Anyone who really knows me well knows that I have the most disgusting nail and cuticle picking habit. And I found out that there’s actually a name for this: Onychophagia – it’s body-focused repetitive behavior and is considered a disorder. The picking habit supposedly stems from anxiety, whether it’s conscious or subconscious. For me, I know I tend to pick my cuticles and nails when I am either bored, irritated, or just idle. Ed actually had a nail picking habit, too, when he was around, and when I think about it, I realize we both got this terrible habit from our dad. My dad picks at his cuticles and his dry skin on his hands, and as someone who worked in construction, his hands were alway dry, flaky, scaly, and pretty scary to look at. My mom always used to lament that when she first met my dad, he had such smooth, beautiful hands… then, after years of working in the glazing industry to install glass, his hands became her worst nightmare.

However, there is one time when I will definitely not pick at my nails or cuticles at all, and that is when they are polished. It doesn’t matter if it’s regular nail polish, gel, Calgel, whatever — if I can see that they look beautiful and presentable, the picking just does NOT happen. And when I was spoiled with manicures every few months while working at a agency, when Google used to take my small team for mani/pedis on the regular, I realized how nice it could be to be treated to something that I once thought was so superfluous and superficial.

I tried painting my own nails on and off. I really just don’t have a very steady hand, especially painting with my left hand. I also don’t have the patience to let it dry completely. I resorted to just painting my nails clear since that was enough to prevent my picking habit, plus clear dries so much more quickly. But when I met up with a friend in Boston last summer and noticed how nice her nails looked, she told me that she made time to do it every week, once a week on the same day. “It’s my self care,” she said. “This is the time I get to myself to focus on my nails, and then I am rewarded with this for the rest of the week!”

“Self care.” It seems to be a term everyone is talking about now. I even get Instagram ads targeted to me in regards to self care — this pertains to everything from manicures, spa treatments, bath salts, scented soy candles… all of that. I’m not sure how I feel about this because as a marketing ploy, anything could be labeled self care as a justification for purchasing whatever it is, whether it’s an object or an experience.

If I get my nails done professionally, I might get them done once or twice a year, and I realized that last year, I didn’t get them done a single time. So I decided to splurge today on a gel design at a trendy Japanese nail salon near my office. My nail technician spent an hour and a half on me — longer than I anticipated, but I appreciated the level of detail she gave me (and even the Harry Potter movie I got to watch while she worked on my nails).

After I left the salon, I kept staring at my nails and admiring them. It wasn’t cheap to get a design with a gel, but I justified it in my head because a) I didn’t get my nails done at all in 2019, and b) they told me this would last for 3-4 weeks. Well, maybe this really is self care. And maybe these little splurges are worth it, if not just to express creativity in a different way, but also to prevent myself from skin and nail picking.

As a tribute to the 9/11 victims and what was formerly the World Trade Center, the city’s architects constructed the World Trade Center subway station, in addition to a brand new shopping center and what is being called the Oculus, a massive glass and steel structure that is intended to resemble “a bird flying from the hands of a child.” In its meaning, the structure is intended to symbolize and bring hope to the site of tragedy.

But because this is New York, there’s going to be shops and money-making businesses to flank these beautiful memorial structures. And so there is a massive retail space that’s part of the Oculus, where not only are there actual luxury brick and mortar shops, but also spaces in the middle of the Oculus that pop-up retailers can rent by the month. One of these vendors who will be at the Oculus until late spring will be No Chewing Allowed, a seasonal French truffle store that can usually be found temporarily at the holiday markets across the city around the Thanksgiving to New Year’s period. I have likely seen them at the Union Square Holiday Market every single year since I’ve moved to New York, no fail, and their samples are always a free treat at this market. You always know them because the person handling them out continuously repeats, “no chewing allowed!” The idea is that you’re supposed to let it melt in your mouth, otherwise you ruin the entire chocolate enjoyment experience. I already do this regardless when eating any chocolate unless it’s a cookie, so I wouldn’t do anything differently.

My cousin who lives in the Bay Area requested that I pick up a box for him because he’d tried these as a gift from his brother, and he and his wife were completely obsessed with them. While they are good, there’s nothing particularly amazing to them for me. They’re just like any other truffle, maybe a little softer. And it also bothers me that their second ingredient listed is palm oil. Am I mostly paying $22 per box for a bunch of palm oil? The label doesn’t even tell you the chocolate percentage!

Tonight, we finally went to see Hamilton the musical. While it would have been ideal to have seen it when Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator/song-writer, was in it, that ship had unfortunately sailed years ago, but tonight’s performance did not disappoint. I will say that I did read up on Hamilton and his history and legacy prior to watching the musical, and I feel like if I hadn’t, some of the topics/songs being sung would not have made as much sense to me if I had not had this prior knowledge. Plus, it can be difficult to rely on songs and raps that go so quickly for all the bits of information unless you either do pre-reading or pre-listening to the songs. Now, I understand why so many people I know listened to the soundtrack over and over before actually going to see the musical. It all makes sense now!

But now that we’ve finished watching the musical, it’s truly amazing 1) how diverse the cast was (purposely done this way by Lin-Manuel Miranda, and 2) how high energy the entire production was; it was as though there was no calm, no real break in dancing/high energy singing to be had. Lin-Manuel Miranda was quoted saying that he made the cast diverse to really highlight what Hamilton was all about as an immigrant himself from the West Indies. And if you want to highlight that, what better way to do that than to show people of different colors and backgrounds on the set of the show? It’s most definitely one of the most notable Broadway shows I’ve ever seen — the rap and music made it so, so unique and different from anything else I’ve seen before.

This is one of those soundtracks that I’ll likely be listening to over and over again on Spotify, similar to how after I saw Phantom of the Opera, I listened to the soundtrack for months and months after. Seeing the musical has also made me want to learn more about Eliza Hamilton, who was Alexander Hamilton’s wife. She sounds like a force to be reckoned with.