Ah, romance
Greetings, friends!
Zach and I spent Valentine’s Day getting matching tattoos at our local studio. It’s been years since my last one, a 12x6” illustration of a citrus tree and hummingbird. I struggled to hold still long enough for the artist to finish, my thigh muscles twitching so hard I could have sworn she’d swapped out her tattoo gun for a taser. It hurt so bad that I never went back to get it colored in. My beautiful little orange tree is still gray. The combined cost and pain resulted in a tattooing 7 year hiatus. But Zach’s been getting a bunch of cute little flash tattoos over the last few years, and perhaps 7 years was just enough time for me to forget just how much I like not feeling bad. So, when he told me about the Valentine’s day flash special at the studio down the block, I proposed we get matching lockets with each other’s initials. He loved the idea, so we made our appointments and I braced myself for agony. I prepared as best I could—slathered myself with lidocaine an…