Dear Readers Again,
Here’s the other half.
Good Housekeeping
Did you know that you can take all the bits and pieces off your stove and put them in the dishwasher? Yes, you can! As for vacuuming, it didn’t seem to make much sense during Passover and then the five or six days following so that was most of April. Thanks to my habit of wandering about the apartment eating matzo only tenuously held together with Land O’ Lakes Canola Oil Butter it’s a losing battle against matzo crumbs.
Two weeks ago I washed the kitchen floor for the first time ever. I knew it was time because when I padded in on bare feet it was sticky. This project required a close reading of the Pine Sol bottle – made possible by reading glasses AND a magnifying glass as the instructions are printed in 4 pt. type. Apparently, you are supposed to rinse Pine Sol if it’s applied to surfaces exposed to food. Which led to a daylong debate in my head about the floor. While I don’t generally prepare or serve my dinner on the floor, I do with some regularity drop things while I’m cooking, things which sometimes go from floor to my mouth. Within five seconds, of course. In the end, I rinsed.
The Amazing Lupe favors the stringy-type cut-end mop, not one of those newfangled Swiffer contraptions. I used her mop set (one wet, one dry) to wash the floor since that’s what was here. The experience reminded me of an amazing exhibit I saw at the Jewish Museum over a decade ago. Mayer Kirshenblatt was a Pole who emigrated to Canada when he was 17 in 1934. There, he painted houses and eventually owned and ran a paint and wallpaper store – not to mention escaped the tragedy that would descend on family and friends who remained in Poland. At the age of 74, Kirshenblatt began painting again, this time on canvas, creating sharply and fondly recalled scenes of life in Apt, the impoverished, predominantly Jewish village he left behind. Each of his lively, folk-art style pictures was accompanied by his narration of the story behind it.
Here’s one, in his own words. There are also recordings, in English and Yiddish of these tales.
Nakhete had a special way of washing floors. The way people used to wash floors in Poland was to slosh a bucket of water on the floor, scrub the floor with a long-handled, stiff brush, and mop up the water with the remnants of a burlap ag. The Watmans had rich relatives in the United States who would send them parcels of used clothing. One parcel contained an evening gown with a long train. Having no other use for the gown, Nakhete used to wear it while washing the floor. She would promenade up and down the soapy floor with the long wet train of the gown trailing behind her. When she reached the end of the room she gave one twist with her hips and the train whooshed across the floor. She and her parents disappeared in the war.
Yes, there is a wedding dress in the apartment. And no, I am not considering this the next time I take to the mop and Pine Sol. The pictures and stories are fascinating, you can read more here.
New Old Bookends
It’s remarkable, I think, that I have been able to make two new old friends during this strange time. Both are at 1270 Fifth residents, though one, my newest oldest friend Carolyn Greene is in residence in Lexington where I’m hoping her mere presence will radiate out to the good citizens of Kentucky and convince them to vote BLUE. She assures me that won’t happen. Carolyn is an ex-officio Board of Directors President at 1270, the very definition of a Thankless Task, and the last couple of years we have met up for summer strolls on Wednesdays to the Greenmarket on Madison Avenue opposite Mount Sinai. She also volunteered to be the receiver for my second refrigerator delivery in early March when Sarah had to vacate the premises for a meeting and I was still working my way back north from the Carolinas.
Now, far from 1270 but yet so near, Carolyn has become a daily textbuddy and, critically, streambuddy as we discovered our mutual affinity for exceedingly violent shows like Better Call Saul, Ozark and Fauda. Somehow, these make the world out my window seem benign, compared to those worlds of Mexican cartels (Juarez and Navarro) and Hamas and Isis. Ah, Fauda. Carolyn binged the first two seasons in two days (or less) and has been at my side (from inside my cell phone), gently coaching me along as I work my way through, taking one or at most two episodes at a time, followed by a single or double hit of Schitt’s Creek to bring my heart rate down. She will give me fair warning when to line up the vodka shots, tips me off about which episodes sent her to hide in the bathroom and just listen, and has been simpatico to my unrequited crush on Doron Kavillo (previously referenced) who is, let’s face it, not exactly my type. Meanwhile, our text exchanges are printworthy, and might someday make an entertaining Love Letters-type off-Broadway show, if there ever is an off-Broadway again. When the Pulitzers were announced, I vowed to nominate her next year for a Special Pulitzer for Fauda Commentary.
My other newest oldest best friend is my upstairs neighbor VFM, with whom I’ve had a hello-and-a-nod mailboxes relationship for years. He invited me to his apartment in early March to check out his kitchen renovation, back in those days when we were so naive and dumb we didn’t realize how dangerous it was to interact with someone who had just flown in from a ski trip in the Austrian alps. Or that the notion that a kitchen renovation might take place in the next few weeks . . . haha, absurd. The day after I visited, he received a quarantine edict from the manager of the hotel where he’d stayed. We both survived the two weeks.
Dropping the gauntlet with a hunk of butterscotch brownies I brought him that Sunday, we’ve been exchanging bits and buckets of food and foodstuffs ever since, via the hang-in-a-shopping-bag-on the-doorknob, ring-the-bell-and-run-away method. I’ve been the beneficiary of his enthusiasm for exotic fruit, his Russian-inflected beef stew and a lumpy vegetable soup I confess I took the immersion blender to. I have reciprocated with a very weird ham soup, less weird chicken soup, a chunky ragu, ginger cake (made with a length of ginger he contributed), carrot cake and two tubs of Haagen Daaz Pistachio I picked up on my last excursion to ShopRite. And I loaned him my copy of The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning.
VFM is a genuine certified felon, he confessed to me rather proudly to me several weeks ago. He appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court, but it was a reverse pyrrhic victory, he lost the appeal but the dissent by Justice Douglas was magnificent. He was sent up the river to serve out his sentence at Lewisburg, home at or around that time to Whitey Bulger, John Gotti, Jimmy Hoffa . . . and his actions earned him a place high upon Nixon’s Enemies List. He is actually now a former felon, having earned a pardon from President Ford. And now, a friend!
Lost and Found
I have had just enough free time to deeply reflect on the absurdity of not being able to find things that couldn’t possibly not be in the apartment. Why, why, why? How could my fabulous new(ish) Flying Tiger $6.00 reading glasses have gone missing? Where the hell are they? Also, not one but two sets of white wired earphones so I can multitask while chatting. I’m down to just one set. And guarding it with my life. Then there’s the flower clippers, where could they have gone? They are always in the second drawer from the left in the kitchen. They were there as recently as two weeks ago. But now . . . missing. And then this weekend, that damn tin of garam masala which I have finally figured out is in New Britain. Alex checked for me and yes, it’s there.
On the bright side, hanging around the apartment all day digging deep into the recesses of dark closets looking for my glasses led to the discovery of three Trader Joe’s Pound-Plus Chocolate bars, buried treasure in a dark corner of my larder. I am now Pound-Plus flush, with five Pound Plus bars in the house. Technically, it’s baking, not eating chocolate. Already this quarantine I have made chocolate cupcakes, a chocolate Bundt cake, a flourless chocolate cake and some labor-intensive, lopsided chocolate macarons. And that’s just the beginning.
Please note I am well aware my backsplash needs recaulking. You don’t need to bother emailing me to tell me this.
That Good Old Vast Wasteland
Perhaps the most prescient decision I made before the gate slammed shut was order a new TV, which was delivered March 20. My previous “new TV” in the apartment was bought in 2010 (it was $1200!) and wasn’t smart in any sense of the word. I wasn’t really suffering all that much having to use a Roku box but I was jonesing for something bigger, slicker and I found one at Best Buy for under $300. I ordered a new wall mount apparatus as well, but the day after I lugged the boxes up to my apartment the building banned all outside workers (nannies, dog walkers, housekeepers, TV installers) and I couldn’t justify sneaking someone in against the rules. Even if I had studied the installation instructions in all five languages and watched 17 YouTube videos shot in rooms with very bad reverb, I didn’t think I could hoist the TV up by myself to get it mounted. Maybe building some sort of Brunelleschian contraption to support it would work. Maybe I’ll do that next week.
So the boxed up TV sat on the floor in my dining room for a couple of weeks until a lightbulb went off that I could probably unbox it myself and probably figure out how to attach the feet to it and probably just stick it on the chest that sits in front of my old TV. Which is what I did, creating a somewhat weird TV doppelganger effect but what the hell. It works, it’s a UHD Series 6 which means ever Law & Order rerun is an entirely new experience, even if I can recite most of Lenny and Jack’s best lines before they do. And last week’s reruns included the coronavirus case!
The picture on my new TV is such a “real” experience that not only can I see the glue attaching Kate Balduan’s fake eyelashes to her lids, but when I dozed off (briefly) while watching Bad Education a week ago Saturday, when I came to I thought there was a man standing in my living room, a cause for momentary panic. Bad enough I have a damn mouse running around. The scene on the screen had been shot from behind one of the characters, with the back of his head and shoulders in the foreground. That’s how real it is. Like, it’s almost theatrical.
Bad Education, by the way, was really good.
Adventures in Cooking Up a Stormville
Almost as much interesting stuff happens when I’m stuck in the apartment as regularly happened when I was out and about. These days, most of this takes place in the kitchen which has become my de facto rec center since the very beginning of the quarantine.
I’m cooking and baking, with some good results and some that are just meh and some that qualify for the MBL Cooking Bloopers Hall of Fame. Like the Orange and Almond Cake I accidentally baked at 480 degrees because of the way the sun was hitting the LED setting on the stove. I ended up scraping all the burned-up bits off (thank you, Lisa Mann) and using the innards for trifle.
Step One: Ruin a cake.
Step Two: Recycle the uncharred remains into a high calorie, high tea sweet.
I have also made a sinfully rich ragu, greatly deepened in flavor by nearly an entire bottle of red wine I found in one of my dress boots (I use wine bottles to hold them upright). It was amazing. There was the ham I’d bought for St. Patrick’s and a lovely beef stew and a turkey loaf and some good-enough almond Florentines that would have been better had I dipped them in chocolate. And a first for me – homemade pizza.
A neighbor heading to Citarella picked up an order I phoned in so Elise got her favorite Spanish shrimp for supper that night. I have turned out five flans as I continue to work on that project. The ginger cake was good enough, but not really worth the labor-intensive effort as I found it was on a par with gingerbread made from a box mix, one of the few shelf offerings that rivals from-scratch baking. I had to grate a lump of fresh ginger the size of my fist, I won’t be doing that again.
Eventually, I plan to record all these recipes – and the adventures I’ve had making them – in an organizational and information sharing system created by my former Buck Hill neighbor Dave Mittereder. Not just for me, mind you — it’s a startup venture for him. They’re collected in The Covid-19 Cookbook on tourtle.com. Check it out, or, better yet, add your own tourtles.
And of course, the thing I make best is a mess.
Citibank – The Opera
Ahhh, Citibank. I’ve heard the Citibank “on hold” music so many times in the last month, I am now creating a libretto of my saga. Dealing with Citi, basically, has been a very poorly compensated part-time job for me over the last month and a half. How far I have fallen from my cushy, over-compensated job with Citi in 2008.
It started with a person or persons unknown to me helping themselves to $5,300 out of my bank account at 1:13 PM on March 12 in Miami. This was a teller transaction, so the perp had ID with my name on it, in addition to a replica of my Citicard and PIN. An inside job perhaps? From the start, it has baffled me why an alarm didn’t sound when a single transaction in Miami is surrounded by transactions the day before, the day of and the day after in New York City. It has been my experience in the past that if I go to Tiffany’s twice in one day (I did that once), the bots shut down the account.
I discovered the fraud on March 18th and reported it immediately. The Fraud folks told me they would overnight a new ATM card, and that I should go to the branch to close the account. The investigation would commence immediately and in a mere 90 days I might get my money back. Easy for them to say, sitting in San Antonio. I had to inform them there was a pandemic going on and there was zero chance I would walk into any bank anytime soon.
The card appeared the next day, which was great. A few hours later, a block was put on my account. Not so great. I had wrangled the phone numbers for the branch manager and assistant manager of my branch, but nobody was answering any phone or responding to email. It was more than a little befuddling why I would be sent a new card I couldn’t use. By FedEx no less. Over time I came to get used to being befuddled. Everything else subsequently was sent via snail mail, taking two or three weeks to get to me. Except for one letter that was emailed referring to an attachment that wasn’t attached. When I called to ask for it, I was told the agent couldn’t email anything to me, it had to be ordered to be emailed.
By now we were all deep in the wonderful world of coronavirus, and it got even more difficult to get hold of anyone on the phone. Every time I called for assistance — once someone finally picked up the phone — I was given information that conflicted with the previous instructions I had been given. I figured out I could set up an account online. Great! But I wasn’t told I had to fax in a copy of my driver’s license, a utility bill and a signature card before it would be validated. That took another week to find out.
Meanwhile, there was money stuck in the frauded account I couldn’t withdraw because of the block. All my automatic payments were going out -- but then bouncing. I applied for a credit line on the new account, a whole other ordeal. When a customer service agent actually answered the phone, they invariably said I had the wrong department, and transferred me to another wrong department. This went on and on and on – like a soap opera that only incrementally progresses an inch or two day by day. if at all.
Another wrinkle was that funds that were supposed to be transferred from my retirement account were was lost in space for more than three weeks, caught in a financial services purgatory between the IRA manager and my two Citi accounts. I managed to figure out how to rob the bank by sending Sarah into the branch with her Citi ATM card (she is a co-signer on the account) which Citi had neglected to block. She was able to withdraw cash, then move the money to my new account. So much for security. I told her to wear a scarf over a mask and turn away from any security cameras.
Is this any way to run an airline? The bank was woefully short-staffed, I was told, because not enough employees were equipped with the right kind of software to work from home. But for me, the real issue was that there didn’t seem to be any protocols in place when a major fraud is reported and being Scooby Do’d. Or if there are, they are encrypted and being kept secret. The whole affair made me feel like a victim twice – of the fraud and of the ineptitude of Citi.
Let me know if you’d like house seats when the opera opens.
Capsule, In a Nutshell
After years of loyal patronage, I have broken up with CVS, which in my most recent – and final -- encounter exhibited none of the “Convenience, Value and Service” its initials are alleged to stand for. Nor for that matter “Consumer Value Stores” which are also what the initials are alleged to stand for.
CVS is one of the places I consider a Covid-19 magnet and have avoided – dare I say this? – like the plague in the last seven weeks. I mean if you have a sore throat or a dry cough or that sweaty feeling that descends just before you break a fever, where is the first place you head? Right, CVS. Duane Reade. Walgreens, Rite Aid.
I leaned on one of my 1270 angels to pick up a prescription for me earlier in my quarantine, but now on the other side of the coronavirus curve (the side that were it a ski slope would be a green trail, and not a black XX) I decided not to impose. The CVS on 97th and Lex has publicized senior hours, or rather a once-weekly senior hour on Wednesdays at nine. You may scoff at the notion of Senior Hours being any safer than Everyone Else Hours in a drugstore, and you would be right. But I went anyway, planning to dart in and out in the blink of an eye.
My mission was to pick up my prescription for Exemestane, the so-called aromatase inhibitor prescribed as maintenance therapy while we all wait to see if my progression progresses further. I made a beeline for the pharmacy in the back, which is presently festooned with large pieces of plastic sheeting descending from the ceiling to the counters, as if a painting project were about to start. The gal behind the curtain fetched the prescription and announced it’s $286.32. “Are you sure?” I ask. I do have insurance, and that sounds like a pre-insurance price. She studies the flyer attached to the bag and report that without insurance it’s $499.99. Such a deal! Sabbatini must think I’m an heiress. I am already involved in a quest for cheaper eczema meds ($1350 for a two-week supply, yes, not $13.50) and wasn’t up for this further imposition on my shoe allowance.
Now I’m on the horns of a dilemma. I could leave the meds behind, go home, research the price, then return for it but that would mean two trips to CVS – double the pleasure, double the exposure to whatever was hanging in the air waiting to drop on me. Or I could just take the pills home and hope to find a cheaper source – or other drug (the doc had indicated there are lots of aromatase options) that would be easier on my wallet. There’s nobody in line but the cashier is getting impatient. She asks if I want to leave it behind. “Once you leave you can’t return it,” she informs me ominously, reading my mind.
I charge it up and head home. After my ablutions, I sit at my desk and fish around on the internet for pricing information through Silver Script, my prescription insurance company. Which is, not for nothing, affiliated with CVS. Then I call Silver Script and am told that the “listed” price under my insurance is $150 and if I return to CVS and get them back on the phone they will appeal my case to the pharmacist. Ca-ching, that’s $150 back in my pocket. Meanwhile, I’m scrolling through the Good Rx prices online. It’s $50 at Walmart, ShopRite and a couple other places – and further down the list it’s $100 at CVS with the Good Rx card. And then, I discover Good Rx offers an elite “Gold Card” entitling the holder even deeper discounts. Like, for $5.99 a month the scrip would be $30 at several pharmacies – though not CVS.
I pack up the Good Rx card and the prescription, mask up and head back.
I reenter CVS, not happy to be there, and stomp down the aisles to the rear. The same woman is manning the desk. I ask her why she didn’t raise the possibility that Good RX might be cheaper when I exhibited, even from behind my mask, that I was clearly distressed about the pricing. She just shrugged. I hand over the bag and the card, and she rings it up as a credit. Then she announces it will be $100 for the prescription with the Good Rx discount. I hesitate. “What if I don’t pay it?” I ask. “Well, you still have to buy it,” she tells me. “Then you can throw it out if you don’t want it.” OK, this was what I was dealing with. “I don’t want it and I don’t want to pay for it either,” I announce.
She marches over to where the pharmacists are packing pills. I see the one she is talking to shrug. Then she returns and shrugs. So, I hand the bag back to her and scoot out. Once home I apply for a Good Rx Gold account (30 days free), then set up an account at Capsule, a no charge prescription delivery service heavily promoted on subway placards and highly recommended by my millennial advisors. Capsule advertises itself as Faster, Smarter, Kinder, Better. That’s good enough for me. They are thrilled to have my account, call me Dear” in texts and take care of calling the doctor’s office to get the prescription.
That afternoon I get my first, and not my last, Capsule delivery. For $30.00. A pretty steep discount from the original $300.
My First Guest in Quarantine
Last Thursday night, between Schitt’s episodes, I padded into the kitchen on little cat feet, startling a largish admiralty grey mouse that darted across the countertop when he saw me. I thought to myself, “Ewwwwwwwwww.” I dropped three glue traps around the kitchen (where there were already a few under the stove and fridge) and placed one in the living room where I caught a glimpse of the mouse running across the floor and behind the TV chest about half an hour later.
In the morning I reminded myself to put on shoes and submitted an online ticket to the maintenance staff requesting more glue traps. The super called to remind me it was exterminator day; did I want to have the bug man stop by? No other human had crossed the threshold since March 18. But given what was running around versus what was going around, I said yes, send him up.
The exterminator showed up an hour later, dressed to kill. I needn’t have worried about the exposure.
He poked around the kitchen while I regaled him with stories of every mouse that ever graced us in apartment 3R with their presence in the last quarter century.. My favorite was the one that ran (or maybe was chased by Wiseguy) into the bathtub and could not get out – the sides were too slippery. When 11-year-old Elise walked in first thing in the morning, her scream could be heard in Weehawken. Poor little thing. The mouse I mean – he kept trying to run up the sides and would fall backward into the tub, where he was cornered.
The exterminator shared his strategic plan to plant a packet of poison behind the stove which would slow the critter down, if not result in his demise. He placed a glue trap banked up against the cabinets next to the fridge. I asked about the traps under the stove and fridge and he told me to remove them, they were likely confusing the mouse. His words, not mine.
Still no sign of the mouse. Perhaps he moved on.
A Few Final Words, Finally
The first couple of weeks were admittedly a little rough. Ambulances shrieking down Fifth Avenue day and night, the eerie emptiness of a building that’s typically bustling. Watching the very few people outside, and how when two were walking from opposite directions, one would veer off the sidewalk into the street, like the Minister of Silly Walks. Mail delivery was erratic, every other day or even every three days. Was our mailman OK? Nobody knew. Standing in the middle of Fifth Avenue at 9:00 AM, no cars. I knew better than to try and guess when this all would end and how it might all end.
I have read far too many accounts of the boredom and loneliness of OPC (other people’s confinements) I’m sure it’s very real, but I have to report that the past seven weeks I have not really had an issue with staying in. Instead, I am finding there is freedom in confinement.
I am not bored, I am not claustrophobic, I am not really thinking or planning more than a day or two ahead. I’m a bit bummed that the Billy Joel Channel has disappeared from the lineup on SXM, replaced by Prince. And that J Crew had to file for bankruptcy. Aaron’s wedding suit and his groomsmen outfits came from J Crew. I hope it survives. I hope all of you survive, too.
I have no interest in “returning to normal” once this is over. Which it may not be, in the done and dusted sense, for a long time. I’m excited about what lies beyond. I have specifically instructed Dr. Sabbatini that he has to keep me alive for long enough to experience this. Remember, after the Black Death, in came the Renaissance. The de’ Medici’s are waiting in the wings.
In the meantime, we should all wash our hands and not touch our faces.
Why is it so damn hard for me not to touch my face? It’s all I want to do once I leave the apartment. Something to explore in the next Weekly BiWeekly.
Cheers
mbl
Well I wrote an excellent long comment before signing in and then it disappeared. I will try to recreate its brilliance. First, I found both of these posts riveting, entertaining, enlightening, educating, moving. Thank you for sharing your journal of this particular plague year. I am, as always, awed by the energy and attitude you bring to everything in your life. I am facing down this moment without writing enough -- though I know, when we're on the other side, I'll want a record of just what the f*** I did during the pandemic and how my life evolved. Maybe I'll just claim your experiences. And thank you for showing what is happening, what you're seeing in beloved NYC. I miss her. Stay safe, stay well, and keep that team of doctors pushing forward for you. 😘