apropos of anything

Or inside out, if you prefer that phraseology. ALL NIGHT. And despite there being twenty other people in the house, I think nobody noticed until Maimunah pointed it out half an hour or so after everyone else left. I think. I hope?

I’d planned for this party well in advance. I thought I had it covered. I would have, too, if unexpected circumstances hadn’t required me to stay in Augusta almost four hours longer than I’d planned. I suppose if I’d truly had it covered, I would have accounted for unexpected circumstances, like in that one Anastasia Krupnik book whose title I can’t remember. Instead, I ran late and got flustered and had to omit a side dish and PUT MY CLOTHES ON WRONG.

We prayed maghrib in the garage. Somewhere around the Turner Hill exit on I-20, Mansoor was sleeping in the passenger seat while I was driving back to Atlanta, and I suddenly blurted out, “Where are we going to pray?” as though I hadn’t really given it a thought when actually I had been obsessing about it for days. He replied, half-asleep, that the garage would do.

For a moment I assumed the fasting was getting to me so that I was no longer comprehending things properly because surely he didn’t just suggest that we pray in the garage. I’d planned on moving tables and shifting chairs to create enough space on the first floor. But no, he seriously meant to do prayer in the garage. When we got home, I ran around clearing clutter and slicing tomatoes and Mansoor… swept the garage. I refrained from asking where we were supposed to park our cars, as that would have earned me the you-are-too-stupid-for-words look, figuring I had enough to worry about, and if he wanted to handle prayer arrangements, that was one thing off my list. The garage worked well. Plenty of space. Fabulous acoustics. And temperate, too.

	Tonight’s main entree. Mine wasn’t so pretty.

I am not sure this party was an unqualified success, or even a qualified success, for that matter. The last big shindig I threw was Dan and AM’s engagement party, where I didn’t worry about whether people had eaten enough because I knew for certain they did, and which, even though I singed my bathroom wall and refinished my dining room hardwoods with candle wax, even though I ended up sending Dan to Publix so many times that they set up a tab in his name (the final run being necessary to ward off possible heartburn as my Indian food had been perfectly spiced for my Indian self but not so much for my party composed entirely of non-Indian guests), I was satisfied with because it had basically gone well.

This party was different. I know I am not going to sleep tonight for worrying about whether I sent guests home hungry or whether the food made people secretly want to gag. If there was a lot of leftover dessert, does that mean dessert sucked, or people were too full to want any? I think the salad was good. And maybe the fruit salad. Perhaps I should stick to throwing parties where the entire menu is salad.

The bright side is that because leftovers get old faster than normal during Ramadan, it’s good we don’t really have any, other than the desserts, as aforementioned. Aasif is coming on Wednesday, so I would like to save some pie for him. Hopefully, it’ll stay fresh until then. The rest I can pack up and leave in the office breakroom tomorrow morning and watch it disappear in a twinkling.

Also, Brad Lidge gave up another game-winning home run tonight, putting the White Sox up 2-0 in the series. If that’s not a bright side, I don’t know what is.