I’ve been eating junk cereal again and today was struck by how the back of the box of my Cinnamon Toast Crunch depicts pretty well the current state of mind of a lot of the world. This image takes up the whole of the back of the jumbo sized box:

If you’re not afraid to breathe when you must scuttle out for provisions, there’s some chance you’re outraged that the gubmint is trying to limit your freedoms as a ‘murican. Or maybe you’re outraged at those imbeciles. Or maybe you’re just not used to being around your family as much as the last few weeks have called for and are a little on edge. Maybe you’re just stir crazy. Maybe you work in a grocery store where people without masks breathe on you all day. Maybe you work in a hospital, risking your health to help others. I don’t believe this is a special edition box of cereal printed for this moment in time, but it certainly seems to fit the general mood.

Gas yesterday at my usual station was $1.699. Grocery availability was reasonable, though some things are still being rationed. I was able to buy a 6-pack of toilet paper for the first time in weeks. I did have to go to a second store to get some cannellini for a white chicken chili.

School is officially shut down for the year, and the district has shared plans for calculating final grades. AP exams are still on for my daughter. A driver’s ed course I had signed her up for is moving to an online format for the classroom portion. My son is having an extended break. He is chewing through books very rapidly, which is nice, as he had really slowed down his reading for a while. He spends a lot of his afternoons out in a hammock in the yard with a book.

Some neighbors continue to have guests, which is sort of disturbing.

My hair is about as long as it’s been in my adult life; so is my beard, though that I could trim confidently. I figure if I’m going to look like a caveman, I may as well wear the whole look.

Our postal service is apparently struggling, and people are buying stamps to try to help save the organization. I ordered a couple of books of dinosaur stamps I’m a little excited about. This matters because there’s a very plausible fear that with an election coming up in November, we’ll need to vote by mail if social distancing is still called for. If our authoritarian president allows the post office to go bust, he increases his odds of winning, as greater voter participation tends to go badly for Republicans. It’s shocking that this is a thing we have to worry about. Who would have thought 5 or 6 years ago that this would be a worry?

Life for me remains mostly as it was before the pandemic, though I feel a little more contaminated when I come home from the grocery store now than I did before, and I go outside the neighborhood a little less than I had before (but not much; I was a homebody to begin with). I do feel like I’m living at the top of a slide down into an authoritarian dystopia, which is unsettling and a little hard to fathom. Maybe it’s also hyperbole. I do hope so.