I Could Smell Dinner From the Driveway
I commute on Mondays, so I wasn't home all day. Didn't matter — I knew my wife had made stew before I'd even reached the front door. Turns out that's the one day of the week I'm glad to have missed it.
Monday is my commute day. The one day I’m not at my desk in the guest room, smelling whatever’s happening in the kitchen from nine in the morning onwards.
I still knew. Got to the end of our driveway and the stew announced itself before I’d even reached the front door.
I work from home every other day of the week, and the smell finds its way to the guest room just as easily as it would in the kitchen itself. Stew normally gets hours to fill the house before I’m anywhere near eating it. By the time dinner actually arrives, I’ve been marinating in the smell of it for most of the day, and I’m not hungry for it any more. Not a little less hungry. Properly, actively not wanting it.
Monday spared me that. I only got the smell at the front door, not the eight-hour version.
Which means the one day I’m out of the house all day turned out to be the one day I’d actually have wanted to be around for dinner. I didn’t plan that. It’s just how the commute happened to land.
I’m not going to start requesting stew on Mondays specifically. But I’ve noticed the pattern now, and I don’t think I can un-notice it.