I spent yesterday being the little old woman I always hoped I would be. That is, in my discount jeans, with my bulging tote bags and my bright red plastic shoes, I wandered around in Manhattan being either a lady of leisure or a homeless person.

My outfit was indeed not elegant. A security guard kept a close eye on me in one store, and wished me a pointed “good day” when I left without buying anything. I saw someone like me leaving Orbis earlier, though she was skinnier and more rumpled; after she stepped out, the security guard came to the door and blocked it against her return.

I had gone to the city with the intention of visiting a stationery store in Brooklyn I had never seen, but I ended up taking the subway the wrong way (I have done this before, and it’s no big deal), so I got off in the West Village, walked through throngs of young people in purple robes celebrating their NYU graduation, and went to a different stationery store I’ve visited before.

Later, I strolled around Rockefeller Center, which I also had never visited before in a lifetime of wandering around New York City. I always avoided the area as much as I could, because that stretch is a maelstrom of oblivious tourists who are hitting the highlights on the visitor list. I’m alone and moving fast, and I have no patience for going around the many sidewalk huddles of four or five people debating where to go next. Now, however, I have added Rockefeller Center to my list of nice places to go when it’s cold or rainy, because there are indoor stores and restaurants and I can sit and dry off or warm up. Other places like that are Grand Central Station, Hudson Yards, Chelsea Market, and the Metropolitan Museum (where I can go for free because I have a membership).

In the basement of Rockefeller Center, another security guard asked pointedly if he could help me. I just pointed at the ladies room and smiled, and he let me go.

In the old flagship Barnes & Noble, I bought some fizzy water and trail mix in the cafe, and the cashier loudly asked me if I wanted the bathroom code, and then circled it on my receipt, which was nice of her, sort of. I sat at a table with some napkins, and filled a fountain pen from a new bottle of ink, and then panicked for a while because it seemed to be leaking. Pretty soon my little table was a wilderness of crumpled napkins with black stains (my palm is still stained). It turned out I had just dipped it too far into the bottle, but you better believe I used that bathroom code (after cleaning off my table, because I am not a hooligan).

Twice yesterday, I’m not sure when, I sat in Bryant Park for a while and had a snack. I love Bryant Park. It’s what a city square should be, full of places to sit, things to do, and people to watch, some of them as raffish as I am, others bizarrely elegant, and at least one gentleman screaming epithets at an inoffensive man he did not know, who got up and went to a different table while the screamer wandered off gesturing at the air. Bryant Park is where I feel most like a lady of leisure with a respectable income, and also where I feel most like a street person. Thus, everything is in balance.

Also yesterday, I bought the new red Crocs I wore for the rest of the day. The cashier at the Croc store, after he helped me find my size, told me he liked my nose piercing. I purchased a piece of tableware at Macy’s, because I had broken one of the bowls in my place setting. I spent a couple hundred in the New York Public Library bookstore on a silk scarf and a pair of reading glasses. It’s a nice gift shop. I recommend it. I found a different bookstore I had been searching for, and bought a couple of books. My inexpensive tote bags were now bulging, and I thus had achieved the requisite genteel degree of street-person appearance (I have my standards, so I don’t use the bright red Target bags so common with bag ladies in my area. They break too easily. But one of my folding totes, which was black, did have the Target logo on it.)

And during my visit to Rockefeller Center, I shoved a heavy brass door slowly open and went into a hushed and civilized fountain pen store, where I was treated with great dignity and courtesy by a tall, muttering gentleman who recognized I knew pens and permitted me spend several hundred dollars on a bright yellow object of great exuberance. He did offer to ship me the pen so I could avoid the sales tax, and I turned him down because what I wanted was a new pen right in my hand, ridiculous and cheerful, so that I could enjoy it before I regretted spending the money.

Fancy pens like that come with elaborate boxes and complimentary stationery. I take the boxes to be polite, but always throw them out, after a decent interval, of course.

Finally, on the way back home on the train, I noticed that my 401(k) had recovered from a catastrophic dip earlier in the year when the war in Iran began, and so (as I had planned to do when it got back up) I withdrew some money to put into my savings account, so I can go on paying the bills if the economy tanks again. I will not be begging for handouts on the street any time soon, no matter what the security guards think, and no matter what I think myself from time to time.

There will be a time when I am too aged and infirm to wander around New York City on foot, but it’s not yet. I walked almost eleven miles yesterday. I think I’ll take today off, though of course I take every day off now.