Being an accounting of the recent and continuing pandemic and its various circumstances, from the perspective of an inhabitant of the regions lately called the Lost Quarter. Dates unknown.

Day Fifty One

As we are all struggling to cope with our enforced confinement, coupled with the dread at what comes when we are at last given our release, I thought I would share the routine that has kept me well-occupied and, if not unworried, at least not entirely consumed by the anxieties of this dreadful age.

5:30am: I awaken for the first time, restive and haunted by some dream. Staring at the darkness I try to puzzle together those images and scenes that never quite fit until I can drift back to sleep.

6:30am: My love’s alarm goes off on her phone, stirring me awake again. I ignore it as I do every morning and return to sleep.

7:00am: My alarm comes on. I hit snooze.

7:30am: At last I relent and give in to the crowing of my alarm and rise from bed, feeling irritable and unwilling to face the day.

8:00am: Coffee and I am ready to commence my day, each swallow taking me further from my troubled and tiring sleep. I resolve that I shall go to sleep early.

8:30am: Stretching and moderate calisthenics to limber up the body and mind.

9:00am: I sit down to work and attempt to write the latest entry of these notes that I am keeping. Feeling uninspired, I check my correspondence. Finding only tedious tasks there I decide to go and eat breakfast.

9:30am: I check on my seedlings, watering them and muttering to myself that the damned things haven’t grown a bit.

9:30am-11:30am: More coffee.

11:30am: Having responded to the most urgent of my correspondence I declare victory over the morning and decide to attend to lunch.

11:30am-11:45am: My love and I inquire what the other desires for lunch, both of us offering suggestions but declining to make a decision.

12:00pm: Lunch at last.

12:45pm: A debate begins between my love and I over what to have for supper.

1:00pm: If the weather is nice I prefer this hour for a quick constitutional.

1:30pm: Coffee and reviewing news from beyond the Quarter. It all concerns the grippe reborn and seems unchanging everyday. I resolve that this day finally shall be my last to check.

1:35pm: Check the news again to see if anything has changed in the time I took to find my resolve.

1:35pm-4:30pm: Hard at my correspondence and writing. Staring out the window longingly at the birds in flight. Getting annoyed at the dog that won’t stop barking or the motorcyclist doing bored loops on a nearby road. Pondering plans for world conquest beginning with the public execution of said motorcyclist to rally the neighborhood to my flag.

4:30pm-5:30pm: Taking the air with my love, perhaps to the river or the hills.

5:30pm-6:00pm: Resumption of the debate on what to have for supper.

7:00pm: Supper and a drink for health.

8:00pm-10:00pm: A relaxing evening of scholarly reading and deep thought. Let us see what is on the television instead. Ah a replay of a sporting event twenty years past when the teams I cheered for were actually competently managed. Comforting indeed.

10:15pm: Fuss over my seedlings before bed. Note that they haven’t changed at all in the past hours and ponder the futility of it all.

10:30pm: To bed and this time I shall actually sleep early.

11:30pm: I have never felt more awake at any point in the day. Now my mind is full of thoughts and ideas, where before they refused to appear. I chase them for a time until at last my body relents and I slumber.