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hive mind in the Walgreen
Monday, December 22 2025
This morning Gretchen took an OTC cocktail consisting of pseudoephedrine, ibuprofen, and maybe something containing my old friend dextromethorphan so she could emulate health well enough to work a hard Christmas-week day at the bookstore in Woodstock. As for me, I was doing fairly well, though I still found myself coughing until red in the face in unrequited efforts to dislodge lingering phlegm from deep in my lungs.
It fell to me to take Charlotte on her morning walk. As we left the house, it was clear she wanted to go down the Woodshed Path to the Stick Trail, so we did that as far as the Gullies Trail and then ended up going down the Chamomile Gorge nearly to Dug Hill Road. We've done that walk a couple times over the summer, but there was no way that, given my fragile health, I would be able to climb up the escarpment above the old de facto shooting range like I'd done those times. So instead I went a way I'd never gone before: parallel to (but just west of) Dug Hill Road as it climbs the infamous grade that, in snowy conditions, is impossible for many two-wheel-drive vehicles. There wasn't much of interest here, and all of it is on land belonging to Catskill State Park. It actually becomes private land after one crosses the driveway to our downhill neighbors' house (and Crazy Dave's cottage), since that driveway is technically on an easement. Charlotte stuck with me the whole way, but as we approached home, she did the rest of the climb on Dug Hill Road itself, which wasn't something I would've preferred. But since she'd already done that and it was the easiest place to walk, I completed the loop that way too. Charlotte always likes hikes through new terrain, and this hike had the added benefit of allowing her to scope out all approaches to Crazy Dave's cabin, which is where her arch-nemesis Brigette lives. I noticed increased numbers of old band-sawn cow bones as we passed that cottage to its east. Some had lain in place so long that they were now covered with a hide of moss.
Gretchen needed me to drop off some copies of her latest version of Kind off at Rough Draft (the fun Uptown bookstore that also has a coffee shop with beer on tap), so I loaded up the dogs, dropped off some books for her at the Hurley library, dropped off the Kinds, collected $38 check from Rough Draft, and continued my errands at the Ghettoford, where I mostly bought beans and tea. I was running out of the cheap black tea I like to drink, but I also wanted to buy various herbal teas that are good gifts for Gretchen.
Gretchen doesn't really drink liquor, but I still give her booze on Christmas if only to restock the top-shelf liquor we keep on hand for visitors. I went to JK Liquor, where I hadn't been in months (it made less logical sense to buy booze there back when I worked in Accord), got a bottle of Jameson, some sort of port, and, for me, a half gallon of Gary's Good Gin and a litre of Duggan's Dew scotch (which is good enough for me). Finally, I went into the nearby Walgreens, mostly just to get a cough medicine containing doxalimine succinate, which works better with Gretchen's chemistry than diphenhydramine. But while there I also got a rubber hot water bottle and a tool that might help Gretchen with here ever-horrid fingernail cuticles (I'm worried about the telomeres in the cells that have to produce those!).
My brain has been slightly rewired after watching so much Pluribus (some of which I rewatched today; that's very important in a show like this, since some mysteries, such as the mechanism for how the final, most massive tranche of humans is "joined," is not clear on first watch). When I was out in public today, I was on a recreational 120mg dose of pseudoephedrine, which normally has me feeling like an alien space probe sent to monitor the human condition. But today as I strolled up and down the aisles at the Ghettoford or in Walgreens, the silence of the other shoppers kept reading to me as an indication that they were humans who had joined a massive hive mind and no longer had to speak in order to communicate.
I ended up making another big pot of soup for dinner tonight. It mostly consisted of old potatoes (whose sprouts I'd had to cut off), cauliflower, a can of Dominican red beans, and leftover tofu, onions, and mushrooms from that spaghetti I'd made back on Wednesday (just before becoming more or less bed-ridden for three days). Last time I'd made a soup, Gretchen detected a burnt rubber flavor in it. But that didn't happen this time; perhaps my use of sauerkraut and pickle juice had been the source of that flavor. This time I went with a conventional half lemon, a classic soup acidifier that I know works well.
When she came home this evening, Gretchen said she'd sold $7500 worth of books today, which must be some kind of record. Earlier when I'd messaged to ask how she'd been doing (what with her illness) she'd told me she was keeping it together with "cartoon physics." But she didn't seem to be doing too badly, and she had plenty of appetite for the soup I'd made despite being on pseudoephedrine (though not as much as me).
Crazy Dave's stone wall, which runs just downslope (east of) the path to his cottage just south of where it crosses the Chamomile. Note the remnants of the early December snows after a recent thaw. Here we are looking north. Click to enlarge.
Icicles on the escarpment below (and south of) our house, viewed from the bottom of the gorge separating our parcel from that of our downhill neighbors (and Crazy Dave). Click to enlarge.
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