I hadn’t been planning to visit Brian at Body Electric on my next trip down to LA, but I'd also been hoping that I might be pregnant on my next trip down to LA. And you can't pierce your ears when you're pregnant, so the plan was to put it off for awhile - say, a year or so. Then I found out I wasn't, and wasn't going to be anytime soon - if ever, honestly - and finding this out coincided with a trip down to Los Angeles to so I could focus on finishing up our next book and also just be with Francesca while both of us take a minute to deal with some Big Life Things.

So I booked an appointment and went: all by myself, in the middle of the day. I took my time getting ready that morning; I curled my hair and put on an outfit I liked. Instead of coming in with a plan, I just showed up. Brian and I talked abut our lives for a bit - the good and the bad, but mostly the weirdness of these past few months - and when it came time to discuss what I was there for I just told him to do whatever he wanted.

This is what he did.

My kind of V-day celebration: A trip to the tattoo parlor.

Valentine's Day is a holiday I tend to skip over - or at least forget about until the very last second. When gifts are involved, though, I'm OK with them being a bit traditional - perfume, pajamas, that kind of thing. But I also realllllly don't like giving (or receiving) gifts that won't actually be used. It makes me anxious.

Last year, around Valentine's Day, Kendrick and I were going through a rough patch, and so I put in more effort than I think I've ever put into a gift in my life: I made him one of those personalized "The Story of Us" books, and it ended up being something we both pick up every once in awhile, when we need a reminder of what it is we're doing here. (And it doesn't have to be cheesy at all; I'll do an IG story later on today showing you a few pages of the one I made for K in case you want to make one and could use some ideas.)

glam | camp tee; sherpa blanket

Thanks to Samantha Bee, The Handmaid's Tale on Hulu, and the Richard Simmons podcast I have officially turned into the kind of person who wanders around all day with headphones on (a.k.a. a teenager). (The fact that they're rose gold makes me feel like that's okay.)

Just bought a pair of these off of TheRealReal and I'm not entirely sure this was a good idea. They're really small. And blue.

This is not me, obviously, but given the sweatshirt-and-no-pants vibe, it totally could be.

My luggage situation, I think we can all agree, is completely unacceptable. I'm not even talking about the "not arriving at the desired location, ever" part; at the moment I'm specifically referring to the physical luggage itself.

Which is terrible.