ouch

My mouth hurts because when I don't wear my tooth for a long time (like an entire weekend, oops), then my teeth start to shift, and the denture acts like a retainer and pushes my teeth back in place, which hurts, and by the end of the day I'm achy and grumpy.  And my toes hurt because I have new shoes, and they haven't stretched out yet and I have ridiculously wide feet.

Oh yeah, and I have a meeting with my tattoo artist tomorrow to look at a first draft of the tattoo.  And it just occurred to me that it might hurt.  I forget that, because the other one didn't hurt.  Not in a "oh I toughed it out" kind of way, in a "pain is not the right word for that slightly odd scratching feeling" kind of way.  I'm assuming that boob-area, being all fleshy, won't be that sensitive, but then I don't know how close to my clavicle it will go.  So, you know, there might actually be pain in my future.  And in case you missed it, I suck at pain.  I don't tough things out.  I scream and yell and cry. 

And while we're at it, it's time to start thinking about what I want to put on my legs.  I'm thinking about text.  I'm throwing up ideas on the walls of my brain and seeing what I'd like to live with.

Things like,

Tomorrow when the farm boys find this
freak of nature, they will wrap his body
in newspaper and carry him to the museum.


But tonight he is alive and in the north
field with his mother. It is a perfect
summer evening: the moon rising over
the orchard, the wind in the grass. And
as he stares into the sky, there are
twice as many stars as usual.

"The Two-Headed Calf," by Laura Gilpin

and,

I was filled with what I'd felt as I crossed the tracks, just after that moment when I knew I wouldn't make it: the unexpected relief that I'd been wrong.

from "Read This and Tell Me What it Says," by A. Manette Ansay