"Aha, so you're an advocate of the corollary, then: 'early to rise and early to bed makes you healthy and wealthy and socially dead'," came the immediate (and amused) answer.

(Fortunately, there were enough egg rolls for two, and boy were they ever delicious. Even if eating one gracefully was apparently not something Carmen was accomplishing very well at the moment.)

"Speaking of things keeping you up at night, how fares that little cat of yours?" she added.