The Good Roads State

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The weather has been so gray lately, and finally, this afternoon there are starting to be some breaks in the clouds and the sun streams through on occasionally. I woke up with a stomach ache this morning. I knew what the problem was. I hadn't drunk enough water to digest all that food I ate yesterday.

I went to two buffets yesterday. The one I went to lunch at was outta town at a little crossroad just off Interstate 40 called Meadow. It's a popular place to each around here because they cook the way the local people are used to having their food cooked. They have a fairly large salad bar, plus ten vegetables, and several kinds of meats cooked in various ways. The desserts are maybe ten kinds of cakes, pies, and puddings, and a freezer full of ice cream to hand-dip.

If I were a restaurant critic, and today I guess I am, I'd complain about their vegetables being over-cooked, and I'd compliment them on keeping the temperature of the ice cream high enough that it's easy to scoop it out and put on the pie or cake for that ala mode dealio.

Meadow is about twenty miles due north of here, The first twelve miles are on a two-lane road that's kept up really well (North Carolina is, after all, "the good roads State"), then the last part of the short jaunt is mostly on the interstate, except for the last mile or so into Meadow.

I came home, and soon my brother drove over to my house from his house further back in the woods with his twin grandsons who are three years old. They've been visiting a lot lately due to the fact that their mother just took an operation that's gonna take a while to heal up.

The three of them rode over on his tractor. The boys call it "the big tractor" because he bought them each a toy John Deere tractor he and his wife hook up to the riding lawn mower with a rope and pull them through here on the "little tractors". It's so cute I get disgusted.

His real reason for coming over here, other than to give his wife a break from looking after two active three year olds, was to ask me if I would like to join them for supper at a new oriental restaurant that opened two weeks ago. Sure, why not?

There has been a Japanese restaurant in the same location for a while, but it was a little too fancy and their prices were way above what the simple country folk in this small town were willing to pay. I thought this restaurant was the same people with the same prices, but I was very surprised to discover they had a humongus buffet spread that had two large dining rooms with mahogany paneling. Wow!

My brother probably knew I wouldn't pay no big money for an extravagant spread living on the little bit of money my SS check could afford, and so he wanted me to see what they had there by offering to buy my supper. I was surprised when he told me their lunch price was around $6 person, and supper was around $9 per person. Children under 6 years old free. That's very reasonable.

The principle medicine I'm taking for the rheumatoid arthritis is called methotrexate. I started out on 6 pills all at the same day, all at once. At first it made me so nauseated I got into some serious projective vomiting. Then, after I had gotten used to the nausea a little, they upped it to 8 pills a week, and then, with the new rheumatologist, they upped it again to ten pills a week.

I did not feel good this morning, even after a couple of ten ounce glasses of water. I knew if I went into a puking spell that the medicine I take in the morning would be wasted, so I went for a walk to see if that would settle my stomach down.

I walked over to when my parent's house stood before the airport authority took their house and another 24 acres to extend the runway. My younger brother is moving the house to some land he owns on the other side of where it was, but still next door, and on the paved road.

He has it up on wheels presently to move it, but it's been a couple of years and he hasn't moved it yet. Me and this brother, the younger brother, who wouldn't ask me out to eat if his life depended on it, has some nostalgia for the old house, but none of the rest of his sibling care about it.

The three oldest siblings, me and my two older sisters, were all born in Mississippi, and we lived there and a couple of other small towns before we moved here. My oldest sister never lived here. She was in her first year of college when our parents moved here.

Our childhood memories are about other places, other houses our family lived in. None of them long enough to get emotionally attached to. I built this wino's hootch I live in from cutting the trees down in the woods to nailing it all together. This is the closest thing to home for me. Except for the couple of months my daughter from my first marriage lived here, I'm the only one who ever will live here. My children are apparently so rich they don't need the house or me either. No blame.
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