The gentle sounds of your non-workday alarm rouse you from sleep early. It’s morning on a weekday, and you decided before you went to bed last night that you’re not going to do anything remotely work-related for a whole day. Your husband even said he’d take the kids solo. So you wake up in an apartment in the city that never sleeps – maybe it’s a long-term furnished rental from a platform like Zeus, or maybe it’s your sister’s spare bedroom – and you decide to have the kind of day that you will remember fondly for the rest of your life.

Breakfast is at the Russ & Daughters sit-down cafe (127 Orchard St) for coffee, knishes, blintzes, and smoked salmon on pumpernickel. Your eye lingers over the caviar section of the menu, but you’re already going to be stuffed with this spread. You decide to wash the whole thing down with a glass – just a glass, because you have the whole day ahead of you, after all – of the most expensive by-the-glass sparkling wine option on the menu, a Cotes de Blancs. So far so good.

After brunch you hail a taxi and make a beeline for the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1000 5th Ave). They’re having an exhibition of a private fashion collection, and you want to see it in person. It’s everything you dreamed it was. After a few hours browsing the Met, you go for a walk in Central Park. It’s right there, after all.

You’ve been craving dim sum, so for lunch you make the pilgrimage to Nom Wah Tea Parlor (13 Doyers St). There’s a short wait, during which time you book a ticket for a Broadway musical later in the night. You check in with your husband, and he says everything is going fine. Once you’re seated, you chow on dumplings, rice rolls, and, for dessert, steamed lotus buns. Pleased with yourself, you think you’re doing at least as good a job as Calvin Trillin would do, were he in your shoes.

The afternoon is for light shopping. As it happens, you collect vintage crime paperbacks, so you stop in at The Mysterious Bookshop (58 Warren St) and pick up a Raymond Chandler you haven’t read. The clerk says it’s one of his favorites, and the two of you talk about hardboiled detectives for awhile. There’s flirting, but it’s innocent enough. By the time the Terroir wine bar (24 Harrison St) opens for happy hour, you’re ready for $1.25 oysters and a glass of Txakoli.

For dinner, you hoof it to Mario’s in the Bronx (2342 Arthur Ave) for homemade lasagna. It’s time for classic comfort food in warm surroundings, and you think you’ve found it. By now you feel like you’re missing something, but you’ve been working so hard lately you’re okay taking this day for self care. And then you have to hustle again. You’re in another taxi, off to make the showtime for a Broadway musical. You’ve never been to a Broadway show before, and the experience nearly brings you to tears.

After the show you belly up to the classic, dimly-lit Rum House for a daiquiri. You were planning on reading the book you picked up earlier, but the couple next to you starts a conversation and you realize you were both at the same musical. You spend the next half hour rolling around in the juicy details – everything you loved about it. As the conversation goes on, you start to recount the highlights of your day, and they’re impressed. Inspired, even. 

At the end of it all, you return to your lodgings. Your husband has dozed off on the couch, and the kids have long-since gone to bed. You check on them and tuck them in, and then you wake your husband up and the two of you go to bed. By now, your eyes are heavy for you to stay awake any longer. When you finally clap your hands twice, the lights douse themselves (because you programmed your voice-activated device to make them do that), and you happily drift to sleep, ready for whatever tomorrow holds – even if it means you have to work on your taxes.