Like everyone else I have been stuck at home for weeks now and have had a lot of time to just think. How has this new normal affected me? It is interesting the mood swings I have gone through. At first, I thought it was no big deal, just an inconvenience for a while.

I was in Alabama visiting my family when it all started the first week in March. Everything shut down so fast that I wasn’t sure I was going to get home. On my flights home there were only eight people on the first flight, Birmingham to Houston; only 35 on a big plane from Houston to Orange County. That is when I realized this was a bigger deal than I had first thought.

When I got home, Karin made me go directly to the shower and put all my clothes in the washing machine before I could give her a hug. That’s when I wondered, (I am a wonderer), what the hell is going on? I had not been watching TV at all.

Now many weeks into what’s going on, I’m still not sure. I have been basically on lockdown – house bound. All my reservations for March, April, May, and June were canceled by the resorts where I was booked for two weeks each month.

I didn’t get angry, as a biologist I understood the problem. The media has scared the bejesus out of everybody. We are not all going to die. Knowing what we know now about the problem we could open the entire country up if all the population would just follow the rules established to prevent the spread of the virus. They work!

I watch the protesters, not wearing masks, mobbed all together, carrying their signs to open things up, and I can’t help thinking, how stupid can these people be? They are involved in an activity that prolongs what they are protesting. Are they really that ignorant or do they just not give a poopoo for anyone but themselves?

Through the frustration that I have felt as time passes there are some good thing that have entered my life because of this chaos. I have watched a pair of Nuthatch birds build a nest in my patio, I work out every day instead of three days a week, and I have time to enjoy the flowers that are in my green-belt where the rabbits and squirrels live. If you are old enough to remember the children’s story of Ferdinand the Bull that wouldn’t fight in the ring because all he wanted to do was smell the flowers. That’s what I’ve become. I have learned to Hang Loose.

It is amazing how some things that seemed important in my life have become unimportant, and things that were important to me as a young person have reentered my life. For example, I no longer care much about what’s going on in the sports world but want to be more tuned in to what everyone in my family is doing. My family has become the rock in my life, again, like it was when I was growing up. I feel I don’t need all the other stuff that has surrounded me as an adult. Is that good, or bad? I don’t know, perhaps, time will tell.