Prednisone unleashes the beast within; it's cranky

Thanks to a bout of poison ivy and a rash that won't go away, I've had to spend the last two weeks of my life sharing my existence with prednisone.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the effects of prednisone and would like to duplicate it, all you need do is to drink 20 cups of coffee and then round a corner and have someone shout "Boo!" Oh, and it would really help if you were in a cantankerous mood anyway.

It's tough on a gal such as me who, according to her family, tends to run on the cranky side of things. And yet, knowing that the pills are going to make me touchy, I've tried to curb my outbursts and keep my anger at bay. Although my inner irritable person is screaming like a 2-year-old who missed her nap, I didn't think that I was doing half bad.

In fact, I felt I was getting along famously until just yesterday, when circumstances that were beyond my control landed me in the middle of a super center at 4:43 in the afternoon. Now, you show me someone who thinks that's not a big deal and I'll show you someone who has the forethought and wisdom to shop online.

Knowing it would be utter chaos, and taking my cranky mood into consideration, I chose to keep my thoughts to myself, smile to passersby, and do my best to appear to the outside world as a jovial woman tending to her family's needs.

Meanwhile, the nap-skipping 2-yearold inside my head was ranting and raging and, much to my dismay, using bad words.

She wasn't happy about the woman who parked her cart in the middle of the aisle and proceeded to debate salsa as if she were about to make a lifelong commitment.

She could not believe the two men who used the soup aisle for a social outing, and it was all I could do to silence her as we waited for a young gal in paper towels to step aside instead of standing mid-aisle and repeating into her cell phone over and over, "No way!" followed by, "You did not!" and just for fun, "You seriously did not!"

"Oh, this is a good place to stinking stop," my inner 2-year-old said inside my head. "Do you know what you should do? You should take up the whole (beep) aisle because you know what? The (beep) rest of us are just here for the sheer joy of watching you (beep) shop and talk."

As I stood and patiently waited for her to realize she was holding up half the city, my inner person contemplated grabbing the phone from the young gal and saying, "She seriously did!" as I flung it past the paper plates.

Why, it was more than I could bear.

But no one - not the woman who parked in the middle of the aisle to check her list, nor the shelf stocker who held up her hand to halt my progress as she counted Ramen noodle packages - no sir, none of them angered my inner person as much as the gal that we shall forever refer to as Picky Pastrami Peggy.

Her mission was to get exactly onehalf pound of pastrami along with .68 pounds of peppered turkey, and to go to any and all measures to make sure that the deli lady sliced to perfection.

With my cart loaded and my last purchase yet to be made, I joined the line of customers who were waiting for the deli lady to cater to Peggy and did my best, in my overly cranky mood, to keep a hand over the mouth of the cranky child inside me.

"How is this, Peggy?" the nice lady behind the counter asked.

"Um," Peggy said as she made a face, "could we go thinner?"

"Is this better?" the nice lady behind the counter asked as I wondered if her inner person was in a fit of rage like mine was.

"You're getting there," Peggy said, and although no one's head rotated and no one walked up behind her and grabbed her by the shoulders and said, "For the love of all that is rational, woman, get a move on!" I know that some of us felt it.

"Anyone want to help me pack Peggy into the cooler?" the man in front of me mumbled under his breath.

"Predinsone?" I asked.

"Arthritis," he replied.

Well, I guess we always have that to look forward to.

Lori Clinch is the mother of four sons and the author of the book "Are We There Yet?" You can reach her at www.loriclinch. com.