Living Seoul

A few weeks ago I got my ears pierced for the fifth time. It was kind of on a whim, but it’s always been a strange goal of mine to fill my lobes with as many piercings as I could. I thought there was possibly room for one more. I refuse to blatantly pierce the cartilage because I don’t like how it looks. I also refuse tattoos. Lobe piercing is the only bodily mutilation I prefer.

Anyway, I was in Houston with my sister and her friend. She recommended a place where she’d gotten her nose pierced. Initially I got some sass from my piercer. He thought I was too uncertain about getting a piercing and thought I needed to do more research. Funny, I already had four holes in each ear. I know how it works. My problem was that I didn’t like the jewelry they had to put in. It all looked really industrial and hardcore piercing parlor…but I suppose that’s where I was. After I decided to go ahead with the large gnarly ring the piercer became friendlier. He ended up being a cool guy; I trusted him. It was the first time I’d gotten my ears pierced with a needle instead of a gun. I’d never had any problems with the gun (my other four holes had been done that way), but I wanted to be especially careful with this piercing because it was bordering the cartilage. The piercing itself didn’t hurt too bad. I definitely got an adrenaline rush.

The aftermath has been much worse. It’s been three weeks since I did it and my ears are still sore. One is healed pretty well but still randomly bleeds. (This morning I woke up with a blood crust. Lovely, I know.) The left ear gives me trouble. I think it’s been infected almost the whole time since I got it pierced. I’ve been taking care of the area–cleaning it with soap, saline solution, not putting my grubby fingers near it. It doesn’t seem to help too much. I read a bunch of internet horror stories of people who had to remove the ring, got keloids or weird messed up bumps and scar tissue. Or ear amputation. OMG. I don’t think mine will be that bad, but I’ve talked to people who said their ear never really healed. It’s just curious to me because I got all the other holes done with the UNSAFE GUN (heaven forbid) but I had absolutely no problems with the other piercings.

This is what it looked like about a week and a half ago. Also a close up…

Also, this is my sister eating part of a cheese log and crackers at an art studio at UH before we went to go pierce my ears. : )

Okay, finally, I’ve been cross stitching for about four years. Maybe more. I don’t even know how stitches many I’ve made. I gave almost all of them away as gifts. I want to start taking pictures of the ones I make because I wish I had some kind of gallery. So this is my first contribution. I made it for my friend…kind of an inside joke we had from high school. I love the violin!