Sunday evening my parents and I took my grandmother to her favorite restaurant for dinner, Bullock’s. It’s a family restaurant out near Westminster.
The place has a buffet. The buffet table is a covered wagon. It uses a yellow fluorescent tube. Food looks… well, not like food… under the yellow light.
There’s a model train that runs in the rafters.
Frankly, I’ve never really liked it. Never.
Why? There’s nothing there I really want to eat. Nothing.
I ordered the roast beef platter. It’s generally safe.
Until I woke up Monday morning with the worst damn case of heartburn.
Oh, my stomach was trying to kill me.
And I couldn’t find antacid tablets.
Morning coffee settled my stomach somewhat, but all through yesterday morning I could feel the heartburn returning. On my lunch break I walked to the Eckard’s Drugs and bought a bottle of antacid tablets. I swallowed five or six. Not at all once. In pairs. About half an hour apart. I wasn’t in pain any more.
In the evening, the heartburn came back. More antacid tablets.
It’s now thirty-six hours since Bullock’s. My stomach still hates the Bullock’s dinner.
Blech. More antacid tablets.
Note to self. Avoid Bullock’s in the future. It’s a good rule anyway, but if it’s going to wreck my stomach like this… :/
Whenever my sister visit from down east, her family and my parents, who live here, always have to make at least one trip to a particular Chinese buffet restaurant. I don’t go with them any more, even though we don’t get to see my sister and her family very often, because three times in a row I was physically ill after eating there, and I decided it probably wasn’t coincidental.
One thing I’m not liking about being in my 40s: lots of heartburn. Things I’ve eaten happily my whole life, like green peppers, now guarantee a bit of suffering if there’s no antacid around, so now there’s always antacid around.