Or so I’m told.

When most people think of Seattle, they think coffee. Then they think tattooed weirdos. We have some of the best tattoo artists in the world working within a 30 minute drive of our house; people even travel to get a tattoo here.

Haleigh and I wanted to do something different for our anniversary this year. 17 years if you can believe it. Haleigh also wanted to get a tattoo before her 40th birthday. Two birds, as they say.

Haleigh has known for a long time what she wanted: “I am greater than my highs and lows.” There aren’t a lot of inspirational diabetic mantras, but that one is pretty great. Rendered into simple lines, it looks rad as hell.

Truth be told the only reason I hadn’t gotten a tattoo yet, despite living here 8 years, is simply I could never decide what to get. It seemed too late to get the standard Marine tattoo of an Eagle, Globe, and Anchor (though now that I’ve broken the seal I feel less precious about that) and everything else just seemed generic. I’ve never been one to think tattoos have to have meaning, but given the permanence there should be some significance.

Mine is an EKG line with “I’ll be dead soon” in Morse code. It’s something I say fairly often. Though not as cool as when Dan Daly said “Come on you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?,” it 1/ has the same energy, and more importantly 2/ it’s short enough to do in Morse code. I like the reminder that life is short and you only get one. It’s like dark YOLO.