Seahorse Tattoo!

I spent yesterday morning at the tattoo shop, getting this lovely watercolor seahorse inked on my right wrist! I have one other tattoo, a star outline on my foot that I got when I was 18, and I've long been considering another tattoo -- but this one had to be meaningful. I'd also been thinking lately that I wanted it to have something to do with Conan, our beloved furry baby who passed away about two years ago from lymphoma. I don't think I will ever stop missing him.

And the seahorse is meaningful -- it reminds me of this awesome day at the dog beach on the Air Force base where we lived in Hawaii. The tide was going out and we found this poor beautiful seahorse trapped way too close to the shore. So after photographing him and introducing him to our sweet Conan, we put him back out where he belonged. I love this picture of Conan making friends with the seahorse, and the tattoo is in part a tribute to him. He's the first thing I think of whenever I see a seahorse.

Here's a close-up of the seahorse. Isn't he gorgeous?


The seahorse also brings to mind a really happy period in my life. It was 2012, our last year in Hawaii. Jarrod had gotten home from a 6-month deployment to Afghanistan a couple weeks before and we'd just come back from a 10-day relaxation trip to Kauai, my mom was out for a visit (she took the picture above, on the same day as the seahorse rescue), I had some really good friends and a job I loved, we were busy doing all kinds of fun things (shark cage tour, parasailing, swimming with dolphins, going to the beach all the time) that we needed to cross off our Hawaii to-do list before we moved. Life ebbs and flows, and it'll be nice to have a little reminder on my wrist of one of the great times.


I took this picture to show the placement of the tattoo, but it strikes me that from a distance it kinda looks like the Dark Mark! (Leave it to me to find a Harry Potter reference -- ha!) I initially wanted it to be closer to my wrist, but I'm not sure I could've withstood the pain. This tattoo hurt approximately 1 trillion times more than my star and the lower on my arm the tattoo artist was working the more painful it was. So Dark Mark Seahorse it is! ;)

P.S. If you're curious, I went to John Lloyd at Truth & Triumph in Dayton.