Smell of Fried Garlic

Coming up Jingmi Lu over the polluted stream, passed the ratty cypress grove well below where I’d normally travel on this road.  The driver said: “Things look faster on Jingmi.”  I’d never normally take this road or approve of such a move.  Today it seems prescient.  Of to the side I can see the airport road, which resembles a parking lot.  I’m glad he asserted and that I acquiesced.

It’s Friday.  Next week will be rather gruelling, certainly.  I’ve three different clients all coming for the same event.  That event is in another part of the country and I’ll need to be down there for most of the week.  A week from today is my younger daughter’s fourteenth birthday and . . . I realized last night talking to her older sister that I wouldn’t be here.  September often seems to end up this way.

I worked in my office this morning.  Outside there was a boisterous soiree, which I tried to ignore.  The sounds of fifteen mothers cooking and tasting at an Italian cooking class my wife was hosting wasn’t so difficult.  I just turned my music up and made my way through my to-do list.  But the smell.  That was a bit more difficult.  I wasn’t about to light up incense in my room.  There wasn’t much I could do to ward off the appetizing smell of fried garlic and stewed tomatoes.

I went out to say “hi” at one point.  Fourteen Chinese woman, two Italian women and now, me.  I enjoyed my thirty seconds of attention as I tried to be witty and pithy as I filled up on water and, my wife would quietly prefer that I be seen and not heard.    Later I was rewarded for my adherence to hosting norms and a rather tasty plate of risotto was brought in form me as they were wrapping up.  And I’ll grant you, it’s a whole lot better than the risotto-eque-poultice I created the other evening.  

One by one they left and soon the house was quiet, once again.

Friday 8/14/18