Quick update: Our early Thanksgiving went well. My mother-in-law not only made cookies, she also made the dressing and the sweet-potatoes-with-marshmallows – from my Husband Approved recipes – and my father-in-law bought wine for us to drink AND did the dishes. I mean. Could I ask for nicer people? We DID end up moving Thanksgiving from Friday to Saturday at pretty much the last minute – and I want points for being The Most Flexible Person in the World for doing that – but it ended up working out even better than it would have otherwise. The whole family went to see Frozen 2 while I cooked the turkey and mashed potatoes and set the table. And we only had one teeny little snafu wherein the turkey took a million years to cook. (NOTE TO FUTURE ME: PLAN FOR AN EXTRA HOUR OF TURKEY COOKING.) But it all worked out okay and I am exhausted and looking forward to eating tacos and pizza and other easy non-turkey things for the rest of the week.

I wish you and yours a wonderful Thanksgiving. Carla and I will be here watching a million movies all weekend, in our pajamas. We have gotten a VERY early start at it.

That’s what I wanted to talk about today, by the way. Pajamas. I know! That’s why you keep coming back, for the crazy wild topical content! Specifically, your pajama habits. (That sounds like a sexytime euphemism, which I assure you, with some disappointment, but really only very mild disappointment, it is NOT.)

It struck me the other day that Carla has a habit of throwing her pajamas in the laundry every morning. I think this is a) annoying, because it means I have seven sets of pajamas to wash each week and b) perplexing, because… aren’t pajamas wearable for multiple nights?

This reminds me of the How Often Do You Wash Your Sheets question that sometimes makes the rounds of blogs/radio shows/social media outlets. I always find that kind of thing fascinating – it’s so cool that we are all living in the world, doing the exact same things, and doing those things so differently! And we typically have Very Strong Feelings about the way we do things! And sometimes we are shocked and/or delighted to learn about how other people handle these same very mundane things! (I wash my sheets about every week. Sometimes more than a week passes, I WILL NOT LIE. But pretty much never do I wash them less frequently than every two weeks because the sheets start feeling yucky.)

Anyway, I am now wondering about your pajama habits in much the same way. Pajamas are a pretty universal thing, right? So we all probably have The Way We Do Things: Pajama Edition, right?

In my little family, we all change into pajamas pretty much as soon as we come home from work/school/whatever. We call them “play clothes,” but they are really pajamas. Or are they?

I don’t know why this is. I am certain that my parents didn’t do this when I was growing up. They both wore business formal clothing to work, and would come home and change… but they changed into jeans and T-shirts. Or my dad would change into “work clothes,” which were faded all-denim ensembles ideal for changing the oil on the cars or riding the property line to find downed fence or watering the lawn or whatever outdoor chores he had in mind.

I have no idea what my husband’s family of origin did, pajama-wise. Although occasionally when we visit them or they visit us, his mom will change into jammies to watch TV or something. But that’s usually after dinner.

I wonder if it makes any difference in what you consider “pajamas”?

I wear leggings and T-shirts. Sometimes flannel pajama pants, although I much prefer leggings. Carla wears matching pajama sets. We always buy her a billion pairs because she wears them so regularly and they tend to get holes in the knees pretty easily. Maybe this is because we typically buy Carters pjs; I have a friend who swears by Hanna Andersson jammies because she says they are indestructible. I have a suspicion that Carla is harder on clothing than my friend’s child, unfortunately I am not willing to pay $30+ on sale for a single pair of pajamas in order to test this theory.

My husband wears sweatshirts and flannel pants.

So, except for Carla, maybe we look less like we are wearing pajamas than I think we do?

Anyway, to get back to my original query about how long pajamas are good — not like they have an expiration date like milk or need to be consumed within five days of opening like chicken stock or something — I toss my own jammies in the laundry about once or twice a week. I’d say the same goes for my husband, but I am the one who scoops his pajamas off the floor and throws them in the wash when it’s laundry time, so… who knows how long they would be in use otherwise?

But are we… weird? Do other people wash their jammies every night or two? Are our pajama habits deeply gross? Maybe Carla is the reasonable one, treating her jammies like underpants and demanding a new pair every night.

And, again, maybe we are not even DEFINING pajamas currently. I guess when I think of pajamas, anything cozy and comfy counts. But maybe pajamas to YOU means… nighties or button-down flannel tops and matching bottoms. I don’t know! I have deep-seated pajama preconceptions, I guess!

It’s not that I have anything against Traditional Pajamas. In fact, I have one nightgown. I got it from a friend shortly after Carla was born, and it’s soft and lovely… but it’s impractical for actual sleeping because it’s… how can I say this without painting too clear a picture. It’s got spaghetti straps and it’s low cut and there is no… shall we say… support… and I am a side-sleeper.

Sometimes I look at all the cute pajama sets at Boden or Nordstrom and covet them.

But I know I would just eventually gravitate back to my soft leggings and old T-shirts. They are comfy and not terribly expensive and I am not terribly embarrassed to go outside and grab the paper while wearing them. (That’s just an expression, you know. I don’t get an actual newspaper; I’m a millennial.) (Also, I am being only half-serious; I am really on the cusp between millennial and Gen X, but also I know that you can’t say EVERY SINGLE MEMBER OF A GENERATION does a specific thing. That’s inaccurate and dumb.)

My preferred T-shirt, by the way, is one of my husband’s discards. Like right now I am wearing a Math Counts tee he got in high school. His old T-shirts are big and comfy and sooooooo soft.

Now – not to bring Controversy to my blog; I promise not to weigh in too heavily although you can guess my position pretty easily – but I am going to guess that people who are Inside-the-House Shoes Wearers are less likely to be Jammies Before Bed Wearers. Here is my admittedly meager evidence: My in-laws wear shoes in the house; they do not leap into pajamas the instant they come in the door. My parents wear shoes in the house; they also do not leap into pajamas the instant they arrive at home. My husband and I do NOT wear shoes in the house, and we live in pajamas. Admittedly, my sample size is VERY SMALL and probably deeply biased, considering that all of the sample members are related. So clearly I need more data points before my hypothesis can be confirmed. But maybe it’s true. Maybe you can only feel strongly that Shoes Should Not Be Worn Inside or that Pajamas Are For The Bedroom Only, but not both.

My fourthish question – have I asked any  questions, let alone approximately three? – is a delicate one. Let’s see how delicately I can phrase it without revealing too much (hahahaha – no pun intended – which is not in the least bit funny until you finish this paragraph, end even then probably only humor-adjacent). Pajamas are… intended to be sleepwear. But some people do not, in fact, use them in that capacity. So, if you are interested in telling me, do you actually sleep in your pajamas? And might this change your response to some of the earlier questions I may or may not have asked? Some people refuse to sleep in socks, for instance. Others get very hot while they slumber, and so tend to shed either some or all of their pajamas prior to or during sleep. Others choose to go pajama free, considering the sheets to be enough coverage during the night. Still others are total anarchists (pajanarchists?) and do something different every single night.

Let’s not discuss lingerie. I am feeling a little too demure to go that route. I mean, unless you are really dying to share your lingerie thoughts – in that case, I definitely want to hear them. But lingerie or no, I DO want to hear all about your pajama habits.

In the meantime, happy Turkey Day. I hope it is full of all the friends and/or family and/or food and/or uninterrupted alone time you could hope for.