April 12th

At 10:00 a.m.  Finally able to get an email from our Travel Agent “Could we talk after noon?” Sure, said I.

It is 1:40 p.m. Eastern Time and I am waiting to hear from our Travel Agent.  She returned yesterday from a week long cruise to the Bahamas.  I had contacted her with our concerns last week and the first few emails were awkward. I quickly got the sense that she hadn’t been following the news.  For instance, she thought that Oceania had cancelled some Asian ports when, in fact, they had cancelled all Asian ports until June 2020. 

So about 2:30, we talked.  I really like her but I found her responses to be inadequate.  I think she is in denial.  But that doesn’t help.

In a “normal” situation, I don’t like idiocy.  But I am thinking of her position.  Her Business is going to take a hit, and not just from me.  On more than one occasion, probably five or six, I probably would have said to someone else “What the F**k is wrong with you?”  But I didn’t, it’s not just my problem or discomfort, it’s also hers.  But my restraint on my temper left me with shaky, almost Parkinson’s shake hands after I got off the phone.  I was that Angry.

5:30, husband comes home.  He has document from his agency that if he travels to certain countries, Italy among them, he will be forced to quarantine for 14 days at his expense of leave. 

He also has a document that he is being denied leave for our cruise trip, May 3^rd to May 17^th.  The reason is he will be gone for 14 days and then quarantined for another 14. Nearly a month, a “Mission Stoppage” is what they said. 

Denied Leave. Period.

Having these documents in hand, I contacted Travel Safe, our travel insurance company, sort of…

I used the number...after about 20 minutes…I was informed that number was “Sales”.  I needed Claims.  So I got transferred. The First of Three times I got transferred, they were playing Mozart on hold for about the full 2 hours I waited (speaker phone on).  I finally got through.  It was an “answering service.”

They would call me back.

Meanwhile, I had put Kielbasa and Sauer Kraut with Carrots & Caraway Seed in the Slow Cooker, and dinner was ready in spite of my fury.

Adam, our neighbor’s son who is staying with us, asked me questions off and on.  I finally said “I have a First World Problem.  There’s a guy in Kuala Lumpur who wishes he had this problem.”

And that is true.

People have lost their loved ones. People have died so unexpectedly and too soon. People have been imprisoned in State Rooms and had to be airlifted home to be further abused by not being able to go home to sleep the night in their own beds.  People are getting very agitated and who knows what that agitation will look like if it goes world-wide.

My perspective is very narrow.  It is insular and introspective. The Coronavirus has reminded us we are all one family, one race of humans and Nature is beyond our control.  It’s the Wild, Wild West out There…