Went to the optometrist today. Had a good conversation with the tech and I kind of wanted to be her real life friend. How does that work? Can I ask her to hang out? I still haven’t figured out how you’re supposed to make friends as an adult.

Anyway, does anyone else find it awkward when the optometrist is all up in your face while a sexy ballad plays in the background?

Got out of my appointment at 10:50, which left me exactly 10 minutes to speed over to the nearest McDonald’s for a bacon, egg, and cheese bagel, which is always my reward if I manage to make it out of the house on a weekend before 11:00, which only happens once a year when I have to go to the optometrist. I know what you’re thinking: “But J-Bo, McDonald’s breakfast now lasts all day long!”

Well, I’m here to say: not so. In the state of Iowa, I’ve learned that all day McDonald’s breakfast really just means: All Day Breakfast as Long as You Only Want a McMuffin, and Otherwise Go Fuck Yourself.

So that’s false advertising.

The big news in my life is that Noemi and I have booked a trip to St. Martin island for our second annual February Sucks Caribbean Getaway. We planned and booked the trip over the course of a single phone call (we hadn’t even heard of St. Martin when we got on the phone), that can best be summarized by the following Bitmoji:

The other big news in my life is that I’m now a gamer. Doug and I have never owned a gaming console together, and I hadn’t actually played a videogame since the 90’s, but then the wedding happened, and Amazon gift cards happened, and then ordering a Wii and Donkey Kong Country Returns happened, and, in the words of Jo Dee Messina, “I ain’t never lookin’ back and that’s a fact.”

DKReturns

I love this game! I used to be the type of person who secretly felt superior to anybody who wasted their time thinking about fake game worlds, but now I’m the type of person who sits at work scanning Donkey Kong Wiki and Googling “WHAT DOES THE BIG RED BUTTON IN THE COG JOG LEVEL OF FACTORY LAND DO?!”

Today was one of my designated days to devote to my book revisions, which I hope to have finished by MLK day. But two hours in to my work, I got such an intense urge to paint my nails half pink and half black that I literally could not focus on anything else. It was the strangest thing. I had never previously seen nor contemplated half pink/half black nails before, but suddenly I needed them more than the oxygen I breathe.

So I layered up, drove to Walgreens in the falling snow, and thirty minutes later had given myself my “I’m Finishing My Book Revisions This Week, Dammit” manicure:

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As I admired it, it hit me: half pink and half black = half soft and half fierce. That’s what you need to be a writer, I think. That’s what it takes to finish a book.

J-Bo out.