I recently went back to the 'burbs for the holidays; we spent nine days there. The first three days were great: the over-sized grocer, The Healthy Bagel that served unhealthy asiago cheese bagels the size of a face, the mass-market madness strip malls, the privacy of staying in a home and being transported in a car...nice. But of course, boredom set in; I am a New Yorker. By day four, I was starting to hear horror movie soundtracks and see double while trying to find creative ways to walk around my sister-in-law's cul-de-sac.

You're either a city person or you are not, which seems straightforward enough, but really, that's a lie. On paper, I am a city rat, not a country mouse: I have lived in Urbanity since the age of eighteen because I like the way that a major city sounds, looks and smells at all hours of the day and night. I can get lost without ever really being lost, and am a natural speed-walking pedestrian: cars, bicycles, and city buses have nothing on me, and I have the nine lives to prove it. Of course, I have been mugged; I shrugged my shoulders, don't condemn all short Latino men in leather jackets (my mugger), and I still forget to zip my purse up. I hate chain restaurants, like seeing more than one shade of person, and I get bored where there are not five things going on at once; if there is not imminent mischief (and/or danger), I am not all that interested.

So, I guess that this all means that I may be deviant, or quite simply, not a "suburbs girl" -- and I emphasize the word think.

What I know, is that at times, I am not a city rat; I hate holding onto a greasy subway rail still warm and slick from the last hand that held it. I hate old and pushy hags with brassy accents in my cramped and yet exotic grocer. I hate slow-walking crowds and not knowing where one hundred bucks went at the end of any given day. There really are times that I hate New York - and I know that I am not ever supposed to utter those words...but, alas, they are true.

This city definitely has an energy to it; one of many trite and yet honest statements that makes New York City what it is. I have always, no matter what, embraced this manic energy upon return, however, this time, I was different: I found myself unable to breathe in a not-choppy way. I wanted to smack an entitled mom-jeans-wearing scarecrow with broom hair (but did not) who would not stop talking in my ear and reaching over my shoulder as I was paying for my T-shirt... My average thirty-five-block-per-day hustle began to feel like it would to other parts of the country -- exhausting.

Although I will never move to the south, much less a suburb within the south, there was something nice about having some arm-swing space. There was something serene about not being proudly or ingratiatingly pushy or rude on a daily basis. There was something appealing about doing jack shit except stuff my face and drink in front of a television set for a couple of days.

I guess this means I am need a country house, which means that I need a lot more money, the common consensus, which explains the craziness of many of us New Yorkers approaching a certain age past those still drunk and "hooking up" in Murray Hill or the LES.

I guess this means that New York and I are going to have to once again, reinvent our relationship.