Month: May 2020

My birthday is in a couple of weeks and I’m turning 64! Chances are NYC will still be closed, but that’s fine. It won’t affect my birthday really. I can’t do some of the things I like to do, like go to the movies in the middle of the afternoon while everyone else is at work, or to a museum, or get a pedicure, but I honestly don’t care. It would be nice! But it’s not important.

I have to come up with a plan b though. Binge watch something fun? It’s hard for me to find things to watch because I cannot tolerate tension, anything bad happening, or unhappy endings. Even when I’m re-watching something and I know everything will turn out alright I can’t stand it when there’s tension, and the threat that it won’t.

I’m almost finished with a book I’m enjoying (The End of October, about a pandemic!) and I don’t have the next one lined up. That’s what I could really use, my next good book.

While taking a nice long walk yesterday I learned that dog parks have opened back up. That made me happy. Dogs need their parks. And their owners get to visit too. Good doggies!

After reading a very convincing essay in the Times, I bought a pulse oximeter. It’s very comforting to read that my oxygen saturation is great, and so is my pulse, which remains satisfyingly low due to my regular exercise. For those who’d like to know, I bought the CLINICAL GUARD Fingertip Pulse Oximeter CMS50DL.

A while back I wrote the Oil-Dri Corporation of America, the manufacturers of the cat litter I use, Jonny Cat, to ask them why the clay had changed. They wrote back explaining that they’d started using different mines. They also sent me coupons for free litter and these two Jonny Cat stuffed animals. This morning I sewed tiny paper towel masks on them, took a picture of them social distancing, and sent it to Oil-Dri. That was a mood lifter. But then …

After that, I recorded myself singing the soprano part for Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir 6. I’ve done three of these before, but, well, I’ve aged! My voice has never sounded so bad. It took everything I had to upload it anyway, and the only reason I did was because I knew I’d feel worse if I didn’t. Ugh. I am glad I made myself do it though. Your voice going at least a little downhill is just a byproduct of still being alive. So screw it. I’m going to keep on singing.

As many people know, every night at 7pm we open our windows and clap for the essential workers. My block is not as engaged as the blocks on either side of us, at least that’s what it sounds like to me. I hear what seems like tons of people making a jubilant racket woo-hoo’ing and banging pots and pans. On my block we have a few regulars. In my building it’s me, and Eamon, who lives in the apartment next door to me, and across the street I always see Nicole, a fellow Choral Society of Grace Church singer, and a woman in the building next door to her. Others join us from time to time, but we rarely have enough to make a lot of noise. But the four of us always do what we can. I hope I get to meet the woman next door to Nicole.

This was nice to see, a group of neighbors visiting.

A lovely mood-lifting video of birds and natural life in Cuba that was made by Suzanne Abruzzo. I love the music she chose, too. I’m posting it here because I think everyone will feel better after watching it, it’s very soothing. It reminded me of something though. I meditate in the mornings, and one of my favorite things about meditating is becoming aware of the sound of birds. But I’ve been hearing them less and less over the years. Where are they?

I took this during a walk along the river last year.