“If you surround yourself with clowns, don't be surprised when your life resembles a circus” –Steve Maraboli

April 26, 2020

“If you surround yourself with clowns, don't be surprised when your life resembles a circus” –Steve Maraboli    

The surreal situation that living in a global pandemic was brought to the forefront once again this week when President Trump, the leader of the free world stood in front of the assembled press at his daily Corona virus briefing and suggested that it may be possible to cure the virus by injecting disinfectant into the human body. Immediately following the presser, companies actually had to issue warnings to keep people from actually following the President’s advice. This kind of crazy seems to be the new normal as the country remains firmly under the grip of the pandemic.











The President tried to pass it off that he was being sarcastic and later tried to blame the press, but the most telling thing is that he hasn’t had one of the daily briefings in the past few days. The idea that he could be sarcastic or make light of the situation is just inane on the face of it especially since the numbers continue to grow at an alarming rate nationwide. Currently there have been 939,053 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the United States with a staggering 53,189 deaths. That number is more than a quarter of the deaths in the world.













Locally things are slightly better as we have done a good job of flattening the curve and keeping the cases from daily walksin Key West. There are currently 11 people who have been hospitalized and thankfully the number of people who have passed from the disease here locally remains at 3 people.
Six weeks into our stay at home isolation, we are hanging on, but beginning to go a little stir crazy. It is an up and down experience being alone and isolated, thankfully Kathy and I have been making the best of it, falling into a rhythm of life where we get some work done, keep the house and yard clean, read and watch some TV and video and have time to exercise mostly by continuing to take long walks and bike rides around town.









This week, Kathy broke down and ordered a small 8 foot pool which arrived and we assembled and have spent a few hours in daily since it arrived. Something about being able to relax in the cool water of even the small pool is calming and enjoyable and we have been taking full advantage of it since it arrived. It was an easy set-up and is really quite refreshing and enjoyable especially for the very reasonable price we got it from on Amazon.





Kathy





We have continued to try and support local restaurants by ordering carry out every few days, this week we ordered from Café Sole and the Dirty Pig. I have a scary feeling that many of our favorite places may not survive the closures and business slowdowns that have taken place during the pandemic. I got some really sad news that one of my all-time favorite restaurants is not going to survive this shutdown. I fear that it will just be the first in a long line of places that may not make it. It is such a difficult situation.





In addition to the daily walks, I took a day to get off the island for the first time in six weeks when I drove up to Big Pine Key to spend some alone time in the great outdoors. The Key Deer National Wildlife Sanctuary has not closed to the public and I wanted to take some time to be outside in nature away from people. They had signs reminding people to remain socially distant while hiking etc., but they were not necessary the day I was there as I saw a total of two other people the entire time I was there.













It was a humid and warm day, but so nice just to be out in nature, even though I saw very little actual wildlife, it was a great break from the monotony of sheltering at home. Even the drive was enjoyable. There have been some bright spots in between the scary news conferences and seemingly endless flow of bad news. We have continued to use the internet to connect with friends, holding zoom meetings with friends and facetime chats with both family and friends.











I also took part in an organized reading by author Lee Smith who read from her new novella based on her first ever trip to Key West, “Blue Marlin”, which is named after the local hotel of the same name where Lee and her family stayed on her first visit to Key West back in the 50s. It was a fun use of technology, not quite as cool as an in person reading but pretty fun anyway. I also spent time watching live concert performances broadcast on the internet including the weekly Sunday show from the Purple Room in Nashville by singer songwriter Todd Snider, In addition, I watched more iRacing competition from Indy Car including the most recent race from COTA in Austin.