Twenty Four

I honor of my slow but steady decline into old age, Omar took me out for a day of whatever I wanted. So first, we went to Multnoma Falls.

It started out a nice day, a bit overcast, but that’s the standard out here. We hopped on the highway and ventured east. It started raining a little. “Don’t you worry.” Omar said, “Portland is known for little sprinkly storms. It’ll rain a few minutes and then stop.” Just then it came pouring down, almost horizontally. Omar looked at me with guilt. We pressed on through the rain for twenty minutes and arrived to the Falls just as it let up. “See.” he said smugly. We jumped out of the car and headed for the path through the woods and were greeted by more rain. So we made a run for it. We ran up to the waterfall, shoved through other prepared tourists with rain coasts and umbrellas, snapped a few pictures, and slid back to the car in 10 minutes. “Done. What’s next?” Omar asked. 

“Mt. Hood!” I exclaimed, so we set out. Along the way and by my request, we stopped at Popeye’s for lunch. “This is your birthday lunch?” Marmar asked judgmentally. I love those biscuits. “We don’t have Popeye’s in Charleston.” I retorted. So I sat happily with my box of fried chicken on a plastic white chair in a  duel Popeye’s/Diesel Gas Station convenience store. We followed the road signs from Multnoma to “Mt. Hood C.C.” We drove and drove and never saw any kind of mountain. It was when we were five miles from our destination that I realized the C.C. stood for Community College. The real Mt. Hood was hours away. 

So instead, we headed back to Portland and Omar surprised me with a visit to a Chinese Garden. Omar has no interest in plants unless they are used to add pizzazz to his meals, so this was big of him to endure. It was a lovely garden in the center of the city. It was very quiet and serene but also a little repetitive. 

To spice thing up, Omar decided we should go have tea. In the garden was a little tea-house, decorated with short Chinese furniture, cushions, and tea pots. There was an ancient Chinese man playing a one stringed instrument in the corner and the waitstaff wore silky red, Asian shirts. We plopped down at a table and were given two giant menus of tea. Neither of us know much about tea but everyone around was taking things so seriously that we pretended to read over our options. The humorless waitress made her way back to our table. “Have you selected a tea, Sir?” she asked Omar.

“Yes.” he said, with an air of superiority, “We’ll try this one.” and he pointed haphazardly.

Moments later, our tea arrived and I instantly recognized the smell. It was a pet store smell, like the cedar chips you put in the bottom of a gerbil cage. Omar cautiously raised the cup to his lips, took a little sip, and delicately placed it back down on the table.

“My.” he said, “It’s like licking a hamster… against the grain.”

We suffered through our cups of tea, laughing mid-sip and politely refusing more hot water each time they came around. We threw a dollar at the music man and ran up out of that tea-house as fast as we could.

To top off my birthday celebrations, we had the most delicious (and I mean most delicious) tacos for dinner and then we had ice cream. The very best ice cream.