Getting a little cranky and edgy these days
It doesn’t take a lot to make me happy.
The hair appointment that’s in my very near future elevates me to the ecstatic-happy level, but as a rule I’m a basically content, happy person for no particular reason at all.
But then along came this hunker-down response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Stay at home. No place to go. Life uprooted. No hugging. Wear a mask, the cause of glasses steaming up, the thing that makes mumbling the new standard for communicating.
I don’t care how cute the face mask material is, I still don’t want to wear one. Masks are for Halloween — they’re not an outfit accessory.
Unless you’re the CEO of a fabric and elastic, hand sanitizer, toilet paper company or a grocery store, happy days aren’t quite here again. They’re in hiding.
Things are getting kind of testy on the home front, I admit.
Better Half and I are both feeling it, edgy in our little prolonged-detention, away-from-reality world.
I realized this when we had words over eggs the other evening.
He’d hard-boiled a dozen on my behalf — a subtle hint on his part in expectation of another batch of deviled eggs.
Honestly, we’ve had more deviled eggs since mid-March than we’ve had the last several entire picnic seasons.
That’s my fault, of course, considering I keep buying eggs in excess. There were three 18-packs in the refrigerator –again. There’s only three people in our house, mind you.
He asked why I was buying so many.
“I don’t know” was my best answer when I was pressed to defend my consumer actions. I might want to bake — or have an egg-tossing competition.
Then again I’ve been buying too much of everything, from macaroni and cheese to spaghetti sauce and noodles.
What can I say — I’m doing my best to stay overstocked with necessities and non-necessities, and it’s not because there’s the threat of a snowstorm, although it is May, and this is Ohio.
National Eat What You Want Day, which technically is May 11 and encourages a day of indulgence, is something we’ve been observing for six weeks.
I find myself apologizing a lot these days to my husband, especially when I realize I’ve worn the exact same outfit at home every day for a good two months — a pair of black sweat pants and a gray T-shirt. Sometimes I dress it up a bit, though, and brush away the powdered doughnut residue.
There’s a dent in our couch from sitting around and binge watching bad TV, including this Netflix series, a three-season commitment about a dysfunctional family in Key West whose members keep digging a deeper and deeper hole. Just when you think they can’t do anything dumber, they do.
It restores our non-faith in humanity, at least until we doze off, wake up and discover we’re hungry for something — I don’t know, maybe a deviled egg.
Honestly, I try to stay positive through all this, to think happy thoughts, to pray the COVID-19 won’t be the kiss of death to restaurant buffets, heaven help us.
Things could get really ugly if that happens.
But at least I’ll have a fresh haircut and highlights.
(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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