(Almost) spring in photos
tattoos, flowers, and finals
If you’re wondering why you’re getting this post and not the longer essay I have drafted that is based on a theological question I was sent—it’s finals.1 I have a 12-page paper and a 18-page paper both due by the end of the week and all of my writing and editing energy is going into those. Then, a brief week off and the final quarter starts. It also marks four years since I started seminary.
I got a tattoo on Friday.
In Kentucky we lived on a one lane road that dead-ended in a cemetery. When we moved into that house, our oldest was a year and a half and I pushed him in a blue trike up and down that road. The trike had plastic wheels and they made the most ridiculous amount of noise. The neighbors knew we were there from the moment we moved in. I walked that road almost every day of the ten years we lived in that house. I pulled the boys in wagons. They toddled along stomping in puddles. Slowly they graduated to scooters, then bicycles. Eventually I started biking with my youngest on a bike seat.2 For all the noise and commotion I existed in, those walks gave me time to think. I planned this tattoo walking that road. It was postponed by the pandemic and then by various life circumstances, but I really wanted the tattoo in my graduation pictures and it’s better to have it done and fully healed before summer and pool season arrive. I love it.
It’s three interlocking diamonds and that’s a grapevine twining around the diamonds. There’s layers of meanings from the trinity to how we flourish in community to how a rule of life (those spiritual practices we keep talking about) gives us space to grow and bear fruit. There’s lettering on the interior line and it’s the transliterated Hebrew phrase “woman of valor.” I wanted four small grape clusters (the boys, 4 years in seminary, I’m almost 40) but the tattoo artist talked me out of it because of how the lines would blur. There are four pieces of vine twirling off the sides though.
We’re going to pretend it’s old-school Instagram.3 I’ll share some pictures with a little commentary and then you share some in the comments!
If I read a book and make this many notes, I’m either writing a 100 page paper on the book or I did not think it was very good.
I’ve been planting flowers and herbs and working on our front flower bed. I’ve hated it since we moved in but other projects have always outranked it. A couple of weeks ago, I ripped everything out and I’m slowly putting it back together. The neighbor complimented me on how good it looked now and it must have looked really bad if the nothing it is now is better.
I finally bought some bathroom art from Etsy. They are whimsical and fun and make me smile every time I walk in there.4
What about you?
Don’t worry; you’ll get that one soon.
This one. We used it for at least three years and loved it. https://mac-ride.com
Circa 2014 perhaps?
The octopus’ name is Octavia, after Octavia Butler. She’s quite delightful with her glasses, book, and cup of coffee.
Tattoo on point!
This tattoo is GORGEOUS. I love it and the symbolism behind it.