Why, is that a dead fairy on your bum?

Any of you that know me know that I often have a perverse sense of humor. A perfect example of this being my desire to get a Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy tattoo. Now for those of you who don't know what they are read on. For 7 years my mom ran a Novelty store in our local "mall" I use quotations because it is more like a strip mall mutated by radiation. In this store we had everything from funny greeting cards to fake puke and whoopee cushions. We even had an 18 or older section with joke condoms and penis shaped cake molds. Looking back on my childhood there is little doubt where my innocent sense of humor began to take it's detour into the morbid and grotesque dirtiness it is now. But back to the fairies... sort of.... There was this tradition in my dad's family where everyone drew a name. The person you drew was the person you got a gift for... kind of like a secret Santa sort of thing. My cousin Carly and I are only 4 months apart and just to appease us they let us in on the drawing... we always drew each other.... imagine that. So every year I picked something out from the store (lucky her... who doesn't like fake poo?). Carly loved fairies and we just so happened to have this calendar called Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Calendar. I will dive more into details later, but for now the short of it. These weren't your ordinary fairies, these were dead squished fairies. I thought it would be a funny gift but I had no idea it would turn into a yearly tradition that to this day still makes me smile. She loved them so much that even into her college years she still plastered her dorm room with the poor flattened beings. It became our little thing.

The images in the calendar came from a book by Brian Froud (there are actually several of them) called LADY COTTINGTON'S PRESSED FAIRY BOOK. It was set up like a scrapbook journal of sorts. In which Lady Cottington often rambled on about strange things and just so happened to capture fairies and press them in the book like pressed flowers... only squishier... The images are fantastic and beautiful. As soon as I was old enough to even think about getting a tattoo I couldn't think of a better image to have permanently attached to me. I still haven't done it but I will. In recent years I have seen a few of them here and there (one of the suicide girls has her whole back done in them) I still hold on to the notion that I may not be an original but I bet I'm the only one who will be able to look at it and think about Holidays long past and a bond with my cousin that will, unlike the subject of our bond, never die.

The book cover

My FAVORITE one and probably the tattoo I will be getting... not on my butt as my husband suggested. Although I do see the humor in that I do admit :)

These are just some of the MANY great images. Every one of them makes me giggle.