Over Informed Is Overrated

I don’t know. It’s not the kind of thing I think about every day. But it’s not like I’ve never thought about it either. I hesitate to even admit what “it” is, for fear “it” could then happen. 

Okay. Fuck it. I’m talking about…getting…okay…gettinghijacked.  

Do you see how fast I said that? “Gettinghijacked”. I had to put the two words together to get them out of my mouth at all. It’s kind of like not saying what I’m thinking, while still having the opportunity to broach the subject, all the while hoping that I’m not putting out some kind of vibes into the universe that will get me fucking hijacked.

Fine. The only reason I’m thinking about this now is that I just finished reading an article on dailymail.co.uk.  If you want a source for every possible type of news (and non-news), this is a gold mine, maybe even a diamond mine. And if there is anything better than a diamond mine, that, too. 

Being over-informed is often overrated. I could have had my pick of topics this morning: from Donald Trump to Ivanka Trump and on to Anti-Trump—from Saudi playboy to celebrity playdates and Kylie Jenner’s 5 hour manicures. I think my favorite headline of the day was “Is My Vagina Normal?” 

I skipped most of the piece about the “tiara-loving socialite” (she was, indeed, wearing a tiara in her selfie) who is being charged with biting another passenger in a first class airplane cabin. It didn’t interest me enough because, mostly, I couldn’t relate. I don’t wear tiaras, I haven’t found myself in first class lately, and, to date, I have not bitten anyone. I realize there is still time.

Here is the headline that caught my attention enough for me to click through and find out what was happening during that EgyptAir hijacking the other day. The one where the hijacker was wearing a fake explosives vest and demanding a four page letter be delivered to his ex-wife in Cypress. (Personally, I would have checked to see if FedEx delivers from Egypt to Cypress and skipped the hassle of commandeering a plane, but that's just me.) Okay, right. The headline:

“EgyptAir hostage reveals passengers' hilarious reactions, including one husband who rang his wife... only to find her main concern was getting him to tell her his BANK DETAILS”

I think what drew me to this particular article was the presence of the words “hostage” and “hilarious”, together, in the first half of the first sentence. To quote from the article, one passenger (an Egyptian surgeon) had the following to say:

'Most of the people managed to stay calm, but as usual passengers on board made my day.’

'A lovely Egyptian chap decided to call all his family and friends one by one in the middle of the hijacked plane when we were about to land to Cyprus.’

'Another funny husband calling [sic] his wife to tell her about some money he was hiding in a bank and the funniest part is his wife forgetting about the hijack thing and asking him to repeat the bank name.’

'Another lovely guy was sleeping and woke up to be informed we are landing in Cyprus and his funny response was 'why Cyprus??!..I will miss my connection.'

From these bits of information I can tell you two things. One—if this surgeon can have his day made during a hijacking, he’s gotta be one cool dude in the operating room. Two—I’d like to know how any follow-up conversation turned out between the husband who was hiding money and the wife who asked him to repeat the name of the bank. 

I will say, if I were to find myself in a situation like this, I would pray for the same fake vest scenario, take enough medication to lose consciousness, and—if I could see to dial a phone call before passing out—I’d have to tell my husband where I keep his M&Ms and extra toothpaste. At least there’d be nothing to fight about later…when I make it home.

   

The Wizard of Odd

If I had been drinking in the middle of the day yesterday, or even in the late afternoon, I would have been able to say to myself, “Don’t ever drink in the middle of the day again.” But I wasn’t. I can’t blame the Pellegrino or the herbal tea.

I have no explanation for the trip I went on. I think I departed at around 5:30 p.m. and returned at around 8:45 when my cell phone rang and I saw it was my husband calling.  I took it as a good sign that I was on my bed and no longer on Donald Trump’s private plane. Or, to be more accurate, his private plane that was kind of like a whole city that didn’t appear to be a plane until we were landing. I must have been really tired. That’s my whole explanation for being on my bed at 5:30.

Yes, there was the big, Godzilla El Nino-fueled storm going on outside, proof that all of the “Looks Like More Of The Same” forecasts were correct, but I had not been bashed on the head—Dorothy style—by any dislodged window frames. It was just a giant rainstorm. It was not a fucking house-lifting twister out there.

The last thing I remember, I was watching CNN. Not the super cute, Anderson Cooper giggling through Kathy Griffin, New Year’s Eve CNN. I was watching that last week in 2015 and stayed awake, no problem. No. This time it was just a regular Wednesday “What’s-The-Donald-Up-To-Now?” hour…or five minutes, or whatever time he was allotted. Tired or not, no wonder I went to sleep.

I get how everything that happened to Dorothy in Oz and everyone she met there related to some shit going on back in Kansas. Toto had bitten Miss Gulch, who—according to Wikipedia—was going to have him “euthanized”. I know that old biatch was going to do something bad, but "euthanized"? It sounds so, I don't know… efficient.  No one forgets Miss Gulch/The Wicked Witch cackling, “I’ll get you my pretty, and your little dog, too.” We do know that for almost every person or “issue” in Dorothy’s dream there was a parallel back home in the Sunflower State. Right? And, with The Wizard of Oz being a fantasy and all, we do know that no little dog was gettin' euthanized. Right? If you don’t know that, I don’t know what to say to you.

Even though it was only fatigue that sent me off to dreamland yesterday around the time that I’d have preferred to be at a cocktail party, I can see very plainly that the news is sometimes like that piece of wood torn loose in Dorothy’s house—the one that went, quite literally, straight to her head.

I’m now completely sure that everything happening on CNN was making its way into my sleep state. I know this from reading yesterday’s news today. I didn’t know where I was exactly, other than in a freakishly tall, ultra-modern high rise—kind of a big, glass mall, that was sort of a city, in the form of a shopping center. I remember Donald Trump’s voice over a loudspeaker system. I don’t know what he was saying, which is true most of the time, even when he is saying something.

I recall going into a Macy’s, worried that I might buy something that I already owned, but I don’t remember clearly whether the people helping me were CNN anchor/reporters re-imagined as the store’s salespeople. That’s how it would have worked in Dorothy’s situation. You’d think I might remember if it was Wolf Blitzer selling me a pair of shoes. Meanwhile, the voice over the loudspeaker was unmistakable. It was definitely The Donald—the wizard of odd. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. Fine by me.

After the mildly traumatic shopping experience, I went back to my room. Don’t ask me to explain why I had a room. Nobody told me why, so I can’t tell you. Once there, my husband appeared. He took one look out of the floor-to-ceiling window and said, “We are landing.”

“What the fuck?” is what I said. Landing? We are on a fucking plane? Shouldn’t the pilot have announced the fucking landing? The least he could do is turn on the fucking seatbelt sign, although, there was no fucking seatbelt since I was lounging comfortably on a fucking king-sized bed. I held on to the side of the mattress as if this would be an acceptable substitute for a safety device. As we touched down, I realized that the wings that had appeared on the building were going to make the “plane” too wide to taxi down the street—yes, the regular street.

No fooling—Donald Trump’s whatever was just going to plow through a regular old busy street, not giving a shit what was in its way. As if on cue, the wings folded into the side of what we were on, or in…plane or building. Don’t ask me.

As we were preparing to disembark, I was thinking we had not arranged for ground transportation, although, I could hardly be held at fault since until five seconds ago I didn’t know we were on a plane. But, I was sure there would be nothing so “regular-person” as a cab since Donald Trump was involved. So, what I'm saying is, I didn't know how we were going to get out of there. I’m also sure this part was symbolic—meant to shame me for not having the Uber app on my phone in real life.

Next, everyone went into a tented area to get his or her belongings. There weren’t that many people, especially when you consider the size of what we had just flown in on. We sat at fancy, white picnic tables and didn’t worry about whether our luggage would show up. We were given something to eat while we waited.

That’s when it started—the burping and the dropping of salad out of my mouth, onto my clothes. It was uncontrollable. Frankly, I was disgusting. Donald Trump looked over at me and I thought I would be embarrassed, but I guess it would take a lot more than that for me to feel like the ill-mannered, inappropriate one. I hope I stayed unembarrassed, but I'll never know.

My cell phone rang loudly in the bedroom. It was my husband calling. There’s no place like home. 

Ice on, ice off… Ice on.

Saturday, early evening…but too late to turn back.

Really, I should have fucking known when I ordered that drink. Outside, it was still snowing. And inside this cozy, tough-to-get-a-reservation joint was something called a Bourbon Storm. The name made me think of George Clooney and, specifically, The Perfect Storm.

I looked it up—a “perfect storm”— to remind myself of how much it would suck to be in one. Basically, it boils down to a lot of stuff, combining to create a “once in a lifetime” event; things that are not “individually dangerous, but occurring together produce a disastrous outcome”. If you’re even remotely equating something you are about to drink with a high-seas disaster of any proportion, it ought to be a sign.

It was not brave, opting for the beverage that now had me thinking of a terrifying death at sea; but neither would I call it stupid. It was as if the choice had been made for me. The menu spoke; Ouija board-like (except it did not have to spell everything out with a floating plastic doo-hickey), it told me: two hours have passed since the afternoon performance of Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance ended and ordering anything insubstantial or fluffy would be just plain wrong. In much the same way I had matched my hat to my gloves, so would my booze and food complement the matinee. That was it, then—bourbon and the duck. Ordering should always be this easy.

Thankfully, my dinner companions—my son and one of his friends—bore no hint of resemblance to any of Albee’s characters, ensuring that abuse of any sort was off the table. Small favors are often big enough.

************

Thirty-six hours earlier…

 At 7 a.m. on Friday, it was exactly 1 degree outside when my plane touched down. One. By the time I met my son and a friend of his for lunch and a trip to the museum, it had easily warmed up by ½ a degree. I don’t even know if there is such a thing as ½ a degree in weather-speak. I only think of degrees in the plural form—as in, “It’s going to be 90 degrees today. What the fuck?” (That’s what I say in California…in March.) I really shouldn’t have given it any thought. By the time we left MOMA, the ½ degree of heat had vanished and I was wasting my time, as usual.

Nothing was settled yet for the evening. When you are visiting a nineteen-year old, you can’t say that anything is ever really settled. It all just manages to happen, somehow, on its own. Yet, I had gone so far as to plan to meet an old friend for dinner. She made the reservation for four people. That accounted for all possible diners—not that a definitive answer was ever going to materialize because, well, nineteen. (The number has now become a concept and a way of referring to my son.)

************

Friday, sometime in between the day and night…

Ice on, ice off… Ice on. Why bother?

Having spent the better part of the morning obsessively trying to de-ice the inside of the windows at the apartment where I was staying, and having spent the better part of the afternoon at the museum, I could no longer say there had been any advantage to taking the red-eye flight the night before.

Oh, I know. I’ve told myself a million times, “You have the whole day to pack. You don’t lose a whole day travelling.” I’m going to remember this feeling for next time is what my zombie-self was thinking. I never do.

A nap was out of the question because, under these circumstances, it is not of any use, the way a nap would be. It is a coma-like state from which you awake, not knowing what day or time it is. There is no one standing over you to shed tears of joy or to shout, “It’s a miracle!” You feel cheated, or I do, anyway. My imagination tells me that awakening from a real coma must be satisfying on some level. This is not. You have to figure out if it is morning or evening all on your own. Have I slept for fifteen minutes or fifteen hours?  You have to get dressed for dinner five seconds after coming out of this pseudo-coma. It’s unfair, and so, like I said, no nap.

“Nineteen” et al decide they will stay downtown to eat. Uptown, my friend and I try to remember when it was we last saw each other. We decide not to care. Now we remember the funniest time we ever spent together. It was at a funeral.

************

Friday night, after dinner… I have no idea what time it is.

I text “Nineteen”: Let me know when you decide whether you’re staying at your dorm or uptown with me. Translation: Let me know either way, so that if I wake up in the middle of the night and you’re not here, I won’t have to worry.

Of course, I wake up at 3:50 a.m. to an empty second bedroom and no text. I’m pretty sure I’m only awake because of the fucking beeping in the entryway to the apartment. I vaguely recognize the sound as the low battery signal from the smoke detector. The only reason it sounds familiar is because the same thing happened at home, a few months before, in my bedroom. This never occurs, you’ll notice, at an hour when you can go out and buy another 9 volt battery without looking like some kind of person who is “socially active” late at night. (By the way, when the detector is also hardwired in, taking the battery out does not stop the beeping. You’re welcome.)

I slam the bedroom door on the intermittent chirp…chirp…and send a text message to “Nineteen”. Delivered. I send another message. Delivered. I call. Voicemail.

“The voice-mailbox you are calling is full.” Of course it is. It’s now 4:30 a.m. and either I keep worrying and calling or I go back to sleep. Bad mommy took the red-eye and… Zzzzzzz.

I don’t know why, but when I next wake up at 7:30 a.m., I just presume I’ll look at my phone and see a text. Chirp. This would make me so happy that…chirp…I wouldn’t give a crap about the…chirp. I would simply roll over and sleep more. There is no text. There is Law and Order: Criminal Intent on TV and some parents who—okay, what are the odds that this is what I’m seeing on TV? I can't even say what is happening. Too disturbing.

So, I dial my son’s number. Like, enough times to make the total number of calls add up to twenty-one times. I’m talking to myself. I’m talking to Vincent D’Onofrio on the TV. Maybe I’m crying. I don’t even know.

I text a friend in the same time zone because I don’t want to wake anyone where it’s three hours earlier. She calls and reassures me that everything is going to be fine. I want to say, “But what about the shit that’s going down on Law and Order: Criminal Intent?” Instead I just say nothing. I’m sure she can hear whatever is dripping from my eyes and nose. “It’s gonna be fine,” my friend says.

When my phone rings at 9 a.m., it’s him, my son. I’m so happy and so mad. The “ringing, ringing, ringing” (to quote him) has “annoyed” him. Never mind that the last time I “rang” was over an hour before this. I think the ringing infiltrated his dream over the course of time. “I was asleep,” he says. Yes, that seems to have been the case. I’m so happy and so mad. I don’t bother to tell him he could have stopped the real "annoying" ringing by answering the first time.

************

It is Saturday, the part that is not just a continuation of Friday night.

I spend the rest of the morning wondering how much shit I’m going to be given in the afternoon for the texts and twenty-one phone calls. “Nineteen” will use the “I’m an adult” defense. I am sure of this. I’ll use the “I’m a mom” one. Then I cease to care because it is snowing and because my son actually likes Edward Albee’s plays.

I am amazed by the amount of snow that can accumulate on the ground between a 2 p.m. curtain and a 5 p.m. curtain call. And again, I am amazed at how much more can appear between then and dinnertime. I stop caring, most likely because of my drink, the Bourbon Storm.

When it is time to leave the restaurant, my son and his friend wait for their Uber. It is now raining. I like that they will be shielded from the damp and the cold going across town.

I don’t allow myself the same comfort. It’s still early and I can take the subway uptown—probably trying to prove some kind of point by walking to the station in the rain and leftover snow that only just fell. I seem not to care that I will look like some kind of drowned rat. There is a certain freedom in that, I’ll admit. So fuck it, which I wouldn’t ordinarily say.

I hear someone behind me on the street talking about the singer Lesley Gore. I thought he was on the phone. Then, I realize he is talking to me. I’m not sure if he is a he or a she. I don’t have any opinion about it either way. I just don’t know how to refer to the person here—the person who is talking to me about Lesley Gore.

“She’s dead, you know,” he/she says to me.

“I know. It’s sad,” I say back.

“You’re not old enough to know who Lesley Gore is,” he/she says.

It’s raining and I would hate this except that I am old enough to remember Lesley Gore and someone thinks I am not.

************

“Don’t sleep in the subway, darlin’. Don’t stand in the pouring rain.”  I am also old enough to remember Petula Clark. This is what I am thinking as I head downstairs into the subway station…

It wasn’t until I had swiped my MetroCard and was standing on the subway platform that I realized I was waiting for the wrong train. Sometimes it’s the right train, depending on where I’m going. I am by myself and, that being the case, none of this is a big deal. I figure out how to solve the problem, I don’t have to be anywhere at a specific time. I’ll transfer to the other subway line after six stops, walk the maze to the right train, and get out two blocks from where I’m staying.

And this is how the rest of my plan unfolds:

•  At the 4th stop, the train does not move. The hard to hear announcement says we are waiting for either “ safe passage” or a “sick passenger”. Considering there is also an announcement about a power outage on two other train lines, everyone is betting on "safe passage".
• The next announcement: There will be another #1 train arriving at this station in three minutes. All I can think about is whether it’s going to crash into the #1 train we are sitting in. I try to decide where to sit or stand in the subway car so that when we are crashed into, I will remain alive. I’m a mother. My nineteen-year old child needs me.
• The other # 1 train whizzes by on the express track. We live.
•  EMTs come and go. "Sick passenger" question answered.  Everyone loses bet. After twenty-five minutes we are back in business.
•  I didn’t get out and walk because it was raining and I still had forty uptown blocks to go…and a bunch of crosstown ones. You try getting a cab, okay? 
•  The train stops in the tunnel for about a minute between 34th St. and 42nd St. I go with the “this has to be normal” explanation.
• I exit the train at 42nd St.

• I find my way to the N-R-Q trains. The platform is mobbed—crowded in the way those pictures of the Tokyo subway look.
• The entire platform moves together as one onto the train when it arrives a minute later. A minute! This is awesome (and more words I don’t ordinarily use).
•  Sudden realization as the doors are closing: the subway car smells—reeks—of vomit. What the effin’ fuck? A woman makes her way from the opposite end of the car. She says, “Oh, Thank God. It’s so much better down here.” I am breathing into my beanie. Some people have pulled their turtlenecks up over their faces.
•  I can’t get off the train and wait for another one. I saw The Taking Of Pelham 123 and I’ll take my chances with the vomit because at this rate…
• At my stop, I get off the train and head the hell for fresh air. (Honestly, at this point, it would not have surprised me if someone had said that King Kong was at the top of the Empire State Building.)

I walk the two blocks back to where I am staying. The Bourbon Storm has worn off. The rain has stopped. What is left of the snow is unremarkable. It has all happened so fast and so slowly at the same time.

************

A little later on…still Saturday night.

I received a text from “Nineteen”: Did you make it home? Upon learning that I had, he continued: Oh my God. Glad you’re safe.

Apparently, we all want the same thing. Some of us get it with fewer texts and no calls.

The For Real Life Reality Show

When our son, Owen, was little, he used to ask my husband and me, "For real life?" when what he actually (really) meant was, "Really?".

I'm less than a tweet's worth of characters into this and already I need to correct myself. I should have referred to our son as "younger". It feels less than accurate to have called him "little". He did not come sized according to age, at least not until he grew from babyhood, to childhood, to closer to adulthood. At his early pediatric visits he was nearly off-the-charts long. Yes, long, because he could not yet stand up. Remember that, people with kids? There was a time when they could not stand up. 

"For real life" became part of our language. Every time we went to say "really", whether asking a question or making a statement, we said it that way...for real life. We still do, as a matter of fact. Furthermore, we say other strange things that people outside of our table-for-three might not get.  Things such as, "I'll see you in, like, sixteen or fifteen minutes." Even if what we for real life mean is, "I'll be back in two hours." There are more of these uttered-long-ago expressions, but I'm sure you get the point. We say them because, well, you know. You can't freeze them--those kids--in time, so you bring some bits of time with you. 

I often wish I had a better handle on gauging just how much time has passed. If something happened two weeks ago, it likely feels more like two days or two years. An event that left its mark decades ago might just as easily have taken place yesterday or in, say, the "sixteen or fifteen" hundreds. I'm only guided by the fact that I wasn't born in the seventeenth or sixteenth centuries and can, therefore, narrow down the time frame slightly.

Recently, I thought about Owen's audition for the first American season of X Factor. Rather than getting it wrong, I just looked back through the archives (that sounds so serious, when all I meant was my archived blog posts) to see when it had taken place. It was just about three years ago. Strangely enough, I probably would have guessed that. But, it would have taken me awhile to get through all of the personal signposts to arrive there logically.

The X Factor was not a random thought. I recalled waking before dawn (way before), driving to the Los Angeles Sports Arena on a Saturday morning, standing in the parking lot for hours, anticipating what? Fame and fortune? No. Of course not. We were waiting for instructions on what to do the next day, which was hardly any different from the first day, other than the eventual singing for a cranky judge at 6:00 p.m. and getting sent home. Dumb reality show. We celebrated by taking off on Monday morning for New York, semi-spur-of-the-moment, to see an eighty-six year old woman sing her ass off at The Regency Hotel. My husband's mother, my mother-in-law, our son's grandmother. She showed us how it was done. We didn't mind waking up before dawn that day to surprise her.

So, here is why the X Factor thought was not random. It came to mind a little over two months ago.

At 4:30 a.m. on a Friday in November, I dragged our just-turned-eighteen year old son out of bed. Truth be told, I had to drag myself a bit, too. We left for the airport and hopped a plane to New York. My husband was already there. He had been gone for ten days already, and I was happy he stayed and waited for us. I had booked the early flight so that we could arrive before dinner time. Owen had the equivalent of room service (restaurant delivery) in the New York apartment where we were staying. My husband and I walked along Central Park South until we found an amazing restaurant.

Two days later, on Sunday, our son went through a four hour audition process for college. We flew home the next day. Eighty-four hours later, he and I were on another plane. Another pre-dawn, drag out of bed experience. We flew to Boston. I went to dinner with my best friend from college. Owen ordered for real life room service. He had a hard time deciding what to get, so I told him just to get everything he felt like. That included lox and bagels, garlic naan, a multi-colored pepper soup, a smoothie, and a Diet Coke. I tweeted, "Eloise is my role model". I wasn't kidding. On Sunday, our son went through another four hour audition process for college.

This... this... is the for real life reality show.

Season Two, by the way, will be coming to you from New York.

I Think My Head Is Going To…Well…EXPLODE.

I Think My Head Is Going To…Well…EXPLODE.

When I sat down to write this, I thought I was just going to say something like, “I sure do get a lot of flyers from psychics.” I mean, especially for someone who is NEVER going to visit one. And you know how some people say, “Never say never?”  Not me.  I’m sayin’ never.  Yessiree, sir.

So, obviously, I have gotten another flyer. I wrote about one of these just a couple of months ago. This is the toniest one yet, though. A thick, glossy cardstock—postcard style—crammed full of pictures and info. It’s a little hard to tell what is being advertised. It could be the city of Beverly Hills.  It could be some Kama Sutra love thing.  It could be a vacant apartment for rent.  Honestly, if you could see the flyer, you would have the same questions that I have about what’s going on here. And, in order to get all of the important information onto the front and back of the card, the layout includes like twenty-five different fonts and sizes of type.

It appears that out of the 346 words printed on the flyer—I tallied them by hand, trying to keep count by pointing a finger on each one (not including the street names on the Google map)—roughly eighty four of them appear to be written by someone who has a basic understanding of everything from “A to B”. (“A” being the English language itself; “B” representing when to capitalize the letter “i”.)  I think that a basic rule of thumb when it comes to the letter “i” is this: Do not capitalize the “i” if an Apple product is involved. Do capitalize an “I” if it is a whole word and if you are not E.E. Cummings.

I need to spotlight a few of my favorites.  It’s a basic need.  No doubt, I’ll have something to say (in italics).  Here goes:

                      Have You Ever Has A Psychic,

                           Palm, Tarot, Aura Reading?

Well, have you ever has one? ‘Fess up.

                      Are You Un  Happy Marriage  , relationship

                                                family  ,friends  ,co-workers.?

I would say that my marriage is happy.  I’m not pleased, however, about some comma issues, upper and lower case letters, and spelling problems that have come into my life.

                     

                      [Name deleted]

                        holds a Master degree   In Psychology

                        by the National Spiritualist Association

                        of Churches (NSAC) \ along with her

                        passion  ,skills studies

I don’t…I can’t…I just read NSAC and thought it said NCIS.  Why is the psychic talking about a CBS television show?  Just remember this, the psychic is a “her”. Right?

                  [Name deleted] uses his Psychic abilities to…

I think the professional should use “his Psychic abilities” or “her passion” to come to an important personal decision.  If the psychic can see his/her own future, it ought to be a slam-dunk as to which path will make him/her the happiest. Go for it.

Here are some other things the psychic feels you might want to discuss:

Am i on the right path for career I’m working for?

I’m going to suggest not bringing that question.

Im confused lately cant seam to make a proper decision

for my self or my future!

Hello? Give your money to me.  This could be menopause or thyroid—or any number of other things. Just give your money to me. I know about apostrophes…and spelling…and other stuff.

You might ask why I gave this post the title, “I Think My Head Is Going To…Well…EXPLODE.”  I’ll tell you:

YOU WILL BE ASKED YOUR

FULL NAMES AND DATE OF

BIRTH of which who u would like

her to read.

Okay? Okay? Was EXPLODE too strong a word?

It’s 6:49 p.m. on Friday evening. I see some scrambled eggs and pajamas in my immediate future.