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Hey man, this is surreal.

I thought I knew what the word “surreal” meant but lately I, actually all of us, have been given a crash-course in surrealism. Here’s the dictionary definition:

(səriəl ) adjective. If you describe something as surreal, you mean that the elements in it are combined in a strange way that you would not normally expect, like in a dream.

-COBUILD Advanced English Dictionary. Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers

 

Here’s my definition.

Monday, I cooked hamburgers on the grill and had 2 glasses of beer. 1,579,690 people have a confirmed case of coronavirus worldwide and 94,567 people died because of it.

Tuesday, I cut my grass for the first time. I cooked some nice big chicken breasts on the grill and had 3 glasses of beer because it was such a nice, sunny, warm day. There were 457,035 corona virus cases is the US. 16,252 fellow Americans have died.

Wednesday, I spread a truckload of mulch on my landscaping. I cooked brats on the grill and had 2 glasses of beer. There were 880 confirmed corona virus infections in Will County, Illinois – my home county – and 35 of my neighbors have died so far.

I could go on….yardwork, spring cleaning, little-jobs-around-the-house. Quarantine, social distancing, PPE, flatten the curve. Dragging my 64-year-old self to the grocery store is a non-starter.

It’s life and death out there. And yet, some of life’s most innocuous, mundane chores keep getting done. We humans are a remarkable, resilient, ignorance-is-bliss species living in a surreal time. Stay safe and let’s hope we can scale things back to plain old ‘real’ soon.

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