Groceries, Trees, Immortality, and Hideous Men
Journal days 59 to 66: Life in my little corner of NYC in the age of the Coronavirus, May 18–25, 2020
One day flows into the next. We are way down on the other side of the curve now:
I’ve gotten a little braver this week. I went into a party/dollar store for some rubbing alcohol and hand sanitizer (both under the recommended 70% strength, but hopefully better than nothing), and I also went to Key Food, which was the first time I’ve been inside a grocery store in almost two months, since the day I freaked out and felt like I was dodging zombies in Angie’s.
Instacart has been on a roll lately, offering same or next day delivery on all of the stores they work with, but I just wanted a few things and didn’t want to have to add enough items to hit the free-delivery minimum. And I wanted to pick things out for myself. So I went in and out quickly, and didn’t drive myself crazy by trying to maintain a six-foot distance, which would have been impossible. Also, this time, unlike the last time I was in a grocery store, everyone was required to wear masks, so that helped put me more at ease.
The weather has mostly been beautiful, still spring-like, with some rainy days. The trees in the Gardens are in full leaf now, and I took many pictures of the tree canopies that shade the streets:
This is what the same street looked like seven weeks ago on April 6, before the leaves came out and while the cherry blossoms were still blooming:
One of the unexpected advantages of being restricted to walking around the same small area is that I have become more aware of the seasonal changes.
Other tree canopies I saw this week in the Gardens:
There’s a service entrance to the Forest Hills Stadium that I often pass. Sometimes, I see two or three cats there. One is bolder and will stand his ground if I stop to look, but the others usually scamper away.
Then on Tuesday evening, for the first time, I saw someone feeding them, and there were a lot more cats there than I had ever seen before. I took this blurry picture:
Then today, when I passed by, I saw five cats. They didn’t move when I stopped to look. They must have been waiting for the person who feeds them:
Also this week, I saw pretty flowers …
… and leaves:
While I was walking around this secluded paradise, much of the rest of the country seemed to be going crazy. This was the week that all the states opened at least partially, and the Internet was flooded with pictures of people crowded together at beaches and bars over the Memorial Day weekend. I’m apprehensive about what’s going to happen, though the best-case scenario would be that the hot weather really will keep the virus in check.
Meanwhile, I’m just trying to stay healthy and solvent, roughly in that order. I discovered four free short exercise videos by Bryant Johnson, who is Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s personal trainer, the miracle worker who helped her gain her superpower of bouncing back from any disease that Mother Nature threw her way. Although these videos are only 10-minutes each and are aimed at seniors, I really felt them, especially the lower- and upper-body workouts:
Maybe if I do these often enough, I can be immortal too, just like RBG! You can find Johnson’s two other workouts along with dozens of other short workouts from well-known trainers here: AARP video fitness.
I’m still reading Sapiens at the rate of about one paragraph/day. (I’m still having trouble concentrating.) I also started listening to the audiobook version of David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, read by the author. I had to put it aside for a while because I found it very disturbing. Subject matter aside, I loved the way he wrote. It reminded me how I used to enjoy playing with long sentences in the days before I became a content writer who aimed for a sixth-grade reading comprehension level, a habit I can’t quite seem to shake.
