Relaxing in the Rain and Strutting in the Sun
Journal days 36 to 38: Life in my little corner of NYC, Sunday April 26 to Tuesday April 28, 2020
Saturday was a beautiful day. People poured into the streets (relatively speaking), which made it hard for me to get in and out of my building without having to share a small elevator and made it difficult to stay six feet away from everyone on the streets.
Sunday morning was drizzly, windy, and gray. I don’t mind the rain, and I felt more relaxed with fewer people around. I went out twice, which is unusual for me these days. First to the farmer’s market:
Later, I went the Gardens. By then, the rain had picked up:
The wind blew cherry blossoms off the trees, and they stuck to the tops and sides of the wet cars:
In a previous journal entry, I mentioned the two designs I found on the Gardens’ distinctive streetlamps. At the time, I thought that one was a picture of a rabbit, but later I started thinking it was a sundial:
Fast forward to today (Tuesday), which was a gorgeous spring day with the temperature in the mid-60s.
When I got back, there were four other people waiting for the single working elevator. It seemed impossible to get an elevator to myself, so I decided to try to walk up 16 flights. I don’t know what I was thinking; last week, when I walked down the stairs, my legs felt like they had turned to jelly. How could I possibly go up?
I got as far as the fifth floor. I was really out of breath. Couldn’t decide if this was great exercise to strengthen my heart and lungs and protect myself from coronavirus complications, or if I was more likely to get sick because I was breathing hard enough to vacuum up any virus particles that happened to be floating around the stairwell straight into my lungs.
I waited for the elevator, but when one finally came, two people were in it. I went back into the stairwell and up to the eighth floor where, miracle of miracles, I caught an elevator that was empty.
I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up, especially as more people will be going in and out of the building as the weather heats up and the tedium of the long quarantine drags on. I might have to give up and share the small elevators and just take my chances.
Unless I can get into good enough shape to walk up 16 flights of stairs.
I get winded faster than other people my age when going upstairs or uphill — at least compared to the fit people in my walking groups. I may have destroyed my lungs by smoking for 35 (!) years until I finally quit 15 years ago. Or maybe I just need to work up to it. If I wasn’t feeling so lazy, this might be a good quarantine project.
On a happier note, I watched Steven Sondheim’s 90th Birthday Celebration live on Sunday night, which was filled with music sung by Broadway royalty. And, being nosy, I loved to see what their living rooms looked like. If you have any interest in Broadway musicals, even if you’re not a hard-core Sondheim fan, I think you will enjoy this:
