My step-common-law-father-in-law, Paul, was fascinated with my decision to get a tattoo: “I just want to know what makes people want to mark themselves permanently.” He is the one who took the photo I posted, back when the Goblin Foo Tattoo was fresh and glistening. “I just want something to remember this time in my life,” was my quick answer, and this turned out upon reflection to be true. For over seven years, a period of time in which I met and married my husband, moved from Baltimore to New York City and back to Baltimore, bought a house, started this blog, and started a new business, the one constant in that transformative whirlwind has been my sweet little dog.

My acupuncturist says that people get tattoos when they change on the inside and want to reflect that on the outside.

Amanda George says that the tattoo was there all along, and the sharp, sharp, buzzing needle just uncovers it.

Amanda George’s father says that people don’t get tattoos because they’ll always want to be branded with a particular image, but because it will remind them of the time when they did want it.

To all of which I say, “Yes, and more.”

Life doesn’t happen in a vacuum. I can’t control whether the rising sea levels will flood out my business, whether George W. Evil is going to escalate a war or an economic depression that destroys my way of living forever, or even whether my own body is going to respond in the way I want to those countless hours in the gym or my (preternaturally slow) aging process. But my Foo Tattoo is one of the few things I do have control over: I arranged for the design and the placement, I picked the artist, I paid for it with money I earned, and it will be where it is until the flesh falls from my bones. It is mine, and it is me in a way that nothing else can be.

I like it.