No diary about being new to New York would be complete without talking about smells.

The smells of Manhattan--ah, the smells. Every day, there is a whole alphabet of smell waiting for you when you step outside. It doesn't matter what time of day it is, or even the time of year--the season and weather only determine an odor's intensity. Smells here are a constant you can count on, something about this city that will never let you down. This is my daily smell catalogue so far:

1) On the way to the dog run every day, several times a day; urine (maybe human, maybe canine, you never know--Patrick claims he can smell the difference--I can't), vomit (there are about a half-dozen homeless men living in doorways along my walk who drink a variety of things, from Hennessey to Mad Dog), dog shit, marijuana (I'm in Chelsea), car exhaust, a great fallafel cart on 24th and 6th, so it goes about like this, it almost has the rhythm of a pop song; urine, urine, exhaust, pot, pot again, vomit, dog poo, urine, pot, pot again, fallafel fallafel fallafel, BO BO BO, and now we are at the dog park so it's urine urine urine, especially if it's raining--the dog run becomes dog urine soup.

2) When riding the subway, it's: BO BO BO, fart smell fart smell fart smell, and then you get on a subway car, and it's BO BO BO, urine urine urine (be careful--don't sit in the seat with the pee puddle), weird food smell, almost like a burp, then BO BO BO (be careful, don't step in the drool puddle of the homeless guy sleeping on the floor of the car), pollution, pollution pollution when you get out of the subway car, and then BO BO BO, fart fart fart as you run for the exit to get up to the sidewalk for some "fresh" air. You reach into your purse for your little bottle of hand sanitizer, because half the time when you have to stand on the subway and you grab a metal hand rail, it's slimy, like somebody greased it with Vaseline--not an exaggeration--I HATE that feeling.

Even in the nicer areas of Manhattan the sidewalks are covered with black dots--it's gum I think, mashed down into smooth round spots that suck up grime and pollution and end up a very dark black. If I had a dollar for every one of them I see and walk on every day, it would be like winning the lottery.

And last, but not least, one of my biggest ickies--spit. Public spitting is RAMPANT here. People treat subway tracks like they are a spatoon. It just doesn't make any sense--the way people live here, they should take public health as seriously as religion. I feel a little like a character in a Charles Dickens novel in Victorian London, when they just threw their urine and feces into the streets. It isn't that bad here, but it's not so far from it either. This city is just ripe for an epidemic--I watch someone spit, then watch a mother pushing a baby stroller wheel right through it--ewwwwww--I might turn into one of those freaky people who run around wearing surgical masks and latex gloves all the time. If a terrorist released something in the subway system here, it would spread so long and so far in a matter of minutes, just because there are so many people. Scary.

If I was in charge of this town for a day, I would organize a cleaning day--I would hand out a surgical mask and gloves to everyone in Manhattan, and a scrub brush and a bucket of anti-bacterial cleanser, and then make each of them scrub a five-foot by five-foot square area outdoors. If everyone in Manhattan did that, say once a quarter, or was willing to pay a crew to do that, say once a quarter, and hose down the subways while they're at it, this island would be such a different place.

Here I am in New York, and my biggest fantasy so far is cleaning. Marth Stewart tapes her show a few blocks from my hotel--maybe I should pitch my cleaning idea to her show--ha. We will be moving to Brooklyn soon, where the air is cleaner, the horizon is more open, and it is far less dirty, so I will calm down some then, but still, wow is this place dirty. And smelly. One of many great things about the Midwest; when you are outdoors there, the wind and spaciousness usually protect you from the BO of others, and if not, it's not usually that hard to get upwind of someone gassy. But here, we are packed onto this island like sardines in a can--there is no escape. There should be BO police in Manhattan--if they can charge you $1,000.00 for not picking up your dog's poop, there should be a fee for being too stinky. A stank meter. I thought this being NY everybody would be so chic and amazing--there are lots of chic and amazing people, but there are also way more people who seem to think that a shower once a week or so is more than enough.

Obsessive compulsives and germ phobics should be sent to NY for treatment--if you live here, you just have to let go of any hope of being clean and just hold your nose and go.