I wake up in a panic.

I feel sick. I wonder if I caught it. I try to remember the exact symptoms of covid-19, and try to self-diagnose whether I have them. Dry cough. Fever. Shortness of breath. I don’t think I feel those.

But I do feel that my eyes are itchy, my nose is runny. And then, it comes, crawls into my nose and demands I let it out.

The signs are everywhere; spring is here.

Easter has come and gone. The trees in my parents’ backyard are beginning to sprout leaves. Bees gather around the budding flowers. Hummingbirds hover picking at whatever it is they look for. The weather warms. The days are getting longer.

Virus or not, life moves forward. There really is no such thing as rest, no such thing as pause.

I realize this means that it is already halfway through April.

One of the (many) running jokes right now is that everyone has lived through multiple decades, including March of 2020.

The joke’s corollary is that March might have felt like a decade, but it feels like only three days have passed and suddenly April is already almost over.

It’s been enough weeks now that I’m starting to build some real routines again.

Monday is go out and get sushi day. Tuesday is virtual game night. Thursday is my hiking day. Friday is takeout brunch from my favorite local diner. The weekends are for passive-watching of live esports leagues (benefit of computer games in the internet era, the only things you share are bits, bytes, and memes).

I’ve found it useful to attach specific activities to various days, to help me differentiate one from the other. This was true even when I was taking care of my parents.

Back then, Monday was also my writing group day, and it’s still true now. We’ve just taken the group online and the transition is surprisingly effective. We jump on a Zoom call, say hi, disappear into the aether, and then jump back on ninety minutes later.

I can’t help but wonder if in the future, we might all be wearing virtual reality headsets, sitting in a pretend Panera Bread, as if we are all sitting right next to each other.

Speaking of Zoom, how did everyone suddenly start using this?

My new hobby has been tending to the yards.

There’s the front, which, despite being covered by pebbles, is still susceptible to weeds, and is also littered with fallen olives from a nearby tree.

My parents’ house is part of an HOA which periodically complains about the weeds. They usually write in, describing the complaint (the weeds) and also the guilt trip (“we know that being part of a community requires maintenance from all parties involved”). I bet that they’d write in now, if not for the current pandemic.