“Anxious about my kids. Nervous if my children need me. Two had weddings last week. One’s in the Hamptons.

“I’m doing nothing. Staying home so long, you can’t get inspired. Life this way is unacceptable. Nights kill me. So nervous I’ve lost 10 pounds in four weeks. I look at the clock — it’s 9, 12, then 2, then … where did the day go?

“I go out an hour for exercise, but if a jogger sneezes nearby, it’s terror. You whip out a spray can. Twice a day I do laps around the apartment. I don’t want to live in seclusion. I could be a Carmelite nun. You only have the phone. It’s all about the phone.

“I can’t watch the news. It’s frightening. I don’t want to hear more of a friend’s cousin’s grandmother. Or hear if you smoke, you’re dead. I already have three in my mouth. TV is so terrifying. Like, you’re going to die no matter what you do. I hated science-fiction in school. Now I’m living it.

“What will normal life be again for us? It’s all unsettling. All sci-fi.”

With 650 million copies of Steel best sellers sold, is another heading our way?

“I finally got to work. You never know where ideas come from. Random House is happy with my outline. Wednesday I delivered the new one.”

Might today’s current misery end up in a book?

“Count on it.”

Keeping mum for Ethel’s sake

Ethel Kennedy. This week, Saturday, will be her 92nd birthday. The list of her lost loved ones is lengthy. She cannot withstand news of another tragedy.

The just-happened loss of granddaughter Maeve — child of Kathleen Townsend, former lieutenant governor of Maryland — and Maeve’s son Gideon, 8, was kept from her. They were swept out to sea in Chesapeake Bay while in a canoe trying to retrieve a ball. The family’s in Hyannis, Mass. Ethel, resting most of the time, in Florida.

The decision was made not to inform her. Said basically is: “There’s been too much dying. She cannot take another. Don’t tell her.”

Please try to pay attention

So how about others of us? Last night plunged to new depths. I watched Howard Hughes’ 1943 movie “The Outlaw” starring new sexbomb Jane Russell. Small-screen film, and her cleavage took up most of it. Two hours. I watched the whole thing … A friend’s Costco card required updating. She was inside a cover-up hat, scarf enveloping her chin, high-neck sweater, dark glasses, no makeup and a mask. They still took her photo … Daphna Kastner and Harvey Keitel. “We’re binge-watching ‘The Sopranos.’ If you sit staring at TV long enough, it’s 11 o’clock. And then time to go to bed” … Dentist Marc Lazare actually sent out his private, carefully protected cell number to his entire patient list “in case anyone has an emergency.”

It’s passing us over

Millennia ago. A plague. Matzos. A Seder. Passover begins tonight. But, now no Seder, no matzos. Why? A plague … But peel off your hazmat. There’s good news. Sunday, on Epix, “Downton Abbey” creator Lord Julian Fellowes brings us a newie. “Belgravia.” About juicy ratty scandals among the upper class in 1840s London. So, see? There’s hope.

Meanwhile, local archaeologists uncovered new discoveries. Just unearthed was an ancient toilet belonging to China’s emperor. They knew it wasn’t the empress’. The seat was up.

Only in New York, kids, only in New York.