Things are starting to break down. I don’t just mean psyche and soul and social bonds and sense of self. I mean ordinary, overworked things around the house: the dishwasher, the garage-door opener, the fridge door, the faucet in the kids’ bathroom, the towel hanger in the kids’ bathroom, the toilet in the kids’ bathroom. (Don’t ask.)

Bodies, too. So far we’ve had a sprain (our 9-year-old apparently attempting the land speed record on a scooter meant for a toddler), a possible fracture (him again, attempting same on a bicycle, after dark) and enough stress-induced gastrointestinal distress to burn out the poor plunger. For a school diary entry, our 7-year-old recounted how, during an overly raucous, parentally imposed game of Chicken Charades, she bit brutally into her lip, resulting in The World’s Biggest Canker Sore.

“This is the worst day of my life,” she reported.

There is much ambient love in my household under lockdown, but I’m sorry to say that at any particular moment there is likely to be a state of war, and the alliances shift more capriciously than those in the Trump administration. Over the weekend, the kids, often fiercely battling each other over increasingly diminished parental attention, unexpectedly banded together and presented us with a written list of demands. We refused to sign; my wife was taken prisoner of war, and the children do not appear to think highly of the laws of conflict. (They let her nap, but only with the lights on.)