First I was all “Ooh, I will do Star Wars- themed food!”. Then I looked up Star Wars-themed food on both Google and Pinterest, and after scrolling vacantly through several pages of life-sized stormtrooper cakes and model-realistic grey fondant Millenniums Falcon, I decided to aim low and make some Death Star truffles. Then Helpdesk Man pointed out that grey-tinted white chocolate truffle-coating would look vile, so I decided to aim even lower and just coat them in regular milk chocolate. Then I found out that the little dent which separates Death Stars from actual moons does not survive the chocolate-dipping process. So I made regular old boring chocolate-dipped truffles in milk and white chocolate, and will pretend they represent the dark and light sides of the Force. Well. The milk and light sides of the Force. I didn’t want to go back to the supermarket.

I’m also bringing cinnamon scrolls inspired by Princess Leia’s hair; and that’s as closed to themed food as we’re going to get tonight (other than the inevitable crack about Jawa burgers). I am a disgrace to bloggers. Meh.

2. On another note, I am in a foul mood. So far today:

-I woke up in a searing rage, because I’d had a dream in which Rowan vomited dark green slime all over Miles and it went all over his face and started choking him, and even though I was standing right there I was paralysed with… I dunno. A neurotoxin? Ennui? Anyway, I kept screaming for Helpdesk Man to come and save Miles, and he kept shouting back from the office “No, I’m busy!” and I kept screaming “HE’S DYING, HURRY UP!” and he kept not doing it, and then we had a big fight scene in which I raked his neck and tried to claw his eyes out.

-Miles swallowed a largeish magnet. Whereupon Rowan gasped and said “Mummy, is he going to die?” (with an air of faint excitement rather than trauma, incidentally); and I said “Call the doctor”, and Helpdesk Man was all “No, I’m working, it’s fine, I’ll look it up on the internet”. Which, in conjunction with the dream, didn’t exactly mellow my calm. So I called the nurse, who said she’d talk to a doctor and call us back, which she then couldn’t do because Helpdesk Man (during her first phone call) didn’t get to the phone in time, and (during her second to fifth phone calls) decided to tie up the phone line listening to all our old voice messages. So I called back and got cut off. When I finally did get through, the news was unexciting - we have to ring back if the magnet doesn’t emerge within 48 hours - but still though.

-After a hasty and (on the snortlepig’s part) coerced lunch, drove like a banshee into town to get to gymnastics class; a precious use, innit, of my valuable* time and $12- a-sniff petrol. Realised on the way that I had done my hair in my hasty looks-like-death-but-OK-when-you-stick-a-hat-on-it style, but forgotten the hat. Hauled ourselves in (the snortlepig was wearing gumboots; I asked her why in the lobby and she said loudly “Remember, I have to because someone pooped on my other shoe!” The someone was a chicken, but she didn’t mention that; she just sounded very accusing. Did not meet anyone’s eyes.). Got accosted by a woman I couldn’t recognise, who asked intimate questions about how we were all doing. Tried to flub through it with jocularity, but she turned out to be one of those souls who doesn’t understand jocularity and asks you to repeat yourself.

-The snortlepig took one look at the gym and melted into a glob of coy, whimpering reluctance, whining that she couldn’t doooo it and I had to stayyyy with her. Realised I’d forgotten to give her her weekly pep talk (which goes along the lines of “You need to join in and do what all the other kids do, or we’ll go home; there’s no point in coming if you’re not going to join in, and you’re not allowed to just run around by yourself”). Gave her stern looks and left her to it, taking Miles over to see the other baby, whose apple he promptly stole. Apologised, returned apple, gave Miles an apple of his own. Miles realised the other baby, having more teeth than himself, had its uses; so he waited until the other baby had bitten off a big chunk of apple, then stole that instead and ate it. By which I mean “spat most of it on the gym floor”. Pondered whether or not this counted as “refusing to eat”, per the nurse’s warning-signs for Magnet Obstruction.

-After watching the snortlepig flop about, dissolve into fits of weeping and skive off to get herself drinks of water every ten seconds, thought “Hold, enough!” and took her home, omitting to pay our three dollars on account of having only been there for ten minutes. Snortlepig, cheerfully: “Are we going to come back next week?”

-Drove home in mounting rage behind a mooper doing 60 in an 80k zone, a foible which very rarely fazes me. Today it made me so furious I honked my horn at a car which decided to turn across me at the last second, also in an 80k zone. It turned out to be a police van. “Let ‘em come”, thought I, and spat the stub of a cigar out the window onto a nun. Then I came home and corrected someone’s grammar online.

That’s it so far for today. I will keep you posted - if you see a beacon of pure rage light up the sky, that will be me. You could use it to power your electronics, but only harmless ones. (Which would be what, exactly? The humble toaster, in combination with a hot bath… oh, never mind.)

3. Yesterday the pig finally persuaded me to try on my wedding dress. It was heartening, in that it almost didn’t not fit; thanks, no doubt, to the exciting bout of food poisoning I had earlier in the week.

4. If Miles were in the Hunger Games, he would be Fatniss Evercheem.

5. Also, if I fed him a bunch more magnets, I could stick him to the fridge.

6. Sometimes I wish I drank.

*Because otherwise, naturally, I would have been writing the Great American Novel.

ETA: It is 2:30AM, Luke has defeated the Emperor and all is well with the galaxy. I feel much more cheerful, although eating fresh, doughy cinnamon scrolls at midnight really isn’t a great thing for one’s digestion. Happy Star Wars Day, everyone!

So anyhoo. If anyone is hankering after any of my personal possessions and/or children, now’s your chance. Helpdesk Man will no doubt wish to keep some of my chattels, but you could put in a bid for my fabric stash or girlier DVDs. Maybe a half-used tube of hand cream. I don’t really have a lot of chattels. Although I suppose my fancy food colouring is worth a bit.

On a vaguely related note, I was recently discussing cannibalism-in-an-Andes-plane-crash-situation with a (so I thought) dear friend, and she flatly refused to give her consent for me to eat her. Harsh, no? It hurts, right here.

Then Helpdesk Man, instead of saying “Oh, wife of my manly bosom, allow me to make you soup and spirit away your children to the nearest park so that you may sleep amid rose petals and dream of unicorns”, decided to get one of his tension headaches; so we spent the day limply passing the baby back and forth, saying “You have to take him, I think I’m going to fall down” and “Hold this, I have to excise a polyp”, etc.

We are currently still conscious, but I make no guarantees. If I die, use my ashes to make a fine roux.

2.Regarding vegetarianism, I have only this to say: you don’t see food companies struggling to make their meat taste more like tofu. “Natural Tofu Flavour”, they don’t say. “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Nuttolene” is conspicuously absent from the butchery aisle. “Artificial TVP” isn’t even a thing. That should tell you something.

It reminds me of the time an acquaintance flirted with vegetarianism for no good reason. No, really. It wasn’t anything to do with ethics or carbon footprints or health concerns, or even a dislike of meat. He’d moved to London, and in his own words, “it’s so easy there’s no reason not to be” - a frankly staggering claim. I mean,London has a population of ninety billion; it’s probably easy enough to be a gluten-free, tree-nut-free one-legged author of if-Harry-Potter-were-set-in-Haiti fanfiction, if you want to. There’d be funding and everything. That doesn’t mean you should hunt out the chainsaw and start looking up the Haitian word for “Quidditch”.

So anyway, we all considered this a harmless quirk until we had a dinner at our place, and the perpetrator - I’ll call him Waggles the Sheep-Dog - having heard me rant about the evils of tofu, was all “No, if it’s done right tofu is really nice. Tell you what, I’ll bring along a tofu cheesecake.”

Now, cheesecake is the worst possible thing in the world to tofufy. The entire point of a cheesecake is that it is made with cream cheese: rich, creamy, fatty and delicious. Tofu is none of those things. I don’t know who thought it would make an acceptable substitute. It is, I suppose, a vaguely similar colour. That’s not much to go on. You could make a similar case for putty, toothpaste, mayonnaise, etc, and all of those would taste about as good.

But being well-brought-up and meek in the face, I said “K”, sadly sadly.

If he had merely brought along the offending dish, it would have been OK - I could have tactfully avoided it. But what did Waggles the Sheep-Dog do but turn up with two - a lemon  one and a chocolate one. And with a big, beaming just-you-wait-and-see grin, he said “One of these has got tofu in it, and I bet you can’t guess which.”

Intriguing, I thought; a bold claim; and turned back to my chocolate mousse. And then he put a slice of each in my bowl and watched triumphantly while I tasted them.

The first one tasted, as tofu is wont to do, like dank cardboard. The second one tasted like slightly cocoaier dank cardboard. He was right; I couldn’t tell which one was worse. But I am, as previously mentioned, well-brought-up; so “Dude, what misbegotten old hag gave you the yak milk to make Cheesecake Number Two?” didn’t seem like the appropriate response. Reluctantly, I admitted that I could not tell the difference.

At which point, Waggles the Sheep-Dog grinned smugly and said “They were BOTH tofu!” And that was the moment I fully embraced the doctrine of total depravity.

3. Today I went to a training session for a part-time, menial, oh-well-it’s-money-although-not-a-lot-of-it job at the Academic Dress Hire place. Due to my brain oozing out my sinuses I accidentally turned up forty-five minutes early, so I went for a drive to the Chinese fruit and veggie/grocer and spent a pleasant half-hour perusing its comestibles.

Asian packaged food intrigues me. It seems to revel in its fakeness. Not that Western junk food exactly conjures up earthworms and mulch*, but Asian junk food gives the impression of having been constructed entirely in a factory - one lot of plastic goop becoming the containers, another the contents. And where a Kiwi company would call the resulting product Mrs Betty’s Grainy Goodness-Bites. Asian companies tell it like it is: Vegetable-Flavoured Wheat Snack, or Fried Gluten Ball. I like it; it’s respectful. It’s as if they say “Consumer, we may be charging you a 400% markup on a morsel of puffed, genetically modified grain smothered in MSG, but at least we have the conscience to make you face the issue. This is a rubbish source of dietary fibre, no picturesque barnyards were involved in the making of it, and you’re going to die an early death by frustrated colon. Here’s a prepubescent girl grinning at a cartoon kitten.”

At any rate, wandering up and down the aisles gave me great joy. I found chrysanthemum-flavoured soft drinks, Candied Wild Jujube, nude pretzel sticks and Yolk Flavoured Pudding Powder. One bag of herby-smelling stuff had minimal English labelling - nothing so gauche as the contents, but a brand - “Old Herbalist Doctor” - and the assurance that it was “Produced Meticulous”. I hesitated over the Pork Floss, refrained from buying a tray of dumplings when I learned they contained Chicken Essence, and considered buying the Maple Syrup Pies, which promised me “boundless merriment” as well as a percentage of real maple syrup; but then, they also claimed to be pies, when the picture on the box clearly showed biscuits, so I didn’t feel they could be trusted. I ended up wimping out and merely buying an apple soda (”No Chemical Ingredients”). It tasted vile, but interestingly so, at least.

Then I went back to the Dress Hire place and learned that the long point of a trencher goes at the back, and international students cannot be trusted. So it was kind of a mixed day, cultural-awareness-wise.

*Speaking of that, today at lunch the snortlepig looked at her chip and asked me “Mummy, what are chips of?” I didn’t quite get what she meant, until she said impatiently “You know, like ducks or rhinos - what are they from?” I said “Oh… potatoes”, and explained the process; but I mean, whaaa? “Ducks or rhinos”? Why not “chickens or cows”? Our diet isn’t that eclectic.

Nevertheless, getting her to eat an apple and play dead wasn’t an easy task. This is the best I got…

And by request of several of my most frothing fans, here is The Cake in all its blurry glory. It looked better in real life. I think.

Banana cake with cream cheese frosting and green coconut; the pebbles were tiny sugar cookies coated in pink sugar; caramel fudge for the wishing well and to shore up the inside of the castle, which was lemon sugar cookies, as was the wishing well roof. The round towers were a funny, meringuey biscuit recipe wrapped around the handle of a whisk; topped with coloured white chocolate cones. The flags, pennants, mushrooms, flowers, wishing well birdie and ducks were fondant - I made fondant lily pads too, but I put them on the jelly pond the day before the party and they dissolved and had to be blotted off the surface of the pond with a paper towel, which was nerve-wracking. I should have left them, really; it made pretty realistic-looking pondscum.The whole edifice weighed about as much as a pygmy hippo and took up two-thirds of the fridge.

I’m pretty sure the pig liked it better than this photo implies.

(Incident, last week, loudly, in the fancy grocer: “Awww, it’s a baby! …It’s a very funny colour.”)

Cuteness of Face: Yup

Quotability: Superb

(Incident, yesterday, upon watching the scene in Ratatouille where the rats get hit by lightning and end up on the ground with their hair all frizzled - “Mummy, they got blown to fluff!”

Incident, last week, when I woke up from a nap. Me: “How long have I been asleep?” Pig: “Oh, about six ages.”

Incident, this week, upon squeezing a new tube of toothpaste too hard: “Ooh! That was a juicy one.”)

Probability of Committing Violent Crime: Great

(Incident, this week: “Daddy’s a pesky man. You should shoot him in the face.”)

Media Savvy: Middling

(Incident, today: “Mummy, I like my Snow White dress that you made me, but I don’t want to live in Snow White and Star Wars, you know, the movie? Because there’s a bad witch there.”)

Aspirations: Domestic

(Repeated incident: “Mummy, when I’m growed up I’m going to marry Jamie [or Kovac; depends on the day], and kiss him on the mouth. And you can come to my wedding, and I’m going to wear a big dress down to the floor, and a weil, and Daddy can buy me a ring. And you can make me a cake, OK? And when I’m big my baby will come out, and you have to call Julia on your real phone to come to the birthing centre, and she will cut the cord with scissors, and they’re going to be red… no, pink. And you have to go away while my baby comes out, and then you can come and pat him, but you can’t give him the milks because he’s my baby. You give Miles the milks, and I will give my baby the milks, but you can pat him.”)

Siblings: Toothsome

General Knowledge: Impressive

(Incident, a few weeks ago: “Mummy, did you know we got a bone in our head? It keeps it [knocking on skull] crunchy.”)

Self-Esteem: Bouyant

(Incident, this week: “Mummy, you’re a pretty good cooker. Not as good as me, I’m a very good cooker, because I’m a big girl.”)

Likelihood of Being Kept Until The Age of Five: Ehh, may as well. Gran bought her gumboots, and it would be a pity to waste them.

The good news is, the party went off successfully, causing Helpdesk Man and myself to feel like we have Won at Life. There were no tantrums (excepting a brief moment when I was icing the cake and Miles was under the table having flashbacks to ‘Nam, but Helpdesk Man cotted him and he was fine); only one kitchen disaster (me leaving a perfectly cromulent batch of pizza muffins in the oven to heat up for an hour and a half); none of the guests showed up early, a fact which always inspires devout thanks in a Smokey; and most importantly, they liked the cake. The pig, who has had Manners drilled into her head all week, said “thank you” nicely regarding her presents and did not suggest opening them before the arrival of the later guests more than half a dozen times. Tiny Miles kindly refrained from indulging either of his two favourite pastimes, weeping and Death By Chunky Bit, and played cutely with balloons instead.

The bad news is that I have been living a frantic, fervid, twitchy list-making life for the past week, and it has done a number on my already precarious sanity. Even now that the party is over and done, my eyes keep jumping back to the fridge door, and I have to stop myself leaping out of my chair to make meringue mushrooms. Consuming a hundredweight of cream cheese icing this morning probably didn’t help. In the interests of therapy, here are the lessons I have learned:

-Never throw out a cookbook you only kept all those years for its one decent recipe, without checking to make sure you didn’t previously cull said recipe from your handwritten recipe book to avoid double-ups.
(Fortunately, the internet is a wonderful thing.)

-Do not spend several hours the night before the party hand-sewing ribbons to homemade scrapbooking paper party hats; no-one will wear them.

-Those flourless peanut butter cookies everyone makes are pretty good, considering.

-Boysenberry puree colours and flavours Swiss meringue buttercream less than you might think.

-Fondant water-lilies should not be placed on a jelly pond in the fridge the night before. They will melt and go all ooey. Fortunately, the resulting oo can be blotted up carefully with a paper towel, and disguised with fondant ducks, placed there at the last minute.

-A triple recipe of a 9-by-13-inch banana cake is more than ample, even for 25 people. More than ample. Helpdesk Man could barely lift it.

-Cutting drinking straws down to a cuter length and putting them in a jar with scrapbooking-paper flowers is a sweet idea, until they blow all over the yard for the fortieth time.

-I really need to hem my beastie cloth. I’ve had it for what, six years now?

-Helpdesk Man has never heard of fairy bread. He is a successful entrepreneur, pushing thirty and author of more than one self-published book. How can he not have heard of fairy bread?

Can’t sleep. Cupcakes will get me.

We went hunting for the pig with the pigs when we got home, but could not find it. I live in hope.

Sadly, for the last few days Miles’ usually benevolent personality has been switched with that of a manic demon hellspawn who thinks the floor is lava. So yesterday, as we washed, he howled. (Interjection: I think there’s a rat in the ceiling. I can hear it oosing about. Should I have a more constructive response to this than going “Huh, there’s a rat in the ceiling?”)  And suddenly, the shower curtain heaved and the front two-thirds of Miles plopped, wailing bitterly, into the shower - which, due to a drainage/water pressure imbalance, was as usual three inches deep in water.

I rescued him from a soggy grave - though not, regrettably, before panicking and screaming “AAAHHH, HE’S IN THE SHOWER!” in the manner of a horror movie ditz. Then I decided I was clean enough, and joggled him on the bathmat for some time, kissing his wet head, until he became tranquil once more. Then we changed his onesie, and decided that from now on, he can bally well have a nap while we wash.

So that was fun. (I think there are a passel of rats up there. Or one practicing the Virginia Reel.)

Also, it’s the pig’s fourth birthday in a few weeks. It will be quite the event. Until now, I have cunningly avoided the horror that is children’s parties by inviting our families and mostly adult friends to a picnic in the public gardens. But this year, in a fit of Pinterest-fuelled domesticity, I decided it would be fun to do the real thing. Small children, cupcakes, games in the orchard, balloons by the gate.

I am now regretting it, and we haven’t even sent the invites yet. But on the bright side, after a whole year of pondering, I have decided what I’m going to do for the birthday cake.

It will be a large, flat, rectangular cake, covered in green coconut to look like grass, with a hill at one end. On the flat bit I will make a lake, with jelly, and some ducks if I can figure out how to wangle them (fondant, I guess?). There will also be meringue mushrooms and possibly cupcake shrubs; I haven’t worked out the details yet. Then there will be a path, made maybe of praline or caramel popcorn, or chopped nuts, although that’s probably not such a good idea for little kids, is it? - a path, anyway, leading to the top of the hill, on which I will have made a gingerbread castle. Or maybe a sugar cookie one, if they hold up - I’ll have to experiment. I’ve only ever made one gingerbread house, when I was about thirteen, and it collapsed, so I have some research to do.

Anyway; could be fun, no? I thought the castle could somehow incorporate those wafer stick things with the chocolate and vanilla stripes, like barber’s poles. Perhaps. Or not. And I can pipe pink around the windows and things. I’m tempted to go all out with a hedge-maze and a cutout bit at the back of the hill showing dwarves delving, and possibly some dungeons; but one should not get carried away. I have the rest of the party to plan. (Fairy bread! One of the best foods ever.)

So does anyone know any games suitable for 2-5-year-olds? Nothing too competitive; I don’t want to deal with the angst. I thought an egg and spoon race might be kind of fun, but I can see it ending badly… maybe a treasure hunt in the orchard? (By which I mean, “Kids, there are lollies hidden between here and here; don’t lick the electric fence”, not a hunt with actual clues. Given the snortlepig’s recent attempts at I Spy with colours, I think that might be beyond her.)

Also, I will be spending from now until the 17th making presents. We got a bookshelf off Freecycle I need to sand and paint; she went into raptures recently over a Snow White costume a girl in the supermarket wore, and my mother-in-law lent me a pattern to sew one; the summer quilt top is inching towards completion; and I have her bedroom curtains, fabric-covered pinboard and ruffly tablecloth in various stages of doneness, as well as vague plans to make her a proper nightlight. Ack.

(Rats seem to have gone. OK. Whatever.)

The consolatory news is that, despite my lemon dipping sauce going totally off its rocker, forgetting to put the thyme in said sauce and running out of time to use the arty skewers I bought for $6.49… I am the Runner-Up.

I have a large, framed certificate to prove it. I’m not sure what to do with it. Either I’ll chuck it in the bin or keep it enshrined on the wall of the throom with mood lighting and laser security. I also have a $200 gift card for Farro, which is much less problematic.

The panna cotta chap won, as could be expected - he made a very fancy fish dish with lemon fondant potatoes (why are they called that? I’m gonna try them, anyway, though not with preserved lemon). Many people liked Tiny Miles. I educated the viewing public on the harvesting methods of saffron, which is more interesting than I probably made it sound. I bought a disappointing milkshake and some incredibly nommy spiced nuts. Helpdesk Man bought fudge, cider, a mango mocktail and two pizzas. (Helpdesk Man 1, Diet 0.) An old lady in the audience heckled one of the other contestants, but left (thankfully) before I went up. Another contestant borrowed my chef’s knife. A man demonstrating cheese-making borrowed my frying pan. The Indian guy gave me his spare plate of curry and couscous. The MC read out bits of my application email, which was embarrassing. Half a bulb of fennel fell on the floor while I was setting up, but I didn’t need it. A lady in the front row was nervily arguing with a contestant over whether her chicken would be undercooked. The pig heard my name being called out and said excitedly “Ooh, Mummy, what are you going to make?”, proving she has been absent in spirit for the last seven days. Miles emitted a rank, sulfurous stench just as the MC was saying “Some wonderful smells are coming from the stove right now”. One guy simply called his dish “Lamb Fusion”, which sounded a heck of a lot artier than my “Well, um, I’m making chicken tender thingies with a lemon dipping sauce and bits of stuff, oh, and cream cheese balls”. I should have flung glitter into the air and said “I present to you… ZELDA!”, or summat. Also, I had to wear a headset. And I accidentally made a joke about Martha Stewart being a felon, but I don’t think anyone noticed,

But on to weightier matters. You know Patch Adams? Well, the film was based on the life of a real chap, Hunter “Patch” Adams, who was indeed a doctor and believed in the power of ‘aving a larf, but was not Robin Williams (three points to him, really). I read his book once. In it he described the model hospital (or “healing centre”, or something vaguely hippieish, I forget) he would have built if he had ever had enough money, but he did not (and his wife left him - it’s not as cheery a read as you might expect).

It sounds like a pretty neat theoretical facility - he planned the whole grounds in the shape of a clown, so as to terrify pilots, and he had pottery sheds and vegetable gardens and counselors and basketweaving stations and things, so if someone was suffering from the blight he could just toddle down the well-raked gravel path and throw a pot, and feel much better. Holistic, innit. But one rather questionable innovation was the Death Room.

Patch Adams wanted death to be a joyful experience, you see, and he thought that the dying - in much the same way that pregnant women choose candles and essential oil and Enya CDs for giving birth - could choose the ambience surrounding their death. So he planned out this room with a dome-shaped ceiling, on which you could project images of stars or childhood photos or whatever you wanted; and the idea was you could choose a fragrance and have your family around and eat cookies and generally go out in style.

It’s not hard to see the flaws in this plan.

“Are you almost done in there? Mrs Jenkins in Ward 17’s going a bit blue.”

“Wait a minute, the Death Star’s almost reached the Rebel base!”

“Weren’t you in here last week? This isn’t IMAX, you know.”

“I was dying.”

“You were watching Avatar.”

“That’s a very significant film for me!”

“Well, do you think you could pop off before the end of the credits? I have to hastily Photoshop a picture of Mrs Jenkins riding on a unicorn with Leonard Nimoy.”

“Mrs Jenkins?”

“She’ll surprise ya. Now look, that’s my pager; are you coming or going? She’s got a three-page deathplan, she’ll be furious if she misses out.”

Meanwhile Mrs Jenkins, being wheeled down the corridor by an orderly:

“Where are we going?”

“I just thought we’d take a little stroll. Get some fresh air.”

“This isn’t the way to the gardens - wait a second. You’re taking me to the Death Room, aren’t you?!”

“What? Of course not. Maybe just a little trial run. Your Aunty Edna’s flown in, and your high school drama teacher.”

“They flew in for a trial run?”

“Of course they did, sweetie. Everybody cares about you.”

“I’m not dying! I feel fine!”

“And you look lovely. How about we pop your old wedding dress on over your shoulders, now?”

“The doctor said I was going to be out of here by Tuesday!”

“Dr Adams? Oh, he’s a lovely man, isn’t he. Likes his little jokes. Now, look at that, Chef’s made your favourite dessert. Aren’t you in luck!”

“Is that my grandmother’s perfume I smell?”

“Probably just the angels, sweetie. Now oop, here we go, onto the couch. You just lie there and look at Mr Spock on the horsie. We’ll be back in the morning to pick up the - I mean, you have fun. Make the most of this.”

I mean, dude. I’d totally do it, though. I’d have a big flashing countdown, just to see what would happen. Can you psychosomatically induce death by expectation? Probably.