Day #19 of Self-Isolation in Epidemic Central

1. Day #19 and I wish I could say this is getting easier - but it's actually quite the opposite. More and more people are wearing masks now, many with the bandana masks that you can make with two rubber bands. Although I did see a few with the disposable blue cloth masks. One woman was going down the elevator - she'd brought her laundry down from the second or third floor and took the elevator from the first floor. She had the mask on and gloves. And for the first time, I saw bicyclists wearing masks - they were all wearing the bandanas and runners, who were also wearing masks.

There were a few people without them - but they were younger.

I took a walk - that's how I know. I walked along Ocean Parkway, a huge thorough-fare in Brooklyn, known as the Champs Elysee of Brooklyn. It's a four lane street with two sidewalks and two bike lanes on either side, framed with benches, and large cedar trees with the pale white bark slowly budding out with leaves. There is traffic, but not much. About twenty-thirty cars as opposed to the hundreds that usually go by on a Sunday. Enough to not jay-walk across it, but not quite enough to be noisy or difficult to cross with a light. It feels like the residential streets now - which had about twenty-thirty cars and now have dropped to far less.

Also, people have discarded the disposable masks and gloves here and there. A habit that annoys me and I don't quite understand. Honestly, put them in the garbage or hand wash them, folks. Be mindful of others and the environment around you.

And a couple of lone ambulances fly by - they appear to be associated with a Hebrew Ambulance Service, since the wording along them is in Yiddish. Hatzolah is the name across the side. I looked it up, Hatzolah Ambulance Service - is the largest volunteer ambulance service in the United States.

( Read more... )

On the way back in - I felt for the immune compromised couple trying to get their groceries inside but waiting for an opportunity to do so. They were stationed out on the side of the curb. They live in a section 8 apartment on the first floor. They are kind, but struggling, with lots of pride.

Inside the foyer was a young woman with a mask, checking her cell phone and not moving. I found her annoying. I went around her and opened the door and she followed me in, we were about three feet away. She immediately went to the elevator and I wasn't sure what she was doing - and realized that she was putting on plastic gloves - a necessity with the elevator which requires pulling a lever to open and to close it behind you.

Once I got back indoors, I struggled with the anxiety. I'd had it before the walk of course - it's the reason I took it. I desperately needed to get out of my apartment.
The day is in the 60s, it's cloudy but not raining. A nice day for a walk. And normally I'd take a long one, but I'm nervous about doing so. Meanwhile I know various folks in my area who are taking them, without any problems. They do live further North nearer to Prospect Park or in Park Slope, but still, you'd think they would struggle with the social distancing. My anxiety seems silly to me and I find myself laughing at it - since a mere 19 days ago, I was sitting on subways with people for 20-30 minutes. We were NOT six feet apart, more like one foot if that.
And most people weren't wearing masks. I was also going in and out of major transportation hubs, such as Atlantic Terminal and Jamaica Air Train Building.
Now, I am terrified to take a walk to the park or go to the grocery store or do laundry? Really?

2. Spoke to mother before and after all of this.

Mother: I'm struggling with your father, he keeps telling me we need to make sure we keep six feet apart.
Me: Well, he's not wrong about that - he's vulnerable.
Mother: He wants to keep six feet apart from me.

Reader? I burst out laughing.

Mother: I told him that I was sorry, but if we go down, we go down together.
Me: Also it's kind of late for that - considering that you've been sleeping in the same bed for the last several weeks now.

I apologized to my mother for laughing, but it was funny. After a moment she joined in and told me that at least I was laughing. Laughter is good.

She told me that a new edict or change in policy is coming from the management of their retirement community. Her guess is that they are going to discontinue housekeeping services soon. I told her that I'd been waiting for that, and was somewhat surprised they hadn't done it by now.

In other news, some, not all, NYC Laundromats are closing as a result of the crisis. I think the bigger ones may still be open, it's the small, tiny ones that have been forced to close. My laundry is in the basement of my building and I'm holding off on doing it as long as possible. Right now, I'm fine, plenty of the essentials. Kind of a necessity if you live in NYC - you need to have enough clothes to put off the trip to the laundromat or basement shared space.

It's ironic in a way that I'm avoiding - considering that now I work remotely from home - I have more time in which I can actually do laundry.

3. Got into two fights on Facebook, which motivated me to write a long post trying to advise folks that we are in different living situations and to try to be mindful of that. And I gave them mine.

The fight was over masks. The problem with social media and the internet, and ahem, my parents siblings, cousins and relatives, is that we have one too many pseudo-experts who feel the need to tell us how it worked for them, or that I'm doing everything wrong. Hardly helpful.

My Uncle felt the need to inform me that the bandana face mask that I made wouldn't protect me from getting the virus. (Yes, I know that. I'm not using it to go into hospitals or instead of social distancing. I'm using it to try and not spread the virus further. And as an extra safeguard. I don't need or want your expertise, nor does anyone else. All you are doing is making me panic. Because I don't have any other option.)

Meanwhile, another friend (not a relative - a social media friend) felt the need to tell me that she suffered lots of mail theft when she was living in a big city. And I was an idiot for buying masks from Amazon and they'd be stolen. This resulted in a panic attack on my end. I finally got pissed off - as a result of said panic attack - and asked what possible purpose did it serve her to tell me this? I'm anxious enough as it is, I do not need help.

I really don't. My anxiety seems to come and go, without warning. It makes me furious and irritable. I do different things to counter-act it. And it's easily triggered now. To be fair, I've been struggling with anxiety since 9/11, although I did have issues with it long before then. The only things that work right now are "meditation", "dancing around my apartment", and "CBD gummies - although I'm not sure the new ones will work as effectively as the ones that I got before and I can't get now, because they don't deliver." Gummies are also expensive. So there's that.
And I'm not sure how much of my anxiety is due to bio-chemistry - aka perimenopause/menopause - which I appear to be heading into. This makes life interesting - since I get hot flashes and have to remind myself that no, it's not a fever, any more than the dry cough, sniffling nose or watery eyes that come and go are COVID-19 - it is allergies.

I need to stay off FB or away from discussions on COVID-19 on FB.

4. Debating about ordering a pizza. There is a place near me that delivers gluten free pizza and cesar salad. They are on Courtelyou Road, San Renno. This is good to know. They do not however deliver alcohol. Dang it. Which is probably just as well.

Also debating about the home alone check in at 7PM via the church. I did do the church worship service this morning.

5. Need to find a funny movie or something to watch. I might just re-watch Greatest Showman. I tried to rewatch Gross Point Blank - but I've seen it too many times. Also tried to rewatch Dark Phoenix, but it's not that good a movie and I despise some of the casting choices. Nick Hoult would have made a better Cyclops than Beast, and Sophie Turner would have been a better Emma Frost - she's very icy in her performance not fiery. Tye Sheridan does not work as Scott. I kind of hand-waved this the first go around, I can't on rewatch.

Rise of Skywalker - Movie Review

And a break from our previous programming to discuss a movie. I finally saw the last Star Wars film or rather the last one in the George Lucas series of films featuring the "Skywalkers" aka "The Skywalker Sage". It FINALLY popped up "On Demand" - so I rented it for $5.99 from Optimum. I have it until Tuesday. 48 hour rental. Gotta love technology. (I was beginning to wonder if I'd have to subscribe to Disney + to see it. Although I may subscribe anyhow - just to see all the old movies and animated series - which I find insanely comforting. I wonder if Darby O'Gill and the Little People is on it? That's the musical with a very young Scean Connery that I saw as a kid at school way back in the 1970s.)

Anyhow, Rise of Skywalker wasn't quite as bad as I expected. I kind of enjoyed it actually. It was for the most part, a fun, thoughtless, fluffy fast-action piece of entertainment. The kind of thing you lose yourself in for a bit and forget later. (In short the perfect distraction for well anyone who feels like they are stuck in the psychological horror flick from a mundane hell.) So, as a result,it held my attention. (I had a lot of fun snarking at it, and rolling my eyes at various parts.) Being spoiled for most if not all of the plot points, most likely helped. (I knew who Rey was for example.) Also the fact that I came in with VERY low expectations mainly because practically everyone on my correspondence list that saw it - either disliked it a great deal or were ambivalent. My co-workers kind of enjoyed it, except for Chidi who prefered Last Jedi.

If you want a fun action movie, with lots and lots of action, a simple plot structure, some banter, and lovely special effects and visuals - this is your movie.
It does help if you've seen the other movies -- otherwise I think you'd be lost. This is NOT a stand-a-lone flick. It also helps if you weren't heavily invested in the thematic scope of Last Jedi and the side characters Last Jedi developed or in love with that movie.

I sort of fall in the middle regarding Rise, in that I enjoyed it for what it was - a JJ Abrahms film. From a critical angle? It's not a very good movie. The plot doesn't quite track from Last Jedi. Although to be fair, Last Jedi doesn't quite track from Force Awakens either. There are moments in it that are played as high drama, but are well, just plain silly. I rolled my eyes or grinned at the cheesiness. It was weirdly comforting.

The special effects are uneven - mainly due to the fact that they made the decision to intersperse Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia throughout the film, in some shots, it looked like Carrie, in others it looked like a CJI version of Carrie and felt off somehow. This kind of skewed the effects. At various points, I got thrown out of the story by the feeling of looking at obvious CGI. Try as we might - it's still not quite possible to digitize a human in a way that looks real to the naked eye. But I was expecting this - from various reviews that I'd read, so it came as no great surprise.

Before going into spoilers, I'll state this - I agree with rosegriffiths, who stated in her review of the film, that Rise kind of has some of the same problems as Last Jedi but in another way. Where Jedi had something new to say, Rise kind of repeats what was already said in the first trilogy of films (and better said in those films for that matter). Where Jedi's plot was overly busy and at times difficult to follow because its doing too much at the same time, Rise's is almost too simple and difficult to follow - because it doesn't quite track with what came before, and it like Jedi kind of loses the characters in the mix. But, I kind of cared more about the characters in Jedi than in Rise, which felt sort of rushed, while Jedi had better and more isolated character moments. In this way the two films sort of remind me of Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Empire did a better job of getting across the character moments, while Return was a bit too focused on wrapping up the plot and I kind of lost the characters in the mix (also Return like Rise was a bit too silly in places for words.)

( spoilers )

Overall a mixed bag. It felt very much like an amusement ride of a movie. But there were some good moments here and there and overall, it was easier to follow than the previous effort from a plot perspective, if not as well done in regards to fight sequences and isolated character moments. Jedi was better on a character and thematic level, Rise better on a plot and overall action level.