I am writing this column on Saturday, March 14th, which is Pi Day and also St. Patrick’s Day weekend and also three days before the primary election and also four days after Daylight Saving Time stole an hour from me that I was using. Outside my window it is 35 degrees and snowing, which is appropriate for March in Chicago, but somewhere downtown they are dyeing the river green, which is a thing that happens every year and which I support but which this year falls on the same day that people are eating pie for math reasons and two days before I am supposed to know who my preferred candidate is for the U.S. Senate seat. I have not eaten breakfast. I don’t know where to start. March in this city has become a full-contact sport and I am too old for full-contact sports.

Let me walk you through what has happened in the last fourteen days, because I think it’s important for the record. On March 1st, Casimir Pulaski Day, I was off work, which was nice, except my granddaughter had school because CPS doesn’t observe it anymore, so I spent the day driving her around and explaining who Pulaski was, which I did poorly. On March 8th, my buddy Carmine’s kid had a birthday party. On March 9th, Daylight Saving Time kicked in and I lost an hour of sleep, which at my age is not a minor inconvenience — it is a medical event. The clocks changed. The Brown Line schedule shifted. My coffeemaker, which is not smart and which I refuse to replace, showed the wrong time for three days because I forgot how to set it. On March 10th, tornadoes hit Kankakee. Tornadoes. In March. With hailstones the size of softballs. I lived in this city for sixty-some years and I do not remember March having tornadoes and yet here we are, dodging funnel clouds between Pulaski Day and St. Patrick’s.

And then this week happened. Monday, the Bears released DJ Moore, which I know is not a March-specific event but which contributed to the general atmosphere of chaos. Tuesday, I received four — four — separate mailers from candidates running for offices I didn’t know existed. The 2nd Congressional District apparently has nine people who want the job, and every one of them sent me a glossy postcard with their face on it. I now have nine faces on my kitchen counter. My wife asked me to throw them away. I told her I was still deciding. She said “deciding what?” and I didn’t have an answer, but I wasn’t ready to throw them away. Wednesday was the CPS spelling bee, which I read about in this paper and which was a charming story, but the winning word was “logothete,” which is a Byzantine government official, and I spent twenty minutes looking it up instead of doing the things I was supposed to do, which is how March works now — every day there is a new thing to know, and I am running out of room.

Thursday was the 13th, which was Friday the 13th, which was also apparently Opposite Day, which is not a real holiday but which people on the internet treated like the moon landing. I got a text from my nephew that said “Uncle Tom it’s good luck today because Opposite Day cancels out Friday the 13th” and I stared at it for a long time and then put my phone in a drawer. I do not understand how Opposite Day works. I do not understand how people have time to think about these things. I had a dental cleaning on Thursday. That was my Opposite Day.

Today — Saturday — is Pi Day, which means 3.14, which means the number, which means people are eating pie, which means the bakery on Halsted had a line out the door at 8 AM. I know this because I drove past it on my way to nowhere in particular, because I had to get out of the house because my wife is preparing food for a St. Patrick’s Day party tomorrow that I did not know we were hosting until Wednesday. The river is green. It will be green all weekend. On Tuesday, I vote. Somewhere in Arizona, the Cubs and the White Sox are both playing spring training games, and both teams have given me reasons to feel cautiously optimistic, which is the most dangerous feeling available to a Chicago sports fan in March.

I checked my calendar for the rest of the month. The Cubs home opener is March 26th. The White Sox open the same week. The clocks are still wrong — not the actual clocks, which I eventually fixed, but my internal clock, which has been off since the time change and which I do not expect to recover until April. There may be more tornadoes. There will certainly be more election mailers. St. Patrick’s Day proper is Tuesday, which is also Election Day, which means people will be voting in green body paint, which is a sentence I just wrote with my actual hands.

I don’t remember March being like this. I remember March being a month where it was cold and gray and nothing happened and you watched bad basketball on TV and waited for April. Now March is a content calendar. Every day has a theme. Every theme has an obligation. Pulaski Day requires an opinion about Pulaski. Pi Day requires an opinion about math. St. Patrick’s Day requires an opinion about river dye. The primary requires opinions about nine people whose postcards are still on my counter. I am sixty-three years old. I have a limited number of opinions left in me and I would like to allocate them responsibly, but March is burning through my supply at an unsustainable rate. April is eighteen days away. I intend to spend it doing nothing. Nobody send me a postcard.