I'm overstimulated, which is a writer's worst nightmare. My thoughts have the zoomies, making them hard to catch or pinpoint. I feel overwhelmed by the vastness of human life. I've met so many new people this week at my new job. And I've seen even more people there that I haven't met. I keep thinking of how my grandma is driving across the country with my aunt and uncle. How people who don't know her will see her and only see an old woman, see her frailty. But that is just her body, that is not who she is. She may be an old woman now, but she was also once a little girl exploring the beaches of Lake Michigan with her best friends and neighbors Rae and Johnny. She was once a girl sitting on her older sister's stack of records in the basement while listening to the record player. She was once my grandpa's high school sweetheart. She was once a girlfriend left behind as my grandpa went to war in Korea. She once, newly married, and never having traveled out of her small town, moved with my grandpa to an Air Force Base in South Dakota where she gave birth to my mother far away from her family and friends. She was once the mother of five young children, raising them mostly on her own. She is a woman who lived through the death of her teenage son. She is a strong woman who lived with and loved an alcoholic man. She was a woman known to be vivacious and full of life, which if you look close enough, you'll see she still is. She is a woman who once filled the halls of her church with art and posters she created and hand-drew on her own. She is a woman who raised strong and fierce children into even stronger and fiercer adults. She is a woman who helped raise her grandchildren, telling them stories, singing them songs, teaching them art, and capturing their imaginations. She may be an old woman now, but she is still all these things. As I've met and seen so many new people at my new job this week, I've been struck again by how each of us has a story, each of us is more than what we seem on the surface. If we urge one another not to judge books by their covers, how much more should we not judge people by theirs? We all love and are loved; we all have people who see us for who we are. We all are more than the sum of our parts. It's shockingly easy to forget this, to merely see people as annoyances, or in our way. We can become so engrossed in our own lives, we forget everyone else is also experiencing life in different, yet very similar, ways. I, for one, am working on remembering.

" Sick Of the Ill and Ill of the sick " How many times have we heard, “raise your hand if you are tired of Covid-19?” Too many to count for sure. Have you ever felt like you are watching a bus drive off of a cliff and there isn't anything you can do about it? Well that is how I currently feel. A never-ending optimist by heart, this is not an easy thing for me to admit. I currently reside in Florida. A New York girl living in a Florida world as they like to say. The place where everyone claims to have New York pizza but it's really the dilapidated Gyro King that makes it the best. The land of eternal sunshine and bad decisions. Sometimes I wonder how a place so beautiful, a place know for Mickey Mouse can really just be a rather large penial colony. Let's just say if you have ever seen Live PD, we have been featured in some of their most exciting episodes. Flu season is not usually very bad here. Back up in N.Y. we were accustomed to getting sick a few times a year with illness that leave you bed ridden for 5-7 days at least. That may be why people here don't seem to be taking the Coronavirus very seriously or maybe it's because they haven't known anyone who has had it. Checking in with our New York family via Zoom once a week since March we have heard all about the devastation this virus has caused. We have even had family members suffer from it firsthand. My immediate family and I have been quarantining since March Currently we are averaging 7,000-10,000 new cases a day here and the ICU's are almost full. During the original shutdown in March everyone was taking things seriously and we had very few cases. Our Governor has insisted that the Schools will open in about six weeks from now and I don't understand it. A beloved Broadway Actor whose story we have all been following just passed away and they want us to put our children at risk? The tiny humans spawned from our bodies that we love more than anything. Just gamble with their lives? I must ask myself daily if the world has gone mad but I already know the answer is an undeniable YES! Megalomaniacs are in office creating their own narrative. We have a governor who has blamed our outrageous numbers on migrant workers, more testing, skewed numbers and kids being kids. Florida isn't the only southern state with growing numbers. Texas, New Mexico and Arizona have been growing steadily. California has just hit the 300,000 mark and Florida is over 200,000 now. The scientist who was controlling the dashboard for the Florida numbers was asked to tamper them down and when she refused, she was fired. The lead epidemiologist who has worked for the state of Florida for 15 years quit when our governor stated he will definitely be opening schools. This brings me to my point as the song goes, “I've got issues. But you got ‘em too.” What do we do as hopeful law-abiding citizens when the government does not have our backs? What do we do when they have decided to be careless with our lives? I have often wondered how some of the atrocities of the past were allowed to happen and then fast-forward to today and we are letting history repeat itself. We have seen the Flu of 1918 first and second wave. Have we not evolved more than this as human beings? Were we just kidding ourselves? Every day I read the news from all of the available sources so I can decipher what the actual truth is. I look at the national numbers, Florida's and my counties. I look to see how many people have died and figure out the ratio to the number infected. I don't want to let the facts overwhelm me as I refuse to be someone who ever lets fear overtake them but I do have questions. One of which is, “Why are some countries in Asia showing so much more caution with less numbers?” “What do they know that we don't.” I have to think that since they have had outbreaks like this before Covid-19 they have much more experience than us. I have seen China and Italy shut down completely and eventually be able to contain this virus while we are still open with millions of cases nationwide and over 200,000 in our state alone. It makes you wonder if we can't get out of our own way? If America is much more concerned with money/economic stability than lives. Has the government just decided that they are willing to sacrifice a certain amount of American lives behind closed doors? What is the actual number of deaths that will make them take this virus more seriously? Does that number exist? It makes you wonder.