The State of Florida certainly has its share of hazards…

Hurricanes, love bugs, the infamous Florida Man himself.

Of course, we typically don’t find ourselves having to take on all of them at the same time on top of a global pandemic, so that’s a new one for the books in 2020! Where does one shelter in place when your shelter has been scattered all over the neighborhood by Category 4 winds, anyways?!

Love bug season is always fun because despite how sick I get of trying to scrub their horny, little butts off my windshield every time I leave the house, you’ve got to admire that kind of passion when even the threat of oncoming traffic isn’t enough to make them keep their disgusting bug hands off of each other when they’ve already committed to doing the deed…

Florida Man, as you would only expect, still doesn’t believe that Coronavirus is a real thing because he’s convinced it’s a hoax started by Bill Gates in order to microchip the world through vaccines or something. That is, until he goes and contracts it himself, or kidnaps an underage girl to use her to get through a COVID-19 checkpoint, or gets indicted on terrorism charges for coughing on police officers and telling them that he had COVID-19.

Oh Florida Man, we just can’t make your stories up!

So needless to say, like most Floridians the last thing I’m ready for at this point is hurricane season amid the rest of this manically-charged pandemonium:

  • As much as I’ve gotten used to sheltering at home, I’d prefer not to have to do it without electricity if we can help it!
  • If you thought the toilet paper hoarding was bad, just wait until there’s a run on Pop-Tarts and beer…
  • And believe it or not, I just don’t have the energy to watch any news reports of guys wanting to tie themselves to trees on the beach to wait out the storms this year.

I don’t think that it’s too much to ask that we limit our horrific disasters to one at a time. This isn’t Sharknado … not yet, anyways.

When folks are still arguing about wearing masks in the grocery store and even tourists are steering clear of our state’s jam-packed, magical theme parks, I think it’s ok to admit that maybe we’re not in the best state of mind to also have to worry about 100+ mph winds and whether or not you might wake up to find that your living room has suddenly become oceanfront property. Or the family jalopy is now parked in the neighbor’s upstairs bathroom…

It’s bad enough having to worry about whether or not every random surface that we pass has been sanitized for Corona in the last 35 seconds, but now to also spend sleepless nights wondering if our house and all of our worldly belongings might get blown into a state with even worse pandemic statistics than our own?! I spend too much of my day scrubbing down the quarantine bubble around my family as it is to also have to think about storm surge and who’s going to take that cool picture of me kayaking down the street for Instagram once the neighborhood is flooded and the eye of the storm is overhead!

It’s like the old saying goes – fear of a deadly, lung-devouring flu strain or fear of an alligator flying through your living room window … choose one!

In any other year, I’m sure we Floridians can agree that we would welcome our four o’clock thunderstorms and swarms of horny locusts on every surface imaginable in exchange for a few long weekends where we can pretend that we’re not worried about getting utterly decimated by Mother Nature’s wrath, but this year has just been a little too crazy and we’re going to need a nice, quiet hurricane season if that can somehow be arranged.

Maybe if enough of us wear masks, the hurricanes won’t recognize Florida and just move on to another state instead.

South Dakota is probably overdue for a little rain…