Lunch Break

Pui wanted to buy seafood for lunch. I asked her to bring back some crab to eat too. She came back loaded down with 4 or 5 pounds of live shrimp and crab plus a bucketfull of mini-scallops.

Pui set up the big steamer, and threw everthing in. Apparently I've never been around steaming live crustaceans... otherwise I would have been prepared for the flying. Yes: The kitchen was filled with flying shrimp, with some of them making it as far as 5 feet away from the stove, in huge arcing spasmodic leaps. Oh... the cats were just thrilled. ...and then miffed, as Pui ran to snatch up the errant edibles before the cats could.

We sat down at the dining room table with piles of shrimp and crab (and a big bowl of raw mini-scallops, which I did not eat). Pui, Go, and Pot focused mainly on the shrimp, while I made my way through the crabs.

Crabs in Thailand are rather small, and unless you are into the brains and eggs, the amount of proper crabmeat you get from a single crab is pretty small — a couple of tablespoons at best.

Go and Pui finished their meal and noted that I was still tearing into the crabs and decided to assist, and soon there were 6 hands pulling apart crabs and digging out meat, and the flow of yumminess to me tripled.

Half an hour later, for the first time ever, I pushed my chair away from the table and said, "I am stuffed with crabmeat." I didn't think that could ever happen.

From there, I jumped into the pool to wash off all of the crab spooge that covered me from my eyebrows to my navel, fingernails to elbows.

Then, I flopped down on the deck chair in the shade, and Maid Go (a graduate of the Wat Po Thai Massage Academy) gave me a 2-hour Thai massage. Actually, it was only 90 minutes, as apparently I started snoring, giving Go quite a startle.

I distinctly remembering waking up for about 10 seconds to tell Go to wake me up in 30 minutes so that I could get back to work. I woke up 2 hours later. I asked Go why she didn't wake me up, and she said that I was sleeping, so I must have been tired, so I must have needed the rest, so she didn't wake me up. (In case that confusees you, see Steve Rosse's post below about Thais not wanting to give people bad news. Apparently, "Wake up Jil" qualifies as bad news.