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Thai food medicine
Thursday, February 6 2025
location: the couch in the Shaque, Stingy Hollow Road, rural Augusta County, VA
Overnight it seemed like my health deteriorated further. I'd had a bit of a cough, and that as getting more insistent. But the big giveaway was the nature of my dreams, which had a geometric quality where swirling shapes similar, I suppose, to complex proteins were merging with other shapes that either worked or didn't depending on extremely precise alignments. This is typical of my fever dreams. I didn't have a way to measure whether or not I had a fever, but I must've at least had a low-level one. When I woke up this morning, it was pretty clear that I was sick, though not so bad that I couldn't do things. I went to see my brother Don over at Creekside, and there I tried to show him how to take pictures and send them to me with his phone, as at some point I might want him to prove to me that he is cleaning the trailer as a condition for buying him the things he wants. I also wanted to make it easy for him to use the phone's flashlight feature. Initially I thought perhaps all I had to do was move a "Flashlight" icon out to his home screen. But it turned out this was just pre-installed malware that made turning on the flashlight into an unnecessary ordeal, one that likely also displayed advertising. After uninstalling that, I realized the flashlight could be turned on and off by simply shaking the phone, something Gretchen's phone does but mine does not. When I showed this to Don, he initially thought it reflected a problem with his phone, much like the "problem" with the jukebox in Happy Days that allows the Fonz to play whatever music he wants to hear for free.
After that, I rifled a bit through our mother's old possessions in a room in the trailer that had once been locked and found a number of clamps that I decided to inherit (one can never have too many of those).
If I was going to survive whatever my illness was, I was going to need better food. Communicating with Jessika, I realized I needed soup. So my first thought was to get some Vietnamese Pho, as there used to be a place where one could get that in downtown Staunton. But alas, that place was gone. Now, though, there was a Thai place out on Greenville Road. So I ordered two spicy curries and a tom yum soup online and then drove into town pick them up. It turned out my order hadn't gone through, so I had to order it again. While that was being prepared, I drove over to Staples at Statler Plaza to get a microsd card for my good camera (as I'd forgotten to bring one). I also gassed up at Kroger, where the gas was only $3.10/gallon.
Back at the Shaque, I ate all of the soup and a little of the curry, which had me feeling a somewhat better (as good food often does).
I'd communicated with Joy Tarder to tell her I wasn't feeling well, and at first she thought this meant we needed to post-pone a document signing at the crematorium. But I said I could probably do it. So I drove with Don over to Fishersville to the office of the crematorium in Fishersville. (It was in a strip development and didn't look like the actual ovens were there.) We met with a gentleman there named Neal, who had us both sign a document permitting the cremation. And then we waited there for Joy Tarder to arrive, as she had a check written from our mother's estate to pay the $2000 it would cost. (An earlier plan to have our mother buried in the goat pasture behind our childhood home had fizzled out due to an insurmountable mountain of red tape.) After we'd signed the documents, Don continued chatting at Neal while he was trying to get work done on his computer. Neal was very understanding and didn't try to stop Don, and I didn't either, though it was kind of mortifying in the way that Don's nattering often is. He wanted to know how much the cremation cost and then talked repeatedly about how, when he dies, he wants his heirs to drag his body out into the woods and say they had no idea what happened to him. Don then got confessional about how he was picked on in high school for not being a bright student. A person with normal social skills would've never been so chatty, but Neal seemed to understand that this was Don's way of processing grief.
When Joy Tarder showed up, she had an envelope for me containing money to disperse to Don when he calls to ask for things. She still hadn't told me anything about the state of the estate, other than the welcome news that all of the land was to be placed in a conservation trust.
On the drive back to Creekside, Don naturally wanted to stop at a bookstore, this time a place called Know Knew Books on Richmond Road a little east of Statler Blvd. At the time I needed to poop and Don said they had a bathroom, so I said sure, I'd take him there. But then he also wanted to go to Walmart to buy plastic containers to protect his books from dust, and I drew the line at that. I was not going to be his fucking chauffer.
After that, I pretty much retreated to the Shaque and convalesced. Periodically, though, I'd muster the strength to salvage some artifacts from my life here. I'd been led to believe that everything here would be bulldozed and erased from the world, so if I wanted something, I needed to take it while I could. I couldn't take the Shaque, but I could take the five-foot-tall handmade ladder to its loft, which was held in place by two lag bolts with 19 mm heads. These heads were covered in what appeared to be wood glue, but this was easily chiseled away with a hammer and a screwdriver, and then I could use the socket set I keep in the Forester to extract the bolts.
As darkness fell, I tried my best to rest, as I thought that was best for my condition. Periodically, though, I'd gorge on the Thai food I'd bought. It was surprisingly spicy considering the extent to which I present as a gringo.
In the Shaque looking up from the couch. Click to enlarge.
In the Shaque looking up below the north half-wall the separates the bunk space from the main space. Click to enlarge.
In the Shaque looking at the mirror mobile in the southwest corner. Click to enlarge.
In the Shaque looking up from the couch. Click to enlarge.
The hole Don began and that a backhoe finished for receiving our dead mother in the goat pasture. But then it ended up being too complicated to bury her there, so we had her cremated instead. Click to enlarge.
A grassy knoll in the southwest little after sunset this evening as viewed from the Shaque. Click to enlarge.
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