my feet. Everything was good and set, I arranged an all day outing with my friend and booked off the day from both jobs.
Although I worked graveyard shift the night before, when the day of my tattoo rolled around I was up early. My friend phoned me at about 11am, which left more than enough time for me since my appointment wasn't until that evening. I had my money stashed away in my wallet next to my appointment card and checked to make sure that my identification was along side all the specifics, and quickly headed out for a fun filled tattoo adventure.
When I walked into the shop I was fifteen minutes early, the perfect amount of time for filling out the forms and let the artist get ready and prep her room. My artist was Carly, the only female artist at the shop I go to, and the artist who did my previous tattoo. She saw me as I was filling out my forms and told me that she'd be ready for me in a few minutes, which made me even more excited than I already was. I leafed through a few tattoo magazines that were on the table in the waiting room and argued with my friend about a phone call from a crush of mine (juvenile I know, but I'm only 19 not 30).
I'm sure that it had been exactly the fifteen minutes when I was called into the room. I took off my socks so that Carly could match up my new tattoo with the previously acquired one and then lay down on the bench.
I got myself comfortable for the first few minutes while she was getting the last final things ready, and I managed to find a tiny spot on the bottom of a near by picture frame to concentrate on for the whole tattoo. The frame had been painted with some type of crackle design and right at the bottom if you looked the certain way you could create a sort of outline of Marilyn Manson. Of course I just stared at it the whole time.
When Carly started on my tattoo she didn't start off slowly with a line at a time, I was glad. For my first tattoo she had gone much slower and it had felt as if she'd never finish (not because of the pain but just because she was taking it easy on me), this time was quick and basically painless. The most painful part I'd say would've been the parts of outline that were curving and done in a single stretch, not that it was actually all that painful. Whenever one of those lines were being done I made sure not to tighten the muscles in my leg, as my foot would have probably accidentally twitched and Carly would've been pissed. The best part is shading, to me it feels exactly as if I took a screw or nail and just absent-mindedly scratched it lightly back and forth across my hand. Shading over bone was even better, it was slightly heavier and the vibrations would go into the bone and spread out in a relaxing way.
The whole tattoo session didn't take very long at all, Carly actually said that it took her the same amount of time to prep her room so she bumped twenty bucks off the price. I was shown in the mirror before she cleaned up the little bit of blood, put some sort of cream or gel onto the tattoo and then taped the dressing to it. There wasn't much tape left so I made a mental note to pop into my work and use some of the medical tape. When we went out front, I booked my next appointment, paid and thanked Carly and then my friend and I left the shop.
I didn't clean my tattoo as much as I cleaned my first one, only doing one or two washes a day. At first the crusting was pretty thick, but after about a week it was all gone. The worst part of the whole process is when it gets itchy as hell during the healing. In the aftercare pamphlet I'm not supposed to scratch it, but I don't like slapping it either (tends to make it more itchy), so I either just leave it alone or I put a tiny, tiny, tiny, bit of vitamin e gel on it. Usually the vitamin e cools it so the need to scratch dies down.
All in all, I love my tattoo and am really glad that I got it. I'm sure that if my gramma ever saw it she'd cry, and feel very touched. I can now say "goodbye my friend", as Finnigan has his own little memorial on my ankle.
If you're looking for a cute tattoo and are in Winnipeg, I suggest any of the artists at Soul Survivors. It's a great shop and the staff are knowledgable and friendly.
Until Next Time,
Bondage Kit