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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 nonfaith 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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