Amanda Moose

Shhhh. I have a secret.
Well it's not a secret really, at least not when I'm wearing short sleeves.

I love tattoos.

Yeah that's right, I'm one of those cool, edgy moms that shows up to her kids parent teacher conferences with my ink a blazin'. Actually that's a lie. I usually wear cover up for those, but not much else.

I only have 3 tattoos right now, but surely if I could I would have them all over me; lots of beautiful art marking my body. But alas tattoos are expensive and I'm a frugal mom with a tight budget. But still, a girl can dream.

Tax returns, the one and only time of the year when I can splurge are here. This years purchase, the same as last years in fact, was a new piece of ink.

Long long ago I used to be Amanda Moose. When I was a kid I hated, loathed, despised, and any other negative adjectives that you can think of, that last name. When I was young kids made fun of me. When I was a teenage most people called me by my last name and not my first. It drove me nuts. I used to joke around and say that I couldn't wait to get married and change my last name. And believe me, as soon as I said "I Do" that was the first thing that I did.

Being a girl with a last name like Moose is much harder than being a boy with that last name. My three younger brothers own their last names, especially now as they reach adulthood. I often find myself stealing their clothing, mostly the sweatshirts they get from the school for baseball or wrestling, or football, or whatever sport they are playing during that particular season, the personalized ones with their last name printed in big bold letters across the back. It's a lie when I say that I steal them because they are comfortable. Pulling on one of those sweatshirts is the only way that I can wear my former last name nowadays.

I had kicked around the idea of getting another tattoo for awhile now, because really once you get one all you want to do is get more and you start planning out what and where for the next one almost immediately. Ask anyone with a tattoo, they'll agree wholeheartedly, I assure you. I was talking to my younger brother Ron over the summer, the day after my mom caught me trying to swipe yet another shirt and jokingly said that I wasn't a Moose anymore, and said that we should get matching Moose tattoos. It all kind of evolved from there.

So away Ronald (the only one of my three younger brothers who is an adult and can legally get a tattoo on his own) and I went to the tattoo shop to get our matching Moose tattoos, his on his back under his left shoulder blade and mine down the back of my right arm.



All of my tattoos are significant to me, and to be honest I think that people who walk into a tattoo shop and point at a picture on the wall and mark their body with it because it's pretty are idiots. It's a permanent thing and should hold some sort of value to you, This one is probably the most significant of my three. I may not have Moose as my last name anymore, as I do so proudly have the surname of my husband, but I will forever be able to wear my maiden name and it will always be a part of me.