Can somebody please tell me what to do with my time now that the tropics have quieted down and I don’t need to spend every waking hour freaking out about potential hurricanes?

And yes, I know: Hurricane season isn’t over. I shouldn’t jinx it. I should stay vigilant and aware and ready because you never know when a tropical bugger spins up in the Gulf and runs us over like a soggy dump truck. I get that. I still have my guard up. Even while I’m watching the clock and counting down the days until we’re free of hurricane season.

But it certainly has grown quiet in the tropics. Or quieter. Not what it was just a couple of weeks ago, when it seemed any slight sneeze off the coast of Africa would turn into a Category 4 monster raging out in the open Atlantic.

I had gone hurricane insane. Tropical OCD. It was all I thought about, constantly checking the National Hurricane Center. Checking crazy hurricane tracking sites. The kind where people go because they think staring endlessly at the same hurricane tracking charts will uncover some kind of hidden information or even supernatural message.

Ah, pollen season. That special time of year when the glorious temperatures that we Floridians finally get to experience are ruined by a rain of tiny particles that clog our eyes, stuff up our lungs and generally cover the world in a thick film of yellow crud. Thanks, flowers! But pollen provides many benefits, and I’m not just talking about the very necessary pollination effect, which I would describe in great scientific detail … if I had any clue what that was.

So, instead I want to expound upon the virtues of pollen season by offering some of the many important upsides that come with the so-called “pollenpocalypse.”

• It gives you the chance to try out a yellow car.

To all of my Northern friends, I do apologize that it is so cold up there. Like really cold. Thanks to the polar vortex, I hear it has been like minus-75 degrees cold. That’s cold! And I’m sorry that I live in Florida, where it’s also cold. But not that cold. In fact, nowhere near that cold. But I find it cold. Sorry! I’m from Tampa … 82 degrees is cold for me. Anyway, friends, I feel for you. You’re in my thoughts … but can you please refrain from sending me angry emails that go something like this:

Dear Brian, How are you … you warm Floridian [lots of foul language I can’t repeat here because of the children]? I bet you’re at the beach right now, sipping a margarita, LAUGHING at us! Aren’t you? Laugh it up, Florida boy! Do you know what it’s like up here?!? It’s 165-below-zero … before you factor in the windchill. Then it’s minus 1,600 degrees. Ice literally implodes at the temperature. My cat is so mad. He hasn’t been out in 2 weeks.

Wake up, freak out, check the National Hurricane Center site, wet pants or breathe sigh of relief … and repeat. Do this about 20 million times a day, pass out exhausted at the end of the day drooling on the couch, and prepare to do it all over again at 5 a.m. the next morning. If you were like me this week, those three hurricanes tearing through the Atlantic in various directions got you properly worried. And there was good reason: IT WAS SCARY AS ALL GET OUT!!! We’re talking horror movie scary. We’re talking “are you kidding me!” scary. As I write this column on Wednesday morning (just woke up, freaked out and checked the National Hurricane Site …), Hurricane Florence was heading to North Carolina, but there’s still all kinds of bobbing and weaving to be done before it would be over. Who really knows? (Excuse me one second while I go check the …) If I’ve learned anything from living in Florida my whole life — and through the last two years of Hurricanes Matthew and Irma — it’s to take nothing for granted. Always expect the unexpected. Never turn your back on a tropical beast that twists and twirls, and can bulldoze a whole ocean into your backyard. Wake up, freak out, check the …