10:00 AM. I have to tell you. The shutdown is hitting us hard here. The Keurig is only making half a cup of coffee. The pictures on my iPhone are only three quarter size. Google is finding 30 percent fewer links. Only two of the three ESPN channels are broadcasting. We’re getting OWN fine but the Lifetime Movie Network is reduced to showing Audie Murphy westerns. The mail lady delivered only the junk mail, not the fan mail I generally get. The broccoli potato soup Raebert gets mixed in with his kibble ran out yesterday, and when I look in the fridge for the bowl it hasn’t been refilled. We’re at our wit’s end here.

I’ll try to post live updates through the day, but I warn you some of the keys on my plug-in keyboard are not funded and not working…

Wish us luck. And feel free to share your own shutdown travails.

10:20 AM. It’s getting worse, even snowballing. Our unfunded housecats are shut down.

And apparently my Ohio State cap is not funded, because look at all the dust. Shocking.

Most alarmingly, the child gate we use to keep Raebert in, or something else out (I’m not 100 percent sure), is usually six inches higher so the older cats can go underneath. But you can see that it has now been lowered by some 20 percent, which compounds the cat shutdown effect, I’m almost 70 percent sure. See?

Hand wringing. What are we to do?

11:20 AM. Worse and worse. It’s looking pretty likely that the blonde women of Fox News are showing 18 percent less leg today. Who knew thighs were federally subsidized? Damn. Airwolf is on, but it’s Season 2, Episode 1, and the plot is about terrorizing a pickup truck in the parking lot of a Texas bar. Really?! The unearthly howl is gone too. Airwolf is just beeping, like a low fuel warning. Those federal credit cards not working at the gas pumps? Double damn.

12:00 PM. Even my wife’s computer is sleeping so hard it’s actually snoring.

It’s usually more discreet, pretending YOU screwed up somehow.

Another thing. I have a full serving of Chicken Parm from Pat’s Pizza in the fridge downstairs. (They make really good Chicken Parm btw.) By this time normally it would be hot and plated and ready for my delectation. Where is it? Where is it!!! I say give Harry Reid what he’s asking for. I can’t abide any more of this personal torture.

Besides, we’ve had a casualty. Absolutely shutdown related. In our own household. Raebert’s elephant, who would usually go downstairs UNDER the child gate, tried to go over it instead.

Then he fell.

I blame them all. Obama, Harry Reid, and the remorseless Republicans too. Then there’s this:

Who knows what horrors the rest of this benighted day will bring?

1:30 PM. So I’m not pretending to be Mister Righteous here. When the newsreaders of Fox stopped showing their legs and boobs and stuff owing to the Shutdown, I went looking elsewhere. Where do left wing ladies strut their stuff? At the Emmys!

But the Shutdown has already closed off that avenue as well. Look at this censored picture of the probably (but who knows?) lovely boobs of Zosia Mamet from the progressive HBO series “Girls.”

Don’t mean to be cranky. But now it appears that the Keurig is wrapped in a half dozen yards of police tape. Well, it doesn’t say police. It says FBI.

Speaking of the FBI, here’s something odd. Heard a few motorcycle crashes today. No ambulances though. Shutdown, right? When I went out they were still writhing around in the fields. Too far away to hear what they were yelling. But I did notice this on the road.

I thought government was supposed to take care of us.

2:40 PM. So now we’re approaching three o’clock in the afternoon. When will this ordeal ever end? One of my computer speakers fell over. There’s no one to pick it up. Raebert’s elephant is now a zombie, stalking cats…

…and even Raebert himself…

Beside the point. Things aren’t the way they’re supposed to be. If they’re going to shut down the things government controls or has a fat finger in, why do we still have all these lewd unfunny sitcoms? Why does the network news still feature blow dried nancy boys of both sexes? Why, if the government really cares about us, does life go on always, exactly, as if there’s no one looking after us but us?

Unless things are exactly the way they’re supposed to be. Tough. Annoying. Difficult. Constant challenge.

Government shutdown? Only a handful of people will ever notice. Mainly people doing business with the government. But they’re used to that by now too. A few days or weeks of hardship. Overcome in the past and in the future too.

As for the rest of us, it’s a giant steaming stinky pile of nothing. Let the pollsters do their worst. Nobody will remember. And Raebert is still The Man.

And (as Samuel Pepys used to say) so to bed.