Journal days 34 and 35: Life in my little corner of NYC in the age of the Coronavirus, Friday, April 24, and Saturday, April 25, 2020
Yesterday was a gray, rainy day. For the first time in weeks, I didn’t go out. Instead, I walked 3,000 steps around my living room while talking on the phone and watching TV, but it was not the same as going outside, getting some air, and seeing the flowers.
Today was a beautiful day, so I made up for yesterday and walked 8,000 steps. Mostly I walked in a neighborhood near the Gardens but outside of it. You can see a big difference. The Gardens has many rules that homeowners have to follow, including using a limited palette of paint colors on the outside of their homes. That helps preserve the charming fairy-tale English village appearance of the Gardens, but it does discourage quirkiness.
Outside the Gardens, I saw things like garden gnomes:
Someone had hung CDs as ornaments from the cherry blossom trees in their yard:
The days are running into each other. I feel like we are in suspended animation. Other states and cities are starting to open up — in some cases with near-criminal recklessness — but I don’t think New York City is going to open anything any time soon. I’m getting ready for the long haul.
In national news, it’s been two days since Trump said he thought it would be an “interesting” treatment to inject bleach or sunshine into the body. After saying he was just being sarcastic, he seems to have gone into hiding — first running off from his news conference yesterday without answering questions and, today, not having a conference at all.
Maybe Trump will go away altogether? Hide out in his room and communicate only via Tweet? Yeah, I know, that’s not going to happen.
