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 |  is paved with good intentions... |
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** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** Hi, I'm Elle. I'm based in Auckland, New Zealand. I'm the mother of two young adults, the wife of an entrepreneurial gamer and the Queen of Unfinished Projects. This blog will contain poems, short stories, possibly photos and book reviews if you're lucky, and my thoughts on a variety of topics. Hope you enjoy it. |
Do you have any tattoos or want one in the future? If you had to have a piece of art permanently on your body, what would you want it to say about you? ~ "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"  I don't have any tattoos. Yet. I'd like to get a tattoo, but I can't decide on a design that I'd be happy to have permanently inked on my skin. Hence, I don't have one yet. I'm certainly not opposed to the idea. I am quite strongly opposed to facial tattoos. I don't like the look of them, and I think they create issues in most job-hunting aspects. Even the Maori moko which are culturally acceptable here in New Zealand, I don't like the look and while it's hard to legally discriminate against someone with a moko in New Zealand, the truth is that many employers would find another reason not to hire someone who had one. As to what I'd get? I'd want something that balanced generic and personal. Let me explain. I want something generic enough that anyone can look at it and not know what it means. To that end, I will never get a person's name tattooed on me. Not my husband's name and not my children's names. Regardless of how my marriage goes over the years, I will always love my children, but still, no. I refuse to have someone's name tattooed on me. But I also want it to mean something to me. I appreciate that some people just get designs because they like them *cough* Charlie ~  *cough*, but for me I want it to have some meaning. It doesn't have to be huge and deep, just at some level it has to be personal to me.The concept that I've had in mind the longest is the koru. A koru is a Maori symbol, based on a furled fern frond, which represents new life, new beginnings, etc. It kind of looks like  . To illustrate, these designs are all based around koru:  In the first image, the one second from the left at the top is probably the closest to something I'd like to work with, but I've moved on from the idea of a simple koru tattoo. I really like the ones in the second image. I don't like it necessarily for the meaning, but for the design. Every tattoo design I've thought of has a koru in it somewhere. Actually, Steve drew me a koru tattoo design once which I really liked. It was quite simple. Then we were buying watches for our 14th wedding anniversary, and I found a watch which had almost the exact same design in the strap/bracelet. It's perfect for me.  So yeah, that's the oldest and longest-running idea for a tattoo. But more recently I've been looking at getting a morepork. A morepork (known in Maori as ruru) is our native owl. I have a thing for owls, but I also love to listen to morepork at night, because they remind me of my childhood on the farm. Hearing them makes me feel happy and safe and comforted. *shrugs* Ideally I'd like to combine the idea of the koru and the morepork. Also, I know it's weird that I use the Maori name for one and the English name for the other. That's how I roll. I've lived in New Zealand my entire life, but my parents are English, so I'm a mixture. I know the Maori names for a lot of our birds, including the morepork, off the top of my head, but I do think of them as morepork not as ruru. I know I've kind of said 'These don't mean anything to me I just like them' and that's not how I was going to roll with a tattoo.  But using both the morepork and the koru expresses my identity as a New Zealander, and I identify a lot with owls. I have nystagmus, which is an eye condition in which my eyes move involuntarily. They move rapidly side to side. People often don't notice it because it's a small, rapid movement, but when they do notice it (it's constant) they tend to refer to it as an eye 'wobble'.  Anyway, I was born with it. It's hereditary and my mother also has it but hers is not discernible to the naked eye. The movement is more obvious when I'm tired or not concentrating, and apparently when I was born, my eyes were all over the place and it freaked my mother out. As I grew up, I developed a habit of tipping my head to one side. When I was old enough to have my eyes tested, my mother took me to an optometrist. He took one look at me in the waiting room with my head tipped to one side and said "I know what she has." Apparently the head-tilt is typical of people with nystagmus. It essentially traps the eye in a corner, reducing the movement. The more extreme the tilt, the more severe the nystagmus. My head tilt is very noticeable, but not so much that strangers look at me and think 'What the fuck?' My head is constantly tilted though, despite the fact that I now wear glasses. It drives my hairdresser mad. So anyway, owls. There are a lot of images out there of owls with their heads tipped to one side, and I feel like that's me, in a bird. I know, it's stupid, but whatever. I've written about this before. Also, everyone thinks owls are really wise, but they're not particularly smart birds, and I can relate to that too! Oh, and I'm a night owl, not an early bird.  So, I haven't found the perfect design yet, but these images might give you some idea of the direction I'm going in. Designs where I like the morepork:   Designs to illustrate how koru might be integrated:   I really like the idea of the bird's feathers being made up of koru and similar Maori-styled patterns. But I don't have that level of artistic ability. I'd love for someone to come up with a design for me though. Anyway, yeah. That's where I'm at with tattoos. No idea where on my body I'd put it, but ideally somewhere that could be covered up if required for a job interview, but not private that I'd be a) embarrassed to show it to the tattooist or b) embarrassed to show the completed tattoo to someone. That rules out a lot, because I'm a very modest person. So I guess arms or legs would be ideal, possibly shoulder or back. *shrugs* Not sure. |
| This is Thankful Thursday. Write a gratitude list containing 5-10 items. ~ "Blogging Circle of Friends " It's good to do this every now and then.  I'm grateful that I have Steve, and that we both appreciate each other. He came home last night and said 'Have I ever told you how much I appreciate you?' I said 'Yes, but I'm always happy to hear it again. Why?' Then he proceeded to tell me about a girl in his course he was teaching who had 'more boobs than brains' and who seems to have annoyed the crap out of him all day. He often comes home after dealing with annoying people and tells me that he's so glad I'm not like them. And when people have unnecessary emotional dramas, either in real life or on TV shows, we look at each other and say 'I'm so glad I have you.' I'm grateful that Caitie is doing well at high school. We were warned not to accelerate her (she skipped her final year of intermediate) because she wouldn't be able to cope emotionally. Actually, she's thriving. Her last school report was the best school report she's ever had. She's also doing really well as part of the cheerleading team (they came first place in their very first competition last month), which is also exercise and teamwork, and she's joined the art club. I'm super grateful that Jayden managed to stay on his Outward Bound course. It would have been so disastrous if he'd been sent home for not being fit enough. I can't even list all the ways that would have been bad. But he tried his best and nailed it well within the time, and I was so relieved and so proud of him. Today is his 10th full day there, and I haven't heard anything since the first full day when they advised that he needed to make the 27 minute run time and then that he'd done it in 24 minutes. Nothing for the last nine days. I've been checking Instagram and Facebook obsessively (I've set up alerts for Outward Bound!) and they did post some photos of the kids playing rugby and going down a water slide in the rain last week, but Jayden wasn't in any of the photos. I really want to know that he's not miserable and hating it, but I also truly don't know what I'd do if I found out he was. I really hope he's enjoying at least some of it or finding it rewarding, or something. But regardless, I'm ever so grateful that he was able to find the determination and strength to run the 3km track in under the time limit. I'm super grateful that I can afford to indulge in my hobbies, even if only to a certain extent. Sure, I could spend a LOT more money on my hobbies if I had more money to spend. I'd get better camera lenses, order more (homemade) books, buy (and spend) more Writing.com gift points, buy more and better craft supplies, etc. But I can still do my hobbies, and they help keep me sane. I can maintain a premium membership here on Writing.com, I have a decent DSLR camera (albeit with standard kit lenses), I can order the books I make (even if I have to wait for the sales), and so on. I know I'm very lucky to be able to have and do these things, and I am grateful. I'm grateful that I have people who support me. I don't have a lot of real life friends. The only friend I have that isn't family or from work that I see offline is heyxie  , and I see her approximately once a year. She lives about eight hours drive from me. And it's a sad state of affairs that she is always the one to come up. Truthfully, she comes up to see her family and I snag a visit while she's here. But her 40th birthday is at the end of this month, and I believe we're supposed to be going down to visit her, although I don't have the details. It'll be good to be the ones to make the effort. Hmm, I wonder if I can meet up with Osirantinous  while we're down there! Os, we're going to Wellington, end of July/beginning of August! Anyway. I have one friend, Joey, from two jobs ago that I met up with when I started working in the CBD again. That's the first time I've seen her in a couple of years, but I should touch base again (it's been six months now). I have one friend, Deb, from one job ago that I met up with when I started working in the CBD again. I'd seen her in October for a 'last hurrah' when they shut their office down, but not for nearly two years before that. I was actually really surprised when she pushed for lunch, but it was nice to catch up with her. That was about six months ago too, I should drop her a line and see if she wants to do it again. At my last job, I felt like I had friends but that they would struggle to transfer to 'outside of work friends'. I really liked working with Nik, Vinessa and Laura, but I felt that we would struggle to be 'outside of work friends' even though we got on really well and enjoyed each other's company. But I did think that Kat and I would be able to be friends outside of work. I saw her outside of work a few times while I worked there, but haven't since I left. Again, I should drop her a line. And in my current job, I get on well with everyone, but I can't see us being 'outside of work' friends. Which leaves me with very few people outside of family that I see socially in real life. But of course I have a whole bunch of online friends who are amazing. Even some who have moved away from the platforms where we originally met, like Beth and Anais (who I met on Livejournal), Rhonda and others who I've met here... The friendship and support I get from my online friends is awesome. And I'm lucky that I have a great relationship with my parents, my siblings and my parents-in-law. I know that not everyone has these. And I know that it hasn't always been smooth sailing for us, but we've got through. Sometimes it has taken effort and compromise, sometimes it has taken time, sometimes it has taken new living arrangements but we've got there, and I talk to them and get support and encouragement from them and give those things back. It's awesome. I'm really lucky, and I'm really grateful to have these people in my life. I'm grateful that I can afford to buy books. I should have included this one under the hobbies one, but reading doesn't really feel like a hobby. It feels like an important and necessary part of my life, not a hobby that I can pick up or put down as the whim strikes me. I know that I could borrow books from the library if I was broke. I have been there and done that. But I read a lot, and I love that I can buy the books I want to read, and have an endless choice, not just what the librarian chose to stock. While I'm at it, I'm also grateful that I can store thousands of ebooks in my phone (or in the cloud to be more precise) and I don't have to carry around or store bulky physical books. And I can read what I want when I want (within reason of course!) because no one can tell what I'm reading. I'm super grateful to have a boss that I like and respect, who respects and appreciates me. I've been pretty lucky with bosses in the past. The boss I had for my first fulltime permanent boss was a woman who had no managerial experience whatsoever, and she and I struggled. Looking back, I know she was doing her best, but the working relationship between the two of us wasn't working for either of us. But after her I had a boss that I respected and who appreciated me, and after him, I had another boss that I genuinely liked and respected. But then I had my god-awful boss who thought admin people were a dime a dozen and utterly replaceable, and frankly they were probably only in admin because they were too stupid or too lacking in ambition to get a better job. Oof. And I had zero respect for him and even less liking. But now? Now I have an awesome boss. And it makes a world of difference. So much. I'm sure there are plenty of other things I'm grateful for (including a warm, dry house, our kitties, that our dog Emma is in good health and doesn't need vet visits, that we have plenty of food, etc.), but those are the things that were on the top of my mind today. |
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