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This is a very minor thing but I suppose not everything in the COVID diary can (or even should) be epic and earth-shatterng.

I haven't gotten a haircut since the lockdowns began back in March. At first it was because the salons and barbershops were all closed, and I wasn't really due for one. A couple of months in my wife borrowed hair clippers from a neighbor and buzzed the boys' heads, since the weather was getting warmer. I did not go under the blades myself, mainly because it seemed like one more task in the crazy new way of things that I didn't want to burden my wife with. This was also somewhat ironic because for the last few years I've enjoyed and looked forward to buzzing my hair low-maintenance short for the summer, and the only debatable bit is how close to Memorial Day it needs to be for me to go ahead and get my "summer cut". Whereas the little guy, now that he's just old enough to have the beginnings of a sense of personal style, prefers his hair a little longer and messier and hates getting haircuts. But, y'know, he's 12 and when his mother says it's haircut time, it is. And I figured I would get my own ... eventually.

Also around this time, my shaving mirorr fell off the shower wall. I started shaving in the shower almost twenty years ago, because in all that time I've always had a van dyke or a full beard, and only needed to shave some or all of my cheeks and a bit of my neck, all of which takes a trivial amount of time and a minimal amount of soap lather rather than shaving cream. It's much less cleanup to just do it while showering. In any case, I buy cheap shaving mirrors that attach to the shower tiles with a suction cup, and every so often the cup loses suction and the mirror falls, and when it falls just rght it cracks and I buy a new one, but most of the time I just reaffix it next time I shave. However, given the pandemic and my lack of exposure to pretty much anyone beyond my household (low-res video conference calls notwithstanding) I stopped shaving altogether. My beard scraggled up my cheeks and down my neck a bit, but who cares. So when the mirror fell in May(?) I didn't bother putting it back up. I still haven't as of this post.

And when summer started and I still hadn't gotten my seasonal buzz, it seemed like I might as well wait until right before we went to the beach, to make the most of combining low maintenance and vacation. We did in fact buy our own set of hair clippers for that express purpose. But then I never found time in the lead up to beach week. Also, the early summer was right around the time when people started actually protesting the lockdowns. Make no mistake, I thought these people were selfish idiots and I still do. It boggles my mind that the extraordinary measures taken by governments during a once-in-a-century virus outbreak could be politicized. I didn't choose to politicize it, but some people apparently did. And so the images of entitled jackasses holding signs that said "I NEED A HAIRCUT" as if they were demanding civil rights and equitable justice were burned into my brain. Which of course caused me to reflexively dig my heels in and say, "Hey, guess what? Nobody needs a haircut." And so the locks continued to grow.

So here we are, six months and counting into the surreal gauntlet the world has become, my beard is woolly, my hair is long enough to cover my eyes in the front and doing a ridiculous upflip in the back, and I don't know when or if any of that is going to change. It's become almost talismanic, like if I can hang in there until we turn the corner, then the corner must be getting closer, but if I cave now and go through the grooming rituals I'm just accepting that things will be the way they are for a long, long time that I can't just wait out. So we shall see how long this impasse holds.

(For the record I do still trim my nails. To neglect that would just be gross.)