My gift to myself last week was to make sure that everything in the kitchen was put away, the dishes washed, the stovetop cleaned of cooking splatter. The house was vacuumed, so walking in after a week away meant there wasn't an inordinate amount of dog hair and there was no kitchen clutter to work through before fixing myself dinner.

The thing I love about NYC is all of the walking. I did ride in a cab once, but the rest of the time it was subway or walking. My jeans were positively sagging when I got home yesterday, and I should have gone into my luggage for my belt but I didn't want to dig through that tightly-arranged pack. I was always very fit when I lived in the city because of the amount of walking, literally several miles a day.

I have plans here for the next few days - when I come home from a trip like this I'm able to see my house through someone else's eyes and target things that I'd like to put in order to make the house even better. My friend's apartment is 1 bedroom with several closets, a foyer, etc and is about 900 square feet - large by NYC standards. I feel positively rich here when it comes to space; my kitchen (without the dining area) is the same size as the bedroom in that apartment, and my hall from the living room past the bathroom is about the width of the kitchen there. Another friend, who just moved into a new high rise, has far less space, no storage (but she does have a washer/dryer closet), and we laughed about where she could mount IKEA cabinets on the walls. I showed her photos of the Greenwich Village apartment (occupied for 40 yeas by the friend I stay with) and we speculated at the apoplexy the peg boards and bright yellow paint would cause in this new building. :)