One more thing on the list is done...check!

It's funny what becomes important to you.

A couple of years ago, we got busy at work. Really busy. Extremely busy. I think a hurricane has something to do with that. Maybe...three hurricanes? Katrina. Rita. Wilma.

For months, sleep came in four hour increments. We seldom changed out of sweats. Showers? Ha! Leave the house? Hardly. One scrunched over the computer at home. One scrunched over the phone for hours, talking to people who had lost everything, and desperately wanted to find their pets. For weeks and weeks.

One of those weeks, I left my earrings out, and never put them back in.

Well, now and then I made a (literal) stab at it. Sometimes I succeeded. Sometimes I didn't. I was too busy to care one way or another. Earrings? Good God, people had lost everything they owned! Who gave a damn about what you looked like when you talked to them on the phone and answered email after email after email that asked for help....

Well, now, years/months later, dammit, I care. I have three holes in my ears, and only one is capable of hosting an earring. I am a casual enough person that the only reason I might even look "dressed up" is if I wear earrings.

So I figured I'd just go get them re-pierced. Not a biggee, right?

And then remembered how I got them pierced in the first place. A mall somewhere, by a 21 year old with a plastic gun. At the time, the 21 year old was older than I was. Now, the 21 year old would be less than half my age.

Uh uh. Ain't happening. So for many more months I scowled at myself in the mirror. When I walked by earring racks, I thought "Hey, those are pretty...well, crap, no good for me, huh?"

So where does a 45 year old go to get her ears pierced when they already have shadows of holes and you want someone to hit the mark rather than mangle your tiny bit of scar tissue?

Well, I went here.

Okay, first off, any place that has furniture that you might find at bachelor Uncle Dave's house, circa 1972, has some savvy. Their site map really doesn't do it justice. I'm sure I was in houses with furniture just like that when I was 12 or so. (I'd link to photos, but they have one of those sites where every page has the same apparent URL. It sure screws up blogging! I did steal one for this post).

You can hardly feel nervous sitting there in those battered black comfy chairs.

Anyone who owned furniture like that also had a pool table, I assure you.

Well, you can "hardly feel nervous" if you are only getting your ears pierced, that is. I supposed the furniture had a less intense effect on the young women awaiting tongue piercings.

As the woman at the counter photocopied my driver's license I looked up and happened to notice that Stiehl's Body Modification hosts an awful lot of cat sculpture.

A LOT of cat sculpture!

When my turn came, Dawn, one of the owners, escorted me to the exam room that looked exactly like your standard doctor's exam room.

Except for the cat and dog photos on the cabinet. Oh, they were very neatly arrayed. They were also beautiful photographs. But they covered EVERY inch of the cabinets.

Their site map will show you nice empty cabinets. Forget it. Cat photos. Dog photos. Every single inch. I assure you.

Needless to say, I thought a lot of Dawn right then.

Especially when she immediately launched into an explanation of how her cats were indoor cats, and they had built them an outdoor enclosure, etc. etc. etc.

I decided I really liked Dawn.

And then she pulled out a short metal implement and I realized I wasn't going to get a 1 second shot with a plastic gun. I was going to get my old ear holes plumbed the old fashioned way.

She went to work at my ears and I thought "Ok, this is a trifle uncomfortable" but in a mere 30 seconds one ear was back in action. She went to work on the other and her husband stopped by to lean against the door frame and chat. How can you feel uncomfortable when two people you just met moments before are chatting you up like old friends?

Turns out they live the next village over from me. (Around here, that makes you neighbors).

While she was working on the second ear, I began thinking back to when I first had my ears pierced. When it was a BIG deal because you were...what...14? 16? Back then? When you were actually nervous. And suddenly the discomfort turned into a sort of nostalgia. A recollection of a rite of passage. About a time when you worried that EVERYTHING might hurt...because you had really experienced nothing yet.

And here we are, all mature and jaded. And suddenly I was glad it actually hadn't just been two seconds with a plastic gun. I could have gotten that at the mall. Right?

When Dawn checked me out, the cost was absurdly low. $17 less than a discount neuter, to be exact. She said this was because she hadn't "actually" pierced my ears. They had already been pierced. I just paid for the three hoop earrings, three little blue beads to decorate them, and a moment of friendship.