A little help, please?

What's another word for bugging? For example, the need for milk was bugging me, all afternoon.

I thought, I could try to Finnish the story with a mean while. But the first line in the mean while, which is about the hero of the story, rather than the store manager whose part of the first line of the story, and a thought about something is bugging him. Between my cat sitting in front of the screen, and a bit of writer's block, I'm not sure what to say after that. Maybe if I could change it from bugging him to another word, it would help.