Why Did I Already Finish This?

I am back in NYC after beginning the day of travel at 4:30am. This time around, it was harder than usual to leave the comforts of home. I'm not sure why, but several sneezing attacks and an encroaching sore throat yesterday amplified the dread of returning. No matter the fact I am hurdling toward my mid-20s, illness away from home is one of the worst feelings.

Today, amid power napping and chugging orange juice with the voracity of a college teen aiming for "Girls Gone Wild" stardom at the keg stand, I barreled through Jancee Dunn's latest, "Why Is My Mother Getting a Tattoo"?

If you've read "But Enough About Me", her first book, you're familiar with the closeness of her family. Now she devotes an entire book of essays to her ambivalence toward having children (don't fret, if you, like so many around her once did- she's a new mom), her parents' propensity for sending her volumes of irrelevant newspaper clippings (my own father sent me one jokingly my freshman year of college alerting me of the new Coyote Ugly opening in Memphis, with "You missed your chance" scrawled at the top), and of course, her mother's determination to get a black raven tattooed on her wrist.

I began the book on the first leg of my flight when I was trying to maintain breathing out of one nostril gracefully and chuckled not even discreetly. If my own family weren't alongside me on the cramped flight, cooing bolstering wishes of better health and checking my clammy forehead for fever, then reading Jancee Dunn's tales of her boisterous, close clan and its involvement in her wedding day, her quest for a new refrigerator, and her fertility is the next best thing.

But alas, I have plowed through the book. I may just start over again...although I could check for any openings at Coyote Ugly; I don't have Jancee's career just yet.

See Something, Say Something

I am not one to make light of casual threats by any means. My paranoia is such that why, just the other evening,  I convinced myself that I was suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning and was mentally divvying up my few worthwhile possessions amongst my friends should I not wake in the morning. So yes, you tell me a mysterious package has been found on the 1 train, and I will wake up an extra hour and a half to walk the 50 something blocks to work. 

So this I say: tourism is the new terrorism. 

I work in midtown Manhattan, the confluence of traffic from Times Square, Herald Square, Broadway shows, and Rockefeller Center. The height of the holiday season, I swear the city doubled in size, and I barely managed a shuffle on the sidewalk while I darted in and out of gawking visitors comparing pashmina colors and awkwardly getting amateur self-portraits from their friends in front of the M&M store. I would rather stay inside than tell them where the nearest Applebee's is. 

I had to run an errand in -shudder- Times Square today, and I am disheartened to tell you the threat of tourism is alive and thriving. I'd say we're at a burnt orange risk. 

But New Yorkers! Don't let them stop you from carrying on with your merry lives! Don't we have enough to deal with besides the influx of unwelcome guests? Last night you smelled maple syrup again, and this morning, you could have sworn that woman on the bus looked like she was about to faint and-ohmygod-if-she-vomits-these-are-brand-new-flats-and-even-though-they-violate-my-feet-in-10-different-ways-they-cost-me-3-days-of-meals-and-I-really-can't-deal-with-someone-ralphing-today-but-I-think-my-shoe-is-filling-up-with-blood-gotta-run, and even though you emerged unscathed, your bag was scanned for questionable particles by the NYPD en route home.  Thankfully, hand sanitizer is not deemed a hazardous liquid.

Sure I've been here just shy of four months, and I realize that's nowhere near the 10-year-minimum prerequisite for obtaining legit New Yorker status, but should you dare suggest I am no different than a tourist, so help me God, I will eviscerate you.

We can't let them win.