Click here if you missed Day 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6.
Day 7
As I toiled in my comfortable little New York nook, the rest of my family in the Bay of Islands romped around like they were at a corporate retreat. They had cookouts, daily wilderness walks and an endless supply of Trumpet ice creams in the freezer. And not the group packs either – individually bought single serve Trumpet ice creams, ALL chocolate flavoured.
Today was my quarantine-iversary: I had officially been sheltering in place for one month. Though Kiwis seemed to have responded to the different levels of quarantine with discipline, grace and decorum, many in New York had struggled to get their heads around the new rules. Central Park was said to be teeming with people, which other passersby took as a reason to also go in, rather than one to stay away. As such, you’d be hard pressed to find a single person in New York who didn’t personally know somebody who either had COVID-19 or had passed away from it.
I shuffled through the full spectrum of human emotions each day, from feeling frustrated and cagey, to remembering I was lucky to have food, a job and shelter, to experiencing joy and whimsy and singing personalised songs to my cat about how elegant her little bunny feet were. My private bubble for one + cat was a living, breathing little organism pulsing in the body of an unwell city that hadn’t quite figured out how to get better yet.
My own skin and health in general were a mess. No longer in a corona-y way, as it seemed like all my symptoms but the smell/taste had subsided (I hadn’t tasted anything again since Chicken-Gate). I wondered if it could be the lack of fresh air, sunlight or exercise, and then mumbled ‘mmhm’ as I realised that yes, it was. Side note: (as if this entire thing weren’t one giant side note) for anybody whose eyes ache from staring dead-eyed at screens all day, I recommend ordering anti-blue light glasses on the online marketplace of your choice so that you can feel scholarly and influential as you watch your 60th hour of Netflix that day. They really feel like they work.
Avoiding increasingly specific and strange online purchases was proving difficult. I had been warned of the importance of not making any big or heady purchases during this time and then turned around and ordered an at-home laser hair removal system. A reckless purchase, some would say, but a purchase I would argue I needed in order to remove my hairs at home…with a laser.
For things people couldn’t buy however, like gloves and masks, people were improvising – and thus revealing themselves to be very crafty gangsters. Friends I never would have imagined owning multiple bandanas were making flags, quilts and rebuilding a new society out of them, and I for one saluted our future bandana overlords. After all, during the brief period when I still went outside pre-lockdown, I was using novelty gloves that were designed for brushing your cat and look how that worked out for me! Not well. I don’t know if I mentioned this but I got the virus.
Read Day 8 of Simone’s coronavirus diary here.
