There is a moment in every evening out when my brain quietly announces…congratulations. You have socialized.

Time to go home.

Not in a dramatic way. I am not flipping tables or faking an emergency phone call. It’s more of a polite internal notification, a calendar alert from my soul.

Ninety minutes.

That’s my window.

After that, the spell breaks.

A movie? Ninety minutes and I have the gist. The hero is conflicted, the villain has childhood trauma, and there will be a sequel. Wonderful. Let’s dodge.

Dinner? Same thing. I love restaurants. I adore menus. I’m deeply committed to appetizers, but somewhere between the entrée and the waiter asking if we would like to see the dessert menu, a thought floats across my mind…we could already be in pajamas.

The theater is no different. Standing ovation at the ninety-minute mark and I’m ready to personally lower the curtain. Shakespeare could have used an editor.

This is not antisocial behavior. This honors all attention spans and is a productive use of time.

We showed up.

We ordered.

We laughed.

We nodded thoughtfully during someone’s long story about real estate or pickleball.

Meanwhile, back at home, there are pajamas, The Pit and Shrinking.

There is a fabulously roomy king bed with crisp linen sheets and an overhead fan.

And, of course, my favorite person, who at roughly the same moment before we exit left who will lean over and whisper the most romantic sentence in the English language, “Should I ask for the check and we get the hell out of here?!”

Yes!!

the real luxury in life is not the impossible to secure restaurant reservation or the sold out theater ticket.

The real luxury is leaving slightly early, getting into bed, turning something on TV, and cuddling like two people who have nowhere else they need to be.

As with most things in life, after ninety minutes, the evening has peaked.

Everything after that is just overtime and I do not like OT in sports or any other cultural or food oriented event.

As Queen E. always stated. “that’s it…it’s enough, no more!”