The Dream Shop

Bumps your ankle

Bumps your ankle

Bumps your ankle

Anyway, the next night we watched a thing about some pig man who is supposed to live in Vermont. People said it had claws and a pig nose but walked upright like a man. Now, I happen to know that sideshows used to shave bears and present them as pig men. So every piece of evidence they gave of this monster sounds to me like a bear with mange.

So now the running joke in our house is that everything is bears. Aliens? Bears. Loch Ness monster? Bear. Every cryptozoological mystery is just a very crafty bear.

Anyway.

It has been very pleasant out. We had the windows cracked and left them cracked when we went to work. This has never been an issue before.

My darling spouse was working on a job in a small town about a mile from our place. He was getting some stuff from the work van when he sees a large white dog prancing along.

"Huh." He thinks. "That looks an awful lot like.....TYR WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE."

Tyr, delighted that she has Found Father, bounds up happily and gets in the work van to give face kisses.

"GIRL NO WHAT." Kev says, scrambling to go let the client know that he has to take the fucking criminal back home real quick.

Turns out she discovered that a window can be shoved open with a determined snoot, and a window screen is not as strong as 80 pounds of muscular dog. And went for an adventure.

I got a call at this point while I was doing payroll.

"BABE WE NEED TO BABY GATE ALL THE FUCKING WINDOWS." My spouse says.

"....okay??" I say, and then get the story. I swore a bunch.

He is correct. It is hot leaf water. And the leaves matter. And the temperature of the water matters. And the vessel you drink it from matters. And who you share it with matters most of all.

For a number of years, my husband and I have had a running joke about trying to find the stupidest and unsexiest tramp stamp possible. Some of the contenders were Grandpa's janky bed from Stardew Valley or maybe SuperGrover, but none of them seemed quite right.

A year ago I noticed in the notes that my infamous bear post was 9 years old. I joked to my husband, "What if I got that as a tramp stamp?" We laughed. We paused. "But no, for real maybe I should do that," so I set a challenge. The post had just over 400,000 notes at the time, and I thought, "Maybe if it gets to half a million before the 10 year anniversary," but then decided, "That's too easy. They'll do that in a month or two." And you would have, so I upped it to the next nice round number of a million, knowing 2 things: 1: you'd never make it to a million (especially since I had comments turned off for the first six months until I figured out how to turn them back on), and 2: I was always going to do it anyway.

I was hoping to get more of it done before the deadline and was even scheduled for another session, but then my husband broke his foot and I had to reschedule and my tattoo artist left for France, so I won't be able to get it finished until probably July or August. There's more to be added and cleaned up, including colour, but here it is right now. I did not want to share my butt crack with the entire internet, so please enjoy the surrogate butt crack.

yes, India made legal gender change impossible but my friends have always gendered me correctly and stick to it even when it confuses other people and my friend's little sibling calls me older brother in Kannada yes, India made legal gender change impossible but my dog learned my new name quicker than the humans and she runs to give me a kiss when she's told to without being confused about who's being referred to

yes, India made legal gender change impossible but I can feel the Adam's apple growing in my throat and my muscles getting stronger, and my smile more real and I'm growing a beard, and I talk more freely

Anyway, the next night we watched a thing about some pig man who is supposed to live in Vermont. People said it had claws and a pig nose but walked upright like a man. Now, I happen to know that sideshows used to shave bears and present them as pig men. So every piece of evidence they gave of this monster sounds to me like a bear with mange.

So now the running joke in our house is that everything is bears. Aliens? Bears. Loch Ness monster? Bear. Every cryptozoological mystery is just a very crafty bear.