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Of food shopping and pandemic pounds

The coronavirus pandemic has really ruined my grocery shopping experience.

Gone is the casual, random, take-your-time, aisle-to-aisle approach to filling my buggy to buy what I need and what I don’t even realize I need.

If you’re a hugger or a handshaker or a shoulder slapper or one inclined to BS as you get your groceries, these are not your best food consumer purchasing times.

Stop to read labels and digest calorie and carb details?

No.

Loiter in lines to talk about the weather and your summer plans?

Negative.

Make eye contact with someone you know?

Heaven forbid — out of the question.

Hold your breath when you pass somebody?

Possibly. Probably.

Gather your goods and go.

Stick to your list and don’t touch anything more than you have to.

Give up the fight with those plastic vegetable bags, the ones that say “open here” but don’t. Tricked ya’!

This is no time to buy healthy and eat healthy anyway.

And keep your distance, for crying out loud.

Stand on the “wait here” tape or the “X” mark until it’s your turn to move ahead in the checkout line. Smile on the other side of the Plexiglass even though no one will know.

I have never been so frightened over food stockpiling. Great Earth!

What’s happening in this “Twilight Zone” episode I can’t escape?

Honestly, I understand the reasoning behind wearing a face mask, but I feel like a bandit with my homemade bandana mask draped around my true identity.

I look like I’m packing a cap gun, like my high-ho Silver horse is parked outside, at the ready if my getaway car is a no-show.

Plus I can’t breathe, and I feel claustrophobic with half my face covered like that and my glasses all steaming up and everything.

It’s hard writing a check when you’re wearing winter gloves for protection. Not my best penmanship. Some crazy looking cursive going on there.

When I get home with this excess of everything I’ve bought at the speed of Janice on grocery shopping steroids, I’m wondering what to do with all of it. What was I thinking?

It’s not like I’m having guests for dinner, after all.

Suddenly, I think I have to eat it all. Hurry.

And I’m not even hungry, which explains why I’m putting on stressful pandemic pounds.

You’d think I’d use this time to expand my horizons, not my waistline.

I have done a fair amount of spring cleaning, even sorting through clothes I haven’t worn in a while.

But I think I’ll hang on to my “fat pants” as I call them. I’ll need them for the next shopping session.

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

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