Man, the city sure kicked my butt today. I had two things to do, count ’em, one-two, and I was leaving the house early to get them out of the way, and then I was gonna come home and get back to work.

But first there was the cold, that kind of deceptive cold that looks like a beautiful spring day from your living room, but that you realize, as soon as you step outside, is really just cold. Slicing-through-your-bones cold. Turning-your-insides-blue cold.

Then there was the twenty-minute queue at the frame shop, where the guy behind me in line murmuring sweet nothings into his cellphone had halitosis enough that for twenty minutes I smelled every word he was saying. Shuddeyr. (That’s French.) (Well, no, I know, it’s not, really.)

Then there was getting to the front of the line, and telling the dude behind the desk what I needed done, and having him say: “No.”

And then of course there were the SoHo tourists doing that thing where they cross the street and then, once they’ve stepped onto the curb on the other side, stop abruptly while they decide whether to go straight, or left, or right, or, wait, left, or straight, or straight, or right, wait— aaaaaa

There was a seat on the train home, hooray, but actually not really hooray, in fact not hooray at all, because as soon as I’d nudged myself past the woman in the outer seat and sat on the warm plastic and shoved my bags into the corner, an aura of moist sweatiness rose up around me, the foul phantom of whoever’d been sitting there before, caressing my cheeks with its invisible sticky fingers.

Is this what’s been going on in the city while I’ve been sequestering myself in my bedroom with my books the past week? Because, fine, World, you can have your stinky dudes and your waffling out-of-towners. I’m taking a nap.