Yes, I got a tattoo

In many native cultures tattooing, or marking of the body is a part of the culture, respected, honoured, cherished. In western cultures tattoos and body markings sometimes have a negative image. 

I want to show you a tattoo that I have recently had done. It is likely the only tattoo I will ever get, but it carries huge significance for me. 

I have wanted a tattoo for a very long time, but was worried about what other people would think, and so I bowed down to the preferences of other people…in other words, I honoured the wishes of others, whilst not honouring my own. 

The last sixteen months have been a period of massive personal and spiritual growth for me. I feel that, for the first time in my life I truly came to know who I am. And you know what? I love who I am. I am a good, kind, loving, caring person. I work hard at everything that I do, and I support people to the best of my abilities. I love greatly. 

The time had arrived when I truly wanted to get a tattoo done, and so I spent a year researching. I knew what I wanted but could not find any design that I liked, and so I went to see some tattooists, and discovered that not all tattooists are artists, and that they were not able to design what I wanted. Via a friend I did find a tattooist who was also an artist. He lived in another city, but I go to that city twice a year and was planning to be there in five months time. I told him what I wanted, gave him examples that contained elements that I liked, explained the meaning behind the design I wanted done, asked lots of questions and then let him loose! Each time he came up with a design I explained what I wanted changed, what worked, and what did not work. When I looked at the fifth design I knew he had ‘nailed it’! I felt the movement in the design, saw all the elements I wanted. Next question was colouring, and on this I simply asked the Universe to guide him. I finally saw the coloured draft the day before I was due to fly out, and it was beautiful, stunning! 

This is a commissioned tattoo, a one off, a design that belongs to Matt and to me. 

Getting the tattoo inked in was a very primal experience. I had given this tattoo so much thought that the pain was never even a consideration, the only things I cared about was the design and the permanence. A tattoo is something we carry with us for the rest of our life. One day I will be 70 years old with a tattoo (assuming I live that long – and there is certainly no guarantee that I will). Some people might stop and ask themselves ‘Oh, gosh, I will be old and saggy, maybe I should not do this tattoo at all.’ That is a valid argument. But…I cannot live for something that is so far ahead. I cannot, and will not, live thinking about when I am 70 or 80 and not live now! We must live now! I know that I would reach 70 or 80 and regret the things I did not do in my life. I would rather look at that tattoo on my 80 year old body and still be in love with it, than look at my naked shoulder and think ‘I wish I had just done it, because I know I would have cherished it, enjoyed it, been proud of it, loved it!’ And then I would realise ‘I let everyone else’s judgement stop me from doing something I had always wanted to do,’ and I would be ashamed! Ashamed because I had (have!) spent years teaching people to be true to themselves, and yet was not true to myself. I may be many things, but I am not a hypocrite. 

Dragon energy and Phoenix energy are powerful energies that I work with, and have worked with for a long time. I tend to have strong Phoenix energy (no surprise there!), but I love them both, honour and respect them both, and will continue to work with them. Their energy is imbedded in this tattoo. I also admire that the Dragon and Phoenix are popular in, and a part of, Chinese culture. By marriage, the Chinese culture is a part of my life, and I both admire and respect it. 

The actual tattooing process hurt more than I thought it would. But thanks to meditation experience, focus and martial arts I managed to get through the three hour process! The last thirty minutes were extreme, and the last ten involved a lot of deep karate breathing! Afterwards my tattooist said that it was a big tattoo for a first one! He also told me that most people can only take two hours, and that if I had not wanted it all done on one day he would have done the outline one day and another day/week he would have done the colouring. I, however, needed it all completed in one session as I was only in the city for one week, and had a martial arts grading eight days later and needed the tattoo as healed as possible by then. 

As I write this (eleven days later) the tattoo still has one tiny patch that is healing, but the rest is looking perfect and the itching is lessening! I am proud of this tattoo. It is sexy, classy, artistic, beautiful, and meaningful! I can cover it up if I do not want to show it off, or if I am going to a corporate dinner with my husband. 

copyright Hazard ink / Robyn M Speed

People who know me well are not surprised I got the tattoo done, and the overall consensus is that it is an amazing, beautiful work of art. People who know me well love that I am who I am, that I live from my heart and Soul and honour myself whilst still honouring everyone else. 

If I am to live on this Earth as the divine being that I truly am, then I cannot hide. I cannot hide my passion, my faith, my love, my joy, my desire, my power, my strength, my gentleness, my devotion to humanity… I cannot, and I will not. Let me show you how much passion and love a person can truly live with! Don’t look at me and judge me, look into my heart and Soul and know me. I am one in a million, I have been told this many times. 

And if you want to see what difference one person can make to the world … my answer to that is: I already have! When we exist true to our Soul, when we love from our heart and Soul, we light up the recesses of humanity and we allow healing to take place. We light up the darkness and we let the light shine in, revealing the truth within each person that has always been there.

We need to be doing better than this

I read a very sad thing this week. The suicide of a 14 year old boy. He was gay, and he was being bullied, and he just could not take it any more.

I don’t care who you are, and I don’t care what your religious beliefs are, we are ONE people on ONE planet, we are a global community, and we should be looking after each other.

I don’t give a rat’s arse what your sexual preference is, because it makes no difference to me (and it shouldn’t to you either!)…

And before you leap on your pulpit and bash me with your ‘books’ let me point out: your religious beliefs will tell you that God made this world, that he made each one of us. Right? Do you believe God is an idiot who makes mistakes? He does not make mistakes, and being gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender, is not a choice it is who a person is. And it is perfect!

And—while I am on a rant—Jesus taught the path of unconditional love. Unconditional love. I am assuming you know what that means! It is not possible to say you follow Jesus and to be filled with hate. It is against what he taught.

We, as parents, need to be doing a much better job of raising our children. We cannot teach them to be bigots, and homophobic bullies. But, we must also understand that a lot of bullying comes from a powerlessness at home. So think about helping your children to meet their need for a little power in their own lives. This can be as simple as some small responsibilities followed by thanks and praise, so that they feel good about who they are, and feel appreciated.

I have seen bullies in school yards who were acting out because of what was going on at home. So, again, I say that as parents we need to be doing a much better job! Consider the impact you are having on your children with how you live your life.

Being gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender, straight, is a part of who we are it is not all of who we are. The double standard has got to stop! Look at your news and your streets, and it seems that a straight man who beats up his wife and children is accepted as normal (what the?), but a gay boy, or a lesbian couple is just so wrong? Come on, this is sheer craziness! What is important is what kind of person you are. That is what matters. Are you loving? Are you kind? Are you helpful and compassionate? Are you funny? Do you make me laugh? Do you inspire me? This is what matters.

A 14 year old boy…Was he kind? Was he smart? What was his favourite food? What were his favourite movies? What kind of music did he like to listen to? What were his favourite books? What did he want to be when he grew up? Questions that should have been so much more important than the fact that he was gay.

He was gay. So what? Being gay does not mean a guy is going to try and jump every guy he comes across. And being lesbian does not mean a girl is going to put the moves on every girl she ever meets. They are not sexual predators! They simply have a preference.

This gorgeous 14 year old boy should have been accepted for the person that he was, and encouraged to reach his full potential in life. And he needed that from all of us. And we let him down. We let him down.

We need to be better parents. We need to teach better values. We need to love our children a whole lot more. We need to take care of each other as the global family that we are.

Give your pets your best

Okay, so we make the choice to have pets, and so we know what we are getting ourselves into. The joy, the laughter, the games—the vet bills!

What we really don’t think about—and we should not ever let this affect our decision to adopt a pet—is how we will handle it when they die.

My answer to this is really pretty simple: give a hundred percent of your love to your family, friends, and pets, because to give any less is a betrayal of them and of you. Obviously I am talking about the core people in your life, not those who exist on the outer fringes (friends who are really just acquaintances and distant relatives).

Anyway, we were talking about pets…

We don’t think of them dying, and if we do we convince ourselves it won’t be that hard. Fact is, it is hard! It’s really hard when they die.

Oscar died today. Oscar was a beautiful blue budgie. He was my son’s pet, adopted when we moved back from four years living in Singapore, (daughter adopted a cat). Leaving school and friends a second time was hard (the first time was when we left NZ to live in Singapore), and so I asked the children to think about adopting a pet, to give them something to look forward to, to make the journey ahead more appealing! We arrived back in Christchurch 17^th December 2004, and adopted the pets the very next day. Oscar was a hand reared budgie so was completely tame. He developed a real knack for sitting on my shoulder and removing my earrings!

He was a funny bird, and a chatty bird. I never walked past his cage without looking to see where he was and saying hello. And when I came down in the morning I would always talk to him, something like “Good morning Oscar. I will just feel these nagging cats first, then I will uncover you/I’ll uncover you as soon as the heat pump warms this room up a bit more”.

I might be in the kitchen making a cup of tea or cooking, and I never realised until now how much a part of my life (our lives) the sound of him eating his seed was. It was a background sound that was there, as was the sound of him sharpening his beak on the grit perch. His chattering in the background was a part of our lives. His calling to the birds outside in summer was a part of the noise of summer.

Part of the background of our lives has gone, and the space this little bird filled so completely, is empty.

Feeling as I do now, does this make me rethink the whole ‘pets’ thing? Is it worth it? You know what … it is worth is. I would rather love Oscar and grieve at his passing, than have not had him in our lives. I would rather feel my heart break, than have never heard his chatter. Yes, he was so worth it!

If you are going to adopt a pet, give them all of your love, so that when they do pass away, you will know they had the very best of you. Don’t hold back your love in anything out of fear of being hurt. Pain in life is inevitable and unavoidable. It will happen. But what you can do, is make sure you tip the scales the other way, the way of laughter, joy and love, so that they far outweigh the pain.

I look back over Oscar’s seven year life and can celebrate the day he did 60 flips round the perch! I can celebrate the way he loved seed pressed into peanut butter which was spread over a cracker! I can celebrate that he could say ‘Hello’ the same as three different people—he could also say ‘whatchadoin’, ‘budgie buddy’ and one day he called the cats name so perfectly we couldn’t believe it was him! He went crazy over silverbeet! He loved a piece of toast. He could repeat a number of different whistles, that we had taught him. We really did not teach him lots of English words and whistles because we loved the sound of him too! We loved his chatter! We loved the way he would watch whatever anyone was doing in the kitchen. The day he started to go downhill, he still watched me making the birthday cake for my son (Oscar was his budgie).

Every creature has a life span. And I believe we are honoured when we get to take care of a pet for their entire lifespan.

Stress

Stress is showing it's face. We have children who have developed alopecia, hair loss, due to the stress of the earthquakes and seemingly endless aftershocks.

People are 'over it' but the problem is we need to simply accept that this is what is going on,  and we need to keep calm and patient regardless. Easy to say, I know, but tough to achieve. The fact is if the parents panic so do the children. As parents we need to be calm a din control.

We have had quakes, Japan had quakes, USA has just had a reasonable quake...and we should really be asking ourselves what we should be learning from this. Anything? How about we just assume that we should be learning something, and ask what?

How many people have water, canned foods, torches, radios, gas burners, etc in case they need them? How many people have considered what would happen if they lost electricity and water, if all the shops were either demolished or closed, and the roads unpassable? These are questions we should all be asking ourselves.

So ask yourself: are you prepared?

Personally, I also think it's a really good idea to get back to growing some of our own vegetables, so that we have food if something happens. Friends of mine were eating home  grown vegetables after the quakes whilst many other people were down to what had been in their fridges or was thawing in their freezers -- they had no power for almost two weeks!

Our advance into a technological society is al very well, but, what happens in a major disaster? Massive power failure! You could be without power for several hours, several days, or several weeks, in which case all your technology is pretty much useless. Get outside in the garden, get outside on your bicycle, and build a part of your life that does not rely on technology!

Being prepared does, in itself, remove a lot of stress

Citywide plywood enhancement fashion trend

We have a new look!!!

PLYWOOD!!!

It is the in thing in Christchurch these days and, not wanting to be left behind, we have joined the citywide plywood enhancement fashion trend!!

After the removal of the chimney and part of the front of the house we travelled through some different looks….

Half pink batts half plywood .... mmm, I'm not sure about this.

Pink batts. But it really wasn’t working for me—I have never been a ‘pink’ kind of girl.

Half pink batts and half tar paper. Not that was kind cool. A little risqué, a little revealing, a little …well, face it, slutty! (We don’t live in an area where ‘slutty’ is going to go down terribly well!)

Full tar paper. Have to admit, I thought that worked kind of well. But, again, it just didn’t feel right!

Half tar paper half plywood ... mmm, not sure I like this either.

Half tar paper and half plywood! Aha! Now that was just downright chic! We had white, black and beige across the house and, as you fashion folk know, that colour palette worked well. In fact, we liked this one so much we trialled it for the entire weekend. (Which is a really nice way of saying the tradesmen had reached knock off time and would be back on Monday, but did his best to whack up one large sheet of plywood before he left.)

On Monday the tradesmen arrived back and set to work and did an outstanding job (and I mean that sincerely). By days end we had a whole new look going on … and I like it! In fact, I love it! And it is just as well I love it because I’m going be living with this for quite some time!

I love it!!!

I think you will see that the look works well, it fits the house nicely, it is subtle, coy, a sort of ‘you don’t really notice me until you stop and pay attention’. It’s a bit like wearing red stilettos with long jeans. Only as you walk do people see the ‘teaser’, and if you sit down (at a nice café—seriously I love a good coffee!) and cross your legs and the jeans ride up the boots a little…well, let me just say that I have had people pull the leg of my jeans higher just to see the boots.

But, back to the house … I will point out that we paid for the pink batts, in case any fellow Earthquakians reads this and thinks EQC will let them put pink batts in a wall that did not previously have pink batts. They won’t. This was an emergency repair job, and they are not supposed to leave a property ‘better’ than its original state prior to the quakes and aftershocks. We did not have pink batts before the damage to the house, and so they would not put them in for us as they repaired the house. I asked for them and am paying for them, but otherwise we would have gib-board and then plywood and then winter…and this house is cold enough in winter without that added chill factor.

I don’t really know what we are going to do with the front of the house when the full repair goes through (as I said, what we had done was an ‘emergency repair’ due to the instability of the chimney and the front of the house after the June 13 ‘twins’ – one decent 6.0 or better would have taken it all down, so we could no longer leave it).

To conclude....

Plywood is the new trend – if you don’t have it, you’re nobody!

Fluro is the new black—there aint nothing sexier than a workman in a fluro vest walking up your driveway, because you know he’s here to fix something!

Hardhats…well, combine that with the fluro and need I say more… (*tiger growl*)

We don’t look at the latest Mercedes or BMW and think ‘Wow, I would love one of those’, we look at the utes and say ‘I wish I had bought one of them!’

When our husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend (not all in the same bed of course ... although...) rolls over and makes the bed shake we almost scream 'Earthquake!'

The great chimney battle

The proverbial 'before' shot

As I began writing this the jackhammer was taking my chimney down layer by layer. I was rather proud of my chimney, as it appeared to be not giving up without a fight! It was, as we have observed, a very well built chimney, and this is perhaps the reason it separated from the rest of the house but did not actually fall down!! 

We have—the house and I—lived through the earthquakes and aftershocks on very good terms. I, for my part, have been intensely grateful that the house remained standing! When the September 7.1 hit (the first quake which set all of this off) it was so violent I was certain may house was being destroyed, that all of the exterior block-work and stucco was being shaken off the house. When I inspected the house in daylight it still stood strong, and the only evidence of the earthquake was step cracking through the mortar, and the cracks down each side of the chimney which, at that point in time, were not too bad. She has been through a lot (I don’t know why I call it a ‘she’), and so yes, I am intensely grateful! How much more can she take? She’s like me, way too stubborn to ever give up!

Poster shot -- pity it wasn't summer....he'd have been topless!

So, today we commenced a new look, which I am assured with be the tarpaulin look. Quite sheik and mysterious, though this will only be over night. By days end tomorrow we will hopefully have the full plywood look. A fashionable trend across Christchurch these days! Plywood offers so many opportunities! Do I paint to match the house? Do I offer the blank plywood canvas to friends of my daughter’s at Design & Art College? Do I offer it as advertising space? So many possibilities…

I have begged for pink batts to be placed between the plywood and the house as, for some incredibly stupid reason, this house does not have insulation. We freeze in winter, hence my great worshiping of the heat pump – I lay flowers at its altar every freezing day!

Progressing slowly...

As I sat here writing, I wondered if the windows would stay in the house if we had a decent aftershock, or fall out*…as the chimney which stood between them is half down, and the wall above them is also gone. Guess I will find out the answer if we get an aftershock of any significant size. Frankly we barely move for anything under a 5.0—even the cats don’t move for anything under a 5.0! 

At a 5.5 I might look up from the laptop, at a 6.3 I’ll be hanging on to something. Last Monday (June 13) in the midst of the 6.3 I, for some incredibly bizarre reason, swore at the earth and told her to “cut it out and sit still!” I don’t know why I thought that might work, but I was a little pissed off, I was in the middle of making a latte (coffee)! Priorities people, priorities!!

And then the power went out so I could not froth my milk. Heartbreak!!

One of the top 5 toughest to take down! I was so proud!

Normally I am a devout tea drinker, but since my daughter’s boyfriend, Jake, brought round an espresso machine suddenly espressos/latte became a daily necessity! My daughter, Lisa, taught me how to froth the milk, and so we are immensely proud of ourselves when we get ‘a good froth!’ (yes, we are incredibly easy to please!). I limit myself to three coffees a day—I was having five or six but people tell me that’s too many!!!

Gaping wound!

I just deviated off topic, didn’t I…

Back to quakes and shakes…

Don't even think it!

When the builders left to drop off a load of ‘chimney’ and take a lunch break, I had to chase one of our cats away from the remaining chimney as the little ‘toad’ decided—having jumped up the scaffolding—that  she could actually make it into the roof cavity, while it was exposed. This was after she looked down the centre of the chimney and toyed with the idea—I could tell by the look on her face that ‘toying’ was going on—of jumping down into the chimney. That’s the last thing I need, a cat in the chimney or in the roof!!

By days end we had what seriously looked like a bandaid on the face of our house! She looked like she’s been in a fight—and I guess she had, because she fought the builders every step of the way! Round two starts 8.30 a.m. tomorrow morning! **

Down to the last layers!

In Christchurch, at this time, in my personal opinion, builders are gods!!!

The new look. Not sure it's working for me....

 

*  Note: an aftershock of 5.4 did hit at 10.30 pm and the windows did stay in the house!!! Hoorah! And…thank heavens the chimney was half down!

**  Update: The following day the rest of the chimney conceded to go quietly… Perhaps tomorrow we will have plywood…