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A woman’s empty stomach a bad thing

You don’t want to be around me when I’m hungry — really, really, hungry.

I am a really ugly, nasty person who needs her talons clipped, hiss silenced and nose put back in joint.

And that’s probably not the best time to start a project with me or tackle a particular chore, even if it is something that I’ve mentioned needs immediate attention.

But Better Half, brave soul that he is, innocently suggested that very thing when I came home from work the other day, a l-o-n-g day that had been extended beyond newspaper duties with a “quick” stop at the grocery store.

The worst time to go grocery shopping — in case this hasn’t been your experience — is when you’re weary, headed on your way home thinking you’re doing something radically productive making progress on your to-do list, but you’re so ravenous that this well-intentioned stop to pick up just a few things instead becomes a hunger-induced, aisle-by-aisle buggy overloading, checkbook-depleting errand gone bad, bad, bad.

So, this is the frame of mind I am in the other day when I arrive home, unloading groceries, starved out of my wits since the day’s intake hours and hours and hours ago had included Greek yogurt, salted carrots and dry roasted almonds.

Me hungry. V-e-r-y hungry. And in a crabby, crabby mood to boot.

Even so after the food had been stuffed away in the refrigerator and jammed into cupboards and onto shelves, an oblivious Better Half suggested a “quick” jaunt to the barn to do what I had said needed done when I got home.

Now under normal circumstances a trip to the barn is quite stress relieving, as a visit with Thunder and Tucker invariably is a salve to sooth any wound a day inflicts.

But this visit involved a do-but-I-don’t-want-to-do kind of chore — making sure a newly purchased blanket fit Tucker before too many days passed, and it couldn’t be returned.

Too bad you can’t just take a horse shopping with you and have him try on stuff in a horse fitting stall.

That would simplify horse ownership a bit, yes?

Putting a horse blanket on sounds easy enough. One person should be able to do it probably, but two people trying, one of whom is hungry, makes the task at hand not quite so easy.

Can you believe that horse blankets don’t come with instructions? This one didn’t, which was unfortunate given the back leg straps didn’t make a lick of sense.

It’s probably something super simple but it just wasn’t clicking. Like the first three years of algebra class for me.

Every logical suggestion Better Half offered was drowned out by the growl of my stomach, so that was all pretty useless.

Finally, I made a decision.

Woman hunger trumps horse warmth.

I made a beeline for the house, the kitchen in particular, the refrigerator specifically, and scarfed down a sandwich and some potato chips.

With every bite I considered the marital vows should be rewritten somehow to include “for better or worse, in hunger and in crabbiness…”

Have you seen the commercial where the nasty person turns nice after eating a Snickers bar?

That would be me.

Here’s hoping you have a great week … on a full stomach.

(Kiaski, a resident of Richmond, is a staff columnist and features writer for the Herald-Star and The Weirton Daily Times and community editor for the Herald-Star. She can be contacted at jkiaski@heraldstaronline.com.)

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