you remind me of the babe

The neighbors I'm goatsitting for live over by a huge swampy area called the Black Slough, so every spring they have terrible problems with gnats, tiny little no-see-um gnats that bite you everywhere.  So since I have been playing midwife I have gnat bites all over in my hair and around my ears, and if I lived in a place with no-see-ums?  Would move.  This is no way to live.  And yet half of the people in our ward deal with the gnats every year.  You can't even go outside!  Poop on that is what I say.  A few years ago my uncle Kenny, whose house is also near the Black Slough, was talking about how much he hates going to the doctor--he was going through chemo at the time--and he said, "I would rather thin beets with a short-handled hoe in the gnats than go to the doctor."  For people who understand sugar beets and hoes and gnats, that is a powerfully vivid image.

A girl I know is getting a roller skate tattoo for her birthday, and it caused me to wonder--what is a relationship with a tattoo artist like?  Do you always use the same person, or do you bebop around?  It seems like going to a new artist would be even more awkward than changing hairdressers, but maybe tattoo artists aren't actually very territorial.  Maybe they understand that certain artists are right for certain designs, and they have no problem with you using the best artist for the job.  It's a tricky world to navigate, man.  So many feelings to consider.  

I wish it were always fall, so I could wear boots and cook ham and it would rain instead of snow.  Which is the autumnest of states?  Vermont, maybe, or New Hampshire?  I should move there I guess, except for I'm pretty sure those places get snow, yuck.  Washington seems pretty autumnal, and maybe Montana, but I refuse to move to Montana unless forced by global climate change.  And I'm sure they get snow.  Snow is horrid.  Why is there not a machine to create a portable climate, so everyone could be where they're the happiest?  This is probably not even the fakest thing that we could invent.  This is just money waiting to be made, guys.