New York-style...

13 April 2024: I always tell people my New York accent only really comes out when I am tired or annoyed. Just now, I realized something else: it comes out when I yell at the cat. And I think I've always done this and am only realizing it now. Now "yelling" is sort of aligned with "annoyed," but sometimes my "yelling" is playful. So I think it might be more of a "caretaking" or "pet-parenting" thing. 

I still hate the idea of equating pet-parenting to child-parenting, but I don't have a better term. And there are parallels, of course. But what in the world does it mean that I slide into my latent New York voice at these moments? Weird, weird, weird...