Quarantined in Paradise

This could be really nice.

If most of us didn't have to think about the bills coming due in two weeks,

We could have been ordered to self-quarantine in the bleak of winter

or suffocating summer

or during hurricane season.

But instead it's glorious spring. I mean, sun-is-perfect, temperature-mild, and breezes-caressing, gorgeous spring!

Don't get me wrong, I am working. I blog on my iPad at the breakfast table, then do an editing session on the laptop on the patio, give a remote piano lesson, and hand stitch medical masks on the lounge chair with this view

quarantined in Paradise.

I hear the weather’s not bad up in New York either. Days are warming and the lucky few with rooftop patios enjoy taking their shirt off while conducting important business calls.

Do I wish I had a job in the "essentials” sector? Yes, I think so. The dubious financial future would fly away. It's taken a long time to settle into this idea of not running out the door every morning, and stay home,  disciplining myself to be productive.

But, as a nurse or postal worker or Total Wine clerk, I'd be in constant fear that the next person I service could be sharing his life-threatening disease.

There's no comfortable place to be.

So, we work at home with rambunctious children underfoot, make them endless meals, educate and contain them.

We discover new annoying idiosyncrasies in our spouses and roommates with fresh arguments to wage.

We fumble through the limitations of FaceTime, Skype, Zoom and Google hangouts for whatever work or social activity we attempt. The online unemployment applications are crashing like bumper cars at a carnival as millions claim distributions.

And just as cases climb in NYC, the cyberspace will continue to get more crowded.

Who is holding up the World-Wide Web? Atlas? Because whoever he is, I hope he’s been pumping planets and running laps around Orion to prepare for this satellite overload.

Speaking of solar systems, if nothing else, at least the seasons seem intact.

For those of us who are not connected to a ventilator, waiting in line for Covid-19 testing or riding out a terrifying diagnosis, the sun still rises, the crescent moon still glows, our gardens grow tomatoes, the Florida Jays still twitter and we,

we will somehow find our way back to a normal spring

quarantined in this charlatan paradise.

Photo credit - thesportysommelier.com