This Week in Work: The Navel Tale and More

I shouldn’t even be blogging, but I should because I want to get into the role of writing again.  I have writer’s block.  Well, I have honestly been writing a lot, just not blog writing.  I’ve been writing poetry plenty, and musings and such.  Just blah on the blog front.  So I have Blogger’s Block. 

I have a busy week ahead of me.  I have a Drifting Sun print job for Jackson’s Bar, hopefully I will be printing those Thursday.  I have to do screens and graphics for this job yet before printing.  I have a day of piercing lined up for this Wednesday.  It will be my first near full day of piercings, I hope to get a good number lined up so it is worth it. 

I’ve begun a self apprenticeship in piercing, as I said, and I had a week of nostrils and navel.  This week I am going to do lips and labrets, and possibly some others.  I’m currently still lining up some guineas.  (I mean no disrespect to people from New Guinea, or guinea pigs or anything of the sort, I simply reply to my subjects/patients/heros as guineas.  I appreciate all of the guinea pigs that are allowing me to learn on them!)  Hopefully I can get a decent day of it scheduled out so it’s worth while lining up a sitter for so long.

I will be attempting lips and labrets.  All new to me!  Last week I did two nostril piercings and a navel.  They all went really well.  The nostril, I had done before as I blogged, on myself.  These ones were done with corkscrew jewelry studs, though, which can prove to be difficult getting to turn to follow the needle through.  I have also done my own navel, I mentioned, only completely incorrectly with a safety pin.  The navel.  THE NAVEL.  That is the tricky one.  But having all the proper supplies to do it was so much easier.

The navel piercing is very popular, mostly with teenage girls.  This is one of the things that make it actually one of the more difficult piercings to do.  They aren’t always great with their aftercare and a navel can take up to 9 to 12 months or longer to heal fully at times.  This isn’t me targeting anyone, this is what I’ve read in my books/studies.  I’ve been on my subject like a hawk about aftercare!  She’s been great!  It’s doing well. 

The navel piercing itself was a little odd.  The needle pierced through fine, I just had trouble getting the jewelry to follow the needle through, as it didn’t fit into the hollow end of the needle well because they were the same gauge.  I finished it up and it went well, but there was a moment where I was almost afraid I would have to stop and not be able to do it.  I thought I wouldn’t be able to get the jewelry through for a split second, but I was determined, apologized to my subject, and lined them up and got ‘er through!  BAM! The biggest problem was getting enough of her skin in the forceps to pierce well enough.  That’s another problem with navels.  They reject and migrate often because there isn’t always a good amount of skin to be pierced there.  No two navels are made alike and there are some that just simply can not be pierced!  You must assess the situation.  I decided she was capable, although hers was a little elongated (like a coin slot) which we joked about. 
  

I need to line up my guineas and be aware of which piercings they are interested in so I can prepare myself properly.  So hopefully everything goes well Wednesday and I am able to get my printing done while still being able to write a few things here and there.  Mondays are so crazy.  I sat down last night (on Sunday) and actually tried to plan my week out some and contacted people about this week.  It was good to start ahead, so hopefully I can keep up with that momentum.  I’m already hittin’ the coffee hard, and I’m gonna need it for this week! 

Piercing Through,

Missie Sue

November Blog #22: "This Land is My Land; This Land is Your Land!"

NaBloPoMo Prompt of the Day (Nov 22): What is the luckiest thing that has ever happened to you, and why?

When I was just dating my husband, we were staying with his brother and his fiance and their 18 month baby daughter, now my niece.  My husband had lived with them for years, it was just the arrangement they had.  When we started dating, I moved in with them and lived with them for approximately 4 months maybe.  I ended up being kicked out by my now sister in law.  Some people would think it odd that I am friendly with her today, but I am and actually, she is one of the best friends I have had in my whole life.  She is family.  She is my sister.  That is how it is now, but it wasn’t always that way.  I was luckily able to turn the other cheek, and all has been forgotten.  Well, apparently not forgotten, but it has been overlooked.  Our relationship means more to me than petty misunderstandings and rocky beginnings.  It’s bigger and deeper than that, and regardless of the reason for the eviction, it isn’t the point of this blog---the chain reaction of events that happened after being kicked out is the point of this blog.  I see this as being very “lucky” in determining the future of our lives and “where we are” today…literally. 

I convinced my husband that as my boyfriend it was insulting to him if he stayed behind without me.  I had no where else that I could go immediately other than my parents' house.  I hadn’t really lived there in nearly 5 years at this point, but I called up my folks and explained the situation and they were happy to take us in temporarily.  My husband had been working for my father at the time temporarily so he had gained some respect from him, which is kind of tough to do and had a lot to do with them taking him right into their home with me which I am grateful for.  Anyway, we slept on a mattress on the floor of my parents’ basement for what ended up being around 3 months. 

While we were staying there we started cleaning out the “Old Part” as we called it, which was actually the small house that we had when I was a little girl until around the age of 6 that was still left attached to the new house at the time.  It had been used for storage for years after they built the new addition on.  It shared a room off of the basement with the new house, the room above this which was my parents’ old bedroom was now their office, but other than that it could be completely shut off from the rest of the house to be a small house of its own.  My parents had rented it out for a few years when I was around 10 or so to family members twice.  We ended up cleaning it out, thinking we were going to stay over there, as I was already keeping my clothes in the closet in one of the rooms over there and mostly using the shower in the bathroom.  For some reason, after cleaning the majority of the house out, we didn’t end up moving into it.  I can’t remember if it was because of what happened next or if what happened next happened because that didn’t happen.  Either way…

A friend of ours was renting the trailer we live in now with her boyfriend off of my father.  This place is maybe a quarter of a mile behind my parents’ house back in the woods.  They ended up splitting somewhere around the time my husband and I moved in with my parents.  The boyfriend wasn’t able to come up with the rent after she left because she was apparently paying it when they were together, so ultimately he had to move out, which left this place up for rent.  Having done odd jobs for my father before and during the time of our stay, I ended up cleaning the trailer for him in between renters during which time I was also checking it out for us.  In some weird way I have always had my eyes on this place.  It has the best location for a forest dwelling hermit.  3 other of our friends had rented it off of my dad and stayed here also for a year or so back before I was with my husband.  So I had been around the place and had been visiting it.  I had never entirely left it.  

"I feel home---when I'm chillin' outside with the people I know!"
- OAR, I Feel Home

When we were young kids, my brother and I would play up here on the hill.  A little ways down the driveway my father used to have a small graveyard of old cars.  My brother and I used to play in them all of the time.  Also, before my father put the trailer that is here now on this piece of land when I was in my teens, he had an old school small, aluminum, rounded-back mobile trailer here.  I remember playing in it as a little kid as well, and staying here with my father a time or two when my mother was away.  It was a camp for him and he and his friends occasionally stayed there. 

We ended up renting this place off of my dad starting in February of 2004.  We rented for 3, going on 4 years, until we got married in July of 2007 and my father presented us with “The Deed to the Ranch” as he called it. 

“Now we know we’ll be here forever!”   
- Boyd Lucas

Yeah, we do.  It was very exciting when we got the place for all of us, including my friends.  I was completely shocked.  “Lock, stock, and barrel,” the deed my father wrote up himself said.  I had never been given something so big in my entire life, maybe other than life itself.  He gave us land.  We owned a home.  It was amazing.    

It was the biggest gift I had ever received and it was the greatest thing I ever “lucked into”.   Just think, it all would never have happened just how it happened if I hadn’t been kicked out of where we were.  I never would have come to live with my parents and had been looking for a place to live right when this place came up for rent.   Now we have our very own chunk of pretty in the woods, land for our children to run and grow up on and ultimately inherit.  As luck should have it, we became homeowners.

Home Sweet Home, circa 2008

November Blog #21: "As I Sit Here in the Drifting Sun"

Prompt of the Day (Nov 21): The Business of Being Born is a passion project. Are you pursuing a passion project?

I suppose that aside from being my “business”, Drifting Sun has really been a giant passion project of sorts for me.  I have never known what I really wanted to do with my life, per se.  I knew all of my interests.  I knew what I didn’t want to do, maybe.  But pinpointing it down to one niche, I could never seem to do.

I went to college and got a degree in Integrative Art, but after graduation, what did that even mean?  I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to do the whole time I was working toward my degree.  I knew I wanted to do something.  But figuring out what, I could never seem to do.

After my husband and I moved into our current residence, I had graduated college and hadn’t gone out to find a job yet.  We weren’t rich or “set”, but the good news was his income allowed me to stay at home and not work right away.  The idea of a homemaker was always sort of a romantic notion, but I had always been driven to do something more with my life.  I have always wanted to be a mother and I greatly wanted to be able to do something that would allow me to eventually stay at home with my children.  I wanted to contribute and do my part.  Even though simply maintaining a household can be quite demanding work and is definitely a job in and unto itself, I was unsatisfied with this.  As a woman, I wanted to be able to support myself in some way, shape, or form.  I wanted to feel like I was doing my part.  We had no children yet to take care of and weren’t planning on having any until we were married; I had time to pursue what I wanted to do.  If I could only figure out what it was. 

During college, I had started sewing in my spare time.  I started making purses, blankets, curtains, etc.  I would make them for my friends and myself.  I eventually started ironing little “Handmade by Missie Sue” labels in them.  After college, I was able to focus more on improving my sewing skills since it was what I was doing at the time for creativity.  I ended up starting an eBay store and trying to sell my “duds”.  Around the same time I came upon screen printing and it seemed to utilize so many of my learned college skills, so in 2005 I formed Drifting Sun, my handmade clothing and silk screen printing services business…or was it?  To this day, Drifting Sun, like it’s founder, is technically without a definite purpose.  I print t-shirts for people; I print my own prints; I sell band shirts; I sell purses and earrings and odds and ends I make.  Drifting Sun basically is whatever I make it…literally. 

I have recently taken a hiatus of sorts from the biz while I was pregnant with and had my daughter.  I printed 2 jobs while I was pregnant, which I got assistance with because I was afraid of the fumes in my printing shop.  I have printed 1 job since and am planning on printing one here before Christmas.  I suppose this feels right.  I do enjoy printing my own designs immensely more than I do those commissioned for businesses, and groups, etc.  I can do both, but lacking space and money makes it a slow process, but I continue.    

Drifting Sun has been a battle with myself; it has been a project I have been trying to get fully passionate about, but like its owner, is a bit unclassified and without direction.  Where do I focus?   

“How can I go forward when I don’t know which way I’m facing?” -  John Lennon

I feel I am at somewhat of a stand still.  Sometimes I question if I am capable of such lofty endeavors.  Not only is it hard single-handedly establishing and running a business, it is also hard to be a stay at home mother and even harder to have your significant other away about 70% of the time, so sometimes I get a little discouraged, but I press on.  I believe that Drifting Sun is a beautiful vision and it deserves my all.  Logically, I understand that it can't have this, but I still can give it my best.  I don’t feel I have yet given it that.  So I continue until it feels right.  I continue to see if I can have my cake and eat it too.  And so the saga continues---here’s to finding my niche with Drifting Sun, and to Drifting Sun finding its niche in the world of small businesses.