Letter from Key West, May 23 2020

1,635,836 covid cases in USA
96,370 covid deaths in USA

Key West continues to open up - restaurants are now at 50% capacity, the check point will be lifted on June 1 and tourists can come and stay in accomodations at 50% capacity.

We had neighbours over last night, and amongst lots of other things the virus in Key West was a topic.  The general consensus was to enjoy the next week and a half and be prepared to bunker back in again when the visitors come.

It is hard to see how the spread of the virus can be controlled in a tourist/partying area like Duval Street.  People come to Key West to socialize in the bars, enjoy great alcoholic drinks, listen to music, make new friends, talk into ears, congregate in groups etc etc etc....how do you get drunk people to practice proper social distancing?? Although, the bars are not open yet, only those that serve food.  Maybe that is the answer - no standing-only type of establishments, table service only.  Maybe that sets the tone and the parameters??

On a nicer note, it was a really lovely evening.  Our neighbours are the best and have been beyond helpful to us recently with flat tyres on the jeep!!! Yes flat tyres - two!! B and his young sons are car crazy and always tinkering on their own, but still, what they did for us was above and beyond.  So this little get together was a thank you for that.

Not pictured is the hummus, guac, salsa and chips. And key lime pie! And beer.

We started with rum and coconuts (from the garden, cut down by Patrick).  How cute do they look with a bamboo straw?!

And then Ciproskas by moi.  Which co-incidentally was one of my very first blog posts back in March 2012! A recipe of how to make a "caiproska" - spelling seems to have changed in my mind over the last 8 years lol!

Letter from Key West, May 19 2020 - June 1 reopening

Well it is official.  The checkpoints are being removed, and The Keys will be open on June 1.  Which means that come June 1, Key West is open for non residents i.e. tourists to come visit.

Restaurants are allowed serve diners inhouse at 50% capacity.  Bars - if you are also a fully functioning kitchen/restaurant then you are allowed open as per the restaurant rule.  If no food, bars are not mandated to open (yet?).  Hotel rooms/accommodations/lodgings are allowed open and have guests stay, at 50% capacity.

What can I say?  Like my previous post, I'm nervous. I'm anxious that just one asymptomatic carrier will kickstart the spread of the virus through our little community.  We have been incredibly lucky and our numbers are so, so low currently.  I am worried that is about to change.

But what is the alternative?  We cannot stay holed up forever. Would it be any better in another month?  I cannot say.  What I can say is that in one month the tourist season is practically over for Key West and unemployed service industry workers would then be looking at a lean few months until October for Fantasy Fest.  IF Fantasy Fest goes ahead?  Who knows at this point what is going to happen.

What I do know is what I can control.
Practice excellent social distancing, wear my mask at all times in public, wash my hands, wash my hands, wash my hands.

Stay well friends.

Just a perfect day....

Yesterday (Saturday) was a day, that will make my heart sing for many days and weeks to come

- We were on the boat at 9.15am and I ate a breakfast of English muffin and coffee on the water.  Is there anything better
- Patrick had an amazing morning of fishing.  Including the fish monster pictured below!
- We enjoyed a really lovely early afternoon in the back yard and the house.  We had a fab cold lunch of Norwegian smoked salmon, Italian prosciutto, Spanish sausage and Irish cheese.
- I may or may not have had a vodka screwdriver with my lunch (of course I did). And we had some squares of key lime pie chocolate for dessert.
- Patrick went grocery shopping and came back with 4 bottles of our favourite Cabernet Sauvignon that were on special
- We faffed around and had fun in the house and yard for the afternoon
- I had an outdoor shower.  Yes, I know, an every day occurrence.  And one, that will never not be, an awesome novelty experience
- Back we headed to the boat at around 4pm.  We went for a massive spin all around the island and I had my famous "goofy [aka really happy]" smile on my face the whole way
- We went for dinner in Dante's and it was fabulous - had the seafood sampler of oysters, shrimp and crab claws
- Went back out on the boat and did some evening fishing.  Patrick caught another fish monster.  Saw a beautiful sunset
- Home and chilled for the evening.
- Ate some key lime pie for a late night treat
- Went to bed absolutely exhausted but so happy.  Slept amazing!

Letter from Key West, April 26 2020

CVS have reduced all their Easter stock so I snaffled some peanut butter cups, some lindt chocolate and some PEEPS! Why the capital letters??  Because they are an unknown in Ireland and intrigue me so much.  Like didn't we have enough goodness, and sweetness, at Easter with all that chocolate?  Well, it appears not, someone came along and said, heck no, have some lurid coloured, sugary marshmallow while you're at it. 



 

Right, well who am I, to argue with that?

 

*******************************************

 

 

Things I am thankful for right now:

 

1. Fresh, clean bed linen. 

I did some chores yesterday, which included laundry of our bed sheets. Simply nothing like it.

 

 





Temperatures are going up here in Key West.  We have started using our AC and literally have two sheets as covers at night.

 

2. A healthy and happy relationship

I've grown a lot over the last couple of years, slash decade....ok, so, slash two decades. Yes it took time but I can confirm it was worth the wait. 

 

A couple of years ago, I remember meeting up with visiting friends to Dublin, an older (and clearly wiser) couple.  With drinks in hand, and sitting by a fire in the Library bar of the Exchequer Hotel I beseeched them for the answer to happiness in love.  Ok, truth be told. I whined to them. "How? how do you do it? how do I do it?? How, when you want to absolutely kill the other person, how do you avoid that turning in to a big massive argument? Howwww?"  

 

The advice they gave me was "we just laugh about things".  At the time I struggled.  How could one laugh about something, when you felt so passionate about it, when you just KNEW you were right and the other person was wrong? 



But slowly over the years, I realized it was great advice. I also realized it was ME who was in control of my happiness, not the other person.  I started thinking about me and what I could do differently, ok so I didn't laugh every time, but I certainly started breathing and thinking more. Thinking things like, is this really important to be "right" about?  Is this really the one thing that I want to hang my hat on today? Really....reeeeeeeally???  The answer invariably, tended to be no. 

I guess it's a variation of Don't Sweat the Small Stuff, or something like that??  All I can say is, it definitely feels a lot better to be the person that I am now.

And as for the laughter?  Well that came too.  And maybe that is to do with the other person, as well as me.  God damnit he is funny! God damnit he makes me laugh about something every single day!

And you know, I like to think that I make him laugh too.

For this, and a million other reasons, it just works.

And for that I am grateful.

Letter from Key West April 9th 2020

Hello from Key West!  Well I have some exciting news for you today.  But first, a coronavirus update...and the update is that I don't really have much of an update for you:

- Internationally/British news: Boris Johnson has apparently been moved out of the ICU onto a regular recovery ward.
- USA: I didn't really watch a huge amount of news today but one thing I am picking up on is that Small Businesses are having trouble getting access to the cash promised by the Government.

Okay! Are you ready for my exciting news?!  How about this for some treasure finds!

Do you remember my previous blog about cleaning out the shed?  I didn't say what I did with all the stuff I cleared out.  If you follow this blog regularly you will know I am a big advocate for avoiding landfill and "reduce, reuse or recycle".  So I do love Key West and the "curb alert" system where people put stuff they want to get rid of out for other people to poke through and take.  One man's junk is another man's treasure as they say.

So yesterday I put stuff out, and a decent amount got taken, yay!  But a decent amount was still left too.  Patrick really just wanted rid of it. He is, understandably, not mad on a big pile of rubbish outside our house, and not mad on strangers mooching around either. So he really would have liked to throw what remained straight into the rubbish bins at that point.  But he knows also how much I wanted it to be reused, so we compromised that I would put it out this morning for just one day more, and that anything left at 5pm today was for the trash.

So out it went:

Ok so this is where it gets interesting! The photo above is pretty junky right?  Bear in mind this is the remains from the second day.  There was some really good stuff on the first day. The type of Christmas decorations (sorry, ornaments!) that look like they would have been expensive and purchased in Fast Buck Freddies back in the day. 

This style of ornament (or even nicer)

And I am sure there are some people (Enid?!) reading this right now shouting, "no way, why didn't you keep them??!!" And while this is a reasonable question, I guess the answer to that is that I would prefer build up our own collection of Christmas tree decorations over the years. Plus there was an awful lot, boxes and boxes, remember my objective was to clear out that shed!! And also I am happy for them to go to new homes if other people will like them and they will be used.

But this morning while putting all the stuff out, my gut told me I should do a thorough search through them all and make absolutely sure I was happy for everything to go. 

Well guess what! I found THIS!

Oh, just a Waterford Crystal snowflake! The 2007 Christmas edition.

Can you believe it?  What is really funny is that this means a fabulous piece of (heavy) cut crystal worth approximately $100 (I looked it up!) was sitting outside of our house for a whole day, for the taking.

My gut was still niggling, urging me on that there was something else decent to be saved.  So when I saw these little teeny tiny guys I knew I had found something good!

They have a 1950/1960's look about them and I had a feeling that I was going to find some kind of identification on them that would be useful - I almost thought it would be something familiar like a steiff tag or something.

Well strangely, it was not Steiff, but it WAS German.

Original FDR Toys. Made in W.Germany

This dates them from prior to reunification i.e. between 1949 and 1990! And I would wager, going on the look of them they are late 50's/early60's.

I am just thrilled to bits with both my finds!  And to think that if I hadn't had that look this morning they could have been in the trash at 5pm.  Eek! Just doesn't bear thinking about.

From there, to here...a post to bring you up to speed

I haven't been blogging much at all in 2020, something that I was slightly regretting and now with the Coronavirus Pandemic, something I am very much regretting.  My twin sister over on her blog has been doing a great job documenting what is going on in Ireland over the last month or so, and I do wish I had been doing the same.

So! This blog post is to record my thoughts and what has been happening for me, over the last few weeks, and then let's see where I go from there - I would hope I would be better at recording things as they happen.  I need to get the sequence of events down in text because honestly, even now, it is all turning into a bit of a blur really.  So this is really just what I "remember", I cannot unfortunately swear to the accuracy of it!

Ok, well first of all let me assure you I was aware of the coronavirus from early January.  I don't live in a total bubble! And I do read a million newspapers online daily, and peruse another million discussion forums etc.  Oh and I get the New Yorker delivered every fortnight lol. And that is not to mention what I pick up from facebook and twitter.

An easy marker for me is St Patrick's day.  Probably about 10 days to two weeks out from the 17th of March, Ireland was starting their fight against coronavirus and as part of that the St Patrick's day weekend celebrations were cancelled (all over Ireland - the biggest parades being Dublin and Cork).  A smart thing to do - a large gathering of people is clearly a magnet for the virus to be spread.  It should be noted that nowhere in the UK (e.g. Manchester) cancelled their Paddy's day parades.  Also the Irish Government cancelled (or banned?) the Six Nations rugby match between Italy and Ireland.  They say this was done a little late and still a lot of Italians travelled to Ireland, but at a minimum it did stop the large crowd of spectators crammed in together in the Aviva stadium.

At this point in Key West we really were not feeling, or seeing any impact.  Life was going on as usual and business was as usual.  Town was full, and all bars, restaurants and hotels were all open and operating as normal.

Now moving forward to closer to the 17th of March.  Things still "as usual" in Key West, people talking about coronavirus but very much in the context of "how it was affecting elsewhere".  Me talking about places like Ireland, Italy and Spain.  Other places in the USA being discussed e.g. the nursing home in Washington where there was just utter decimation of the poor resident's lives. RIP. But still nothing about Key West, and at this point no discussion about it even arriving at our door.  I know, I sound naïve, I can't capture in words how insulated one feels down here - one feels very remote to the real world at the best of times, and clearly the same at the worst of times. 

We hosted a St Patrick's day party on the 15th of March.  With hindsight, the optics of that don't look great.  At the time I had no concerns.  Well actually, I did post one post on the facebook post on the party invite page saying if anyone had symptoms to stay away (different wording lol!!)...but important to note that at this point the "the asymptomatic carrier" did not even enter my consciousness.  I tapped elbows with everyone who arrived but there were other people who hugged each other, and definitely we did not stand 6ft/2 metres apart. The coronavirus was one of the biggest topics of conversation, but it was by no means the only one.  One or two people did mention that they were planning to hunker down and stop going out after the party.

So then, this is where things began to ramp up.  I believe on the 16th of March, by order of the Governor of Florida all bars were ordered to be closed and restaurants were to reduce their seating capacity by 50% in order to allow patrons to socially distance while eating.  The city of Key West went one further and ordered all bars and restaurants to close completely on 17th of March (17th of March!! St Patrick's day! Traditionally a BIG day and big holiday period in Key West).  Later during the week it was further ordered that all lodgings/rentals/hotels were to close on the 21st of March.  Thus meaning that by Sunday 22nd March the island should be inhabited by locals only.

Since then everyone has pretty much started and continued to "stay at home" and I think my previous blog post takes up from that point onwards...

Onwards and upwards!  Stay well, stay healthy, and stay positive.  We will get through this.  It is going to take time, how long I do not know, but what I do know is that if we all play our part the quicker it will be.

Oh! On that note about everyone playing their part - yesterday it was widely reported around the world about Ireland's Taoiseach (Prime Minister/leader) Leo Varadkar, who has re-registered with the Irish Medical Council and will be working as a doctor (his previous occupation) for one day a week during this crisis.  Talk about leading by example and being unafraid to roll up your sleeves and get stuck in.  Good man Leo!  I have been the first to criticize our Government in the past but I am extremely proud of how they have managed and guided Ireland during these unprecedented times.