What could we have done differently to prevent this whole fiasco? Plenty, methinks. I have heard so many people who THINK they already had the virus in January or February, even though they weren’t tested, because it was before COVID was a news item. Is this paranoia common in 2020? Or is it justified? I also know of a lot of people, who have suddenly decided to move from their house, city, state, job, you name it. The self-reflection forced upon us in Pandemic quarantine has brought plenty of radical changes.

My favorite neighbor Maggie has moved to Coconut Grove. I’m happy for her as she embarks on this new chapter of her life, but I will miss her. I didn’t get a chance to really say goodbye, since I’m down (up?) in the Keys. Not that I could’ve hugged her, at any rate. And after being in the Keys alone for so long, I’ve started to veer into a weird territory- growing scallion ends and succulents, researching recipes for pickled watermelon rind and taking photos of mushrooms growing in my condo development to see if they’re edible. If the Pandemic doesn’t get me, the mushrooms may.

And Wyatt’s gone for a week, so I miss him.

It seems people are divided in our country on many fronts. One example is the working vs. not working camps; this even comes into play in my own family. My son Christopher is a welder in Tallahassee, his wife Courtney a Labor and Delivery Nurse in a hospital. When I Face Timed with them last week, Christopher told me he only worked 25 hours the week before. Courtney, on the other hand, is working more than ever. Her hospital has always been understaffed, but added to that now is people out sick with COVID or awaiting results from COVID, and they’re severely understaffed. She’s working her a** off and she’s pregnant! My son wants more work, but it’s not there. The situation is frustrating and it seems, no one’s happy.

My friend Katy is a server at Disney World and was one of the “lucky” ones hired back recently. But instead of her normal 6 hour shifts, on different days, she now has 12 hour shifts, four days in a row. And she has to wear, not only a mask, but a plastic face shield while serving Disney diners- she’s on her feet all day and she’s my age (60). Not easy! But when the 7000 Disney employees who got hired back complained about the working conditions in an online chat group, the 12,000 who haven’t been hired back said: “Stop complaining. At least you have a job!” And the $600 a week unemployment boost by the government, to help citizens in the Pandemic, ends at the end of this month.

Apparently, lingerie sales are up 50% in the Pandemic. Not in this household. Mumus and yoga clothes are still in steady rotation. We’ve been looking into buying a boat this summer (a dream of ours for a while), but apparently they’re a hot commodity right now, since everyone wants to be out on the water, socially distancing. Since being in the Keys for a month straight, I’ve started noticing things here that need to be fixed/organized/replaced, so I’ve made some Amazon purchases, delivered to the Keys. All my kitchen appliances are original, from the 90’s, so I’m thinking about replacing them, especially my Hotpoint microwave, which I feel must have been a prototype for microwaves. There’s no turntable that spins and when I put my coffee in to heat it up, the mug comes out hot, the coffee cold, so besides being ineffective, I worry about getting zapped with radioactive waves.

At home, our roof is still not fixed, but they have found the leak, thank God. The deck guy I got to install our deck was cheaper than the rest (originally), but he underestimated the size of the deck, so I had to pay him $2000 more. And when the contractor pulled up the deck, they found he had screwed the faux wood panels into the roof, which caused our roof to leak, so my “cheap” deck is going to end up costing me a fortune. Lesson learned.

My week of meals down in the Keys ended up being (at least somewhat) the way I envisioned them. Monday I made shrimp ceviche, a Cotsco recipe (Ceviche Salad with Avocado, Cilantro and Green Chile) since I had all the ingredients already. I wanted to give a little oomph, so mixed a simple mashed avocado sauce to put on top, along with sriracha (for color and heat). I also wanted a little crunch to my salad, so heated a flour tortilla in the cast iron skillet to go with it and sliced it into wedges. Yummy and pretty healthy.

Tuesday, I stuck with my normal Num Thai take-out, with an order of crispy duck and stuffed tuna. I’d read about the stuffed tuna on Yelp. It’s basically a slice of ahi tuna wrapped around crabmeat tossed in spicy mayo and it was as good as Yelped about. I fufilled my fantasy of grilled teriyaki chicken and corn on Thursday night. Zeke always accuses me of trying to “man his grill”, so this was my chance to man it myself. It turned out fantastic, but prefer boiled corn to grilled, even with the wasabi butter I slathered it with, to keep with the Asian theme.

On Wednesday, I made a Grilled Cheese Sandwich with Muenster cheese, guava preserves and arugula, on fresh rye bread. My Mom always used Muenster cheese for making grilled cheese sandwiches when I was growing up; it melts perfectly. The secret to getting a golden crust on the sandwich was spreading mayo on the bread (neat trick!); the preserves and arugula took it from a Ho Hum grilled cheese to Heck, yea! I served it with some quinoa bean salad my neighbor in the Key’s had dropped off for me. It was an easy, comforting dinner.

I also made Key Lime Bars with Vanilla Wafer Crust (a NYT Food recipe), just because I felt like it. It was basically a Key Lime Pie in bar form, but the vanilla wafer crust was kind of genius. It made the crust crunchier, and unlike the crumbly, graham cracker crust with a hint of cinnamon, focuses the palate on the intense Key Lime filling. Zeke loved them.

While I’ve been hunkered down in the Keys, Zeke has been in Miami whipping up gourmet meals for Rachel and, sometimes, Lauren. When I complained that he never whipped up these creative (or basically any) meals for me, he came down to the Keys equipped with a very fancy Coquille St. Jacques recipe (Ina Garten). He sautéed shallots with brandy and cream; it smelled heavenly. Best of all, this scallop recipe can be made ahead, stored in the fridge and baked later, which is what we did. He served it with rice and it was delicious. Saturday night, Zeke grilled a stuffed pork chop and served it with a Dijon, maple sauce. I made roasted Brussel Sprouts with balsamic vinegar to go with it. Both meals were winners and much appreciated.

We ate lunch at Mrs. Mac’s on Friday, which felt like Saturday all day because Zeke came down on Thursday. We sat outside (of course) and each got a cup of their Conch Chowder and split the Superfish Sandwich with onion rings. It came with grilled yellowtail snapper, sliced tomato, Swiss cheese and 1000 island dressing, on grilled whole wheat bread. It was really good and the service is always attentive and friendly at Mrs. Mac’s, a true local gem.

I can’t really complain about being quarantined in the Keys, as I’ve always wanted to seclude myself here and just write. Now I have the perfect excuse. I’ve been walking every day, reading a Travis McGee murder mystery (Bright Orange For the Shroud) and watching Chef’s Table, the ABC Murders and Clueless (25 year anniversary) on T.V. I’d like to paddleboard but I’m deathly afraid of sharks. I realize the chance of me getting bit by a shark is one in 3.75 million, but I feel like if it was ever going to happen, this would be the year. And Natalie Wood was deathly afraid of drowning, and you know how that ended.

I’m lucky I have a pool to swim in, as it seems to be the most desirable home luxury to have this summer. I was reading an article on The Skimm about how “Inflatable Pools are the Official Symbol of America’s Lost Summer.” The article said, about people ordering inflatable pools, if this Summer has a theme it would be: “It’s Better Than Nothing.” People are making do, doing without, realizing this might be as good as it gets, especially since Americans are allowed to travel like, nowhere. The article ended with “It’s 2020. Take a nice dip in all of your abandoned dreams.”

I’d been planning a Road Trip to visit my Mom’s condo in Steamboat Springs, Colorado with my Mom, A.J. and Wyatt. We were going to drive there, fly back, but after knowing a couple people who got, or were exposed to COVID on flights, I really didn’t think it was the right time to be flying. Especially with my eighty-something year old mom. And, Zeke and I were going to fly up to D.C. with Lauren to get her set up in her apartment to start Georgetown Law School in August, but now we’ve decided to drive instead. After dropping Lauren off, Zeke and I are going to knock off three more states on my Bucket List- West Virginia, Maryland and Delaware.

The expression “There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” has been on my mind a lot lately. It’s a grisly little saying and while I have no desire to skin a cat, it’s just kind of been my theme for 2020. Because if this year has taught us anything, it’s how to pivot on a dime. If you can’t go on an Alaskan cruise this summer (like I was supposed to), vacay in the Keys, if you don’t have a pool at home, buy an inflatable one, if you can’t fly somewhere, drive and, if you don’t have a boat, paddleboard instead. Just watch out for sharks!

We’re gonna need a bigger boat!

Brody (aka Roy Schneider) in Jaws.

Up Next: Key West Food Tour Seafood Lover’s Tour and Best Melting Cheeses.

About a month and a half ago, while walking around our neighborhood, my husband and I noticed a ton of little impromptu parties of teenagers, outside or around pools, in our neighborhood. No one was wearing masks. Whether these were graduation parties (as Gimenez has suggested), or just “gettys” that then preceded to move indoors, I don’t know, but it sure didn’t seem safe. Gimenez has also blamed the protests on the rapid spread of COVID 19 in Miami. Florida is constantly in the news now, for all the wrong reasons. We’re the laughing stock of the country, not for hanging chads this time, but for our state of Covidiots. We are a cautionary tale of what not to do.

Of course we re-opened too early, there’s no doubt about it now. And of course, people that were cooped up for months, without contact with friends and family, rushed to go back to the normal socialization we all once knew. We let our guard down, and now we’re paying for it. In spades.

But the restaurants! I feel so bad for them. They were just getting back to normal (albeit the new normal), re-hiring staff, re-ordering food, getting back into the swing of things, even offering Miami Spice for four months straight. And now- who is going to survive this? Which restaurants will still be standing after the smoke clears? Back to take-out and delivery for moi.

Our week started off with a celebration for Zeke’s birthday on Monday. He’d gotten a rotisserie cooker for his grill for Father’s Day and wanted to try it out, so I got a duck and champagne at Publix. We had planned on eating at 7, but unfortunately the duck was still quite frozen when we were supposed to start cooking, so we popped the Champagne at 6 and were all quite tipsy by the time the duck rolled off the grill at 8:30! Nothing like being starving (and slightly smashed) to make a meal taste great.

Lauren had made a cheese plate that we nibbled at with the Champagne for appetizers. Zeke roasted his duck on the grill, letting the duck fat drip into a tray underneath filled with partially cooked and cubed potatoes and sprigs of rosemary. This was a delicious, low cal dish. I made a miso asparagus dish from Joy of Cooking, that was quite nice and bought some French bread to go with dinner. The “very” vanilla cake Zeke requested was a white cake with white buttercream frosting, served with vanilla ice cream. From what I remember, it all was great and we left the next day to Key West, which was my gift to Zeke for his birthday.

We had a Ghost Tour the first night, a Key West Seafood Lover’s Tour the next day and we tried a bunch of new restaurants down at the Southernmost Spot in the US. While we usually have some duds in our experimental dining, in this case, they were all winners. I will write about the restaurants and recommended dishes later, but it was very disconcerting to see so many people (about half) in Key West NOT wearing masks on the streets, even though it was mandatory. There was no one enforcing this rule, however, although apparently Tour Guides and Restaurants can be fined heavily for violating the no-mask rule.

Fourth of July was a bit of a let down, with none of the kids (or grandkid) joining us, because apparently the Keys are “boring” without a boat. I laid in bed most of the day, reading, but did rally to throw together dinner (burgers, corn, baked beans and macaroni salad); we went down to the dock for sunset. We were supposed to go out on someone’s boat to see the fireworks in Key Largo that night, but they were cancelled like 80% of the fireworks across the country. Can we just say Fourth of July 2020 was a dud? It surely was for me. Even the red, white and blue cocktail I attempted to make turned green instead. It also would’ve been my Dad’s 85th birthday.

Speaking of Duds, here’s 2020, so far:

• Coronavirus
• Economic Shutdown
• Record Unemployment
• Stock Market Plunges
• Aggressive Rats
• Murder Hornets
• Death of George Flyod
• Protests, Riots, Looting
• Saharan Dust Cloud
• UFO’s (in Miami)
• Locusts in Africa
• Brain-destroying amoeba in Florida (you might have missed this one)
• Meth Alligators

Zeke told me about this last one. Apparently it’s happening in Tennessee, where people are flushing drugs, like Meth, down the toilet. The police are claiming that alligators could ingest the drugs and make them hyper-aggressive. And speaking of medicine, a lot of people are having a hard time, mentally, with the Pandemic and it’s consequences. Suicides are up, as is depression and domestic abuse. The trickle-down effect of the Coronavirus seems to be endless.

And normality, even though it was the “new normal”, has just been yanked away from us in Miami. Believe me, I think it was the right call, but it sucks. A fellow Book Club member, who was recovering from an unfortunate accident that involved stitches, had sent out an invite: “I think I have quarantined enough”, to ask if anyone wanted to go to Fiola’s for lunch right before this happened. Restaurants will be closed starting July 8th, although restaurants with outside seating will be permitted to serve, if they can stick to social distancing guidelines.

I’m still walking (although now in Key Largo) and have enjoyed listening to a podcast called My Favorite Murder on Exactly Right. It’s a comedy/murder podcast that is very entertaining; there’s nothing like listening to a podcast about murder to get your mind off the Pandemic. I also listened yesterday to a BBC Podcast called Desert Island Discs, where the interviewer asks a person what seven songs they would take with them on a desert island. I really enjoyed it and it got me thinking about what my seven discs would be.

I did make some yummy caramel corn on July 4th, an Ina recipe to go on an amazing sundae she made with salted caramel gelato and homemade chocolate sauce. I only made the caramel corn with peanuts part, but it’s a delicious snack which reminds me of something my Mom used to buy called Screaming Yellow Zonkers (what a name!). It’s rather addictive, a perfect movie-watching snack.

And, since it’s summer (you should know this by the earth-scorching, melt-your-face off heat when you step outside) here are some great Summer Movies to get your mind off You Know What: Grease, Jaws, The Parent Trap, American Graffiti, Say Anything, Mamma Mia, Caddyshack, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Blue Crush, Stand By Me, Now and Then, My Girl, Something’s Gotta Give, The 7 Year Itch, Dirty Dancing, Splash & Vacation.

These aren’t Academy Award winners, by any means, but who wants anything serious right now? And don’t forget the 3 C’s: Avoid: Close Contact, Crowded Places and Closed Spaces. Stay safe out there.

Up Next: Key West Restaurants and Mango Mania