What a time we live in! I was spending my summer down at Disney World, yet again, when Coronavirus started up in China. At the Airbnb I was at, as luck would have it, we all came down with some sort of nasty upper respiratory infection that had the side effect of extreme exhaustion, so rather than going to the parks I ended up staying home for the most part. And then, the virus started to spread, but wasn’t in Florida yet, when I was scheduled to change Airbnb’s to a second location (what is it with Brazilians and their love of Donald Trump? Both locations hosted by Brazilians, both of them in love with the man and believe his every word) this time with a hostess who refused to believe the pandemic was going to be a real thing (just as the first Florida infections, from cruise ships, started showing up) and was out partying while I was huddled in my room and thinking, “going to Disney World probably NOT the best choice right now.” I.e., saw relatively little of the Mouse this year in spite of having purchased a one year pass.
The more this hostess refused to honor what was coming the more nervous I got about staying at her home. That and while I wasn’t so much worried about it killing me, if I got sick enough to NEED medical assistance I wanted to be ‘in network’ (as my health insurance doesn’t cover Florida) so being sick didn’t also result in going broke. SO, I shortened my trip to leave the following week (instead a month hence)… and the following day Disney World decided to close up shop in 4 days.
EEK! Shit done got real! Disney doesn’t even close for Hurricanes!!
So I told her I was leaving the next morning (didn’t want to be stuck on the highway with all the tourists heading north), threw my stuff into my suitcases, loaded up the car and left. Believe it or not this hostesses’ response to the park closing was to bundle her four year up daughter and head to the parks “for their last two days in a while”… her comment being “the parks will be half empty, and I don’t believe this illness is going to anything worse than the flue. People are silly.”
Along the path up north I stopped for gas and food, and that was it. Totally not how I usually road trip, and my inner child was going, ‘but mom, we could stop here, or go there” and my neurotic adult voice saying, “shut up and be quiet, we’re not stopping!”
Along the way I could tell distinguish republicans from democrats based on how they washed their hands. Suddenly most folks (who bothered to wash at all) were doing it mostly as instructed in all the videos that were floating around the internet last week, which was never how folks had washed their hands till then… with a few folks still doing the 5 second throw water on your hands and leave. I assumed those folks were the republicans.
The room I had rented in Chicago was supposed to be from Mid April to June, but the guests who were booked into that space for the days before my arrival had just cancelled and headed home, so I was able to begin my booking in early March instead (a BIG house on Chicago’s north shore with a family I’d lived with previously), almost a full month earlier than expected.
On the 13th of March (while I was in Southern Georgia) I had gone to Costco’s website to order a delivery of groceries to arrive on the 16 (I got in late on the 15th but had thought I might get there on the 16th if traffic or weather was bad, etc.), but it never arrived even though my credit card had been charged. I emailed the company that night, they didn’t respond to the email till Friday the 20th. I tried calling customer service multiple times before that but didn’t manage to get through till Wed., the 18th — and that required over two hours on hold — at which point I cancelled the order because the guy said, “well we can try to get your order to you in 5 hours from now, but it if it doesn’t show up again you’ll have to call us again!” No grocery deliveries for me… and TODAY the Governor of IL who had allowed restaurants do continue to do delivery and take out, but not sit in, has put the entire state on lock down.
We live in interesting times.
Rebecca Radnor's Personal Blog: Consider yourselves warned! 