I have been the Queen of Sleep forever. I am an expert at falling asleep, sleeping in uncomfortable places, not waking up during the night, falling back asleep quickly and efficiently if I do, and not snoring. (If my husband tells you I snore, he’s lying and should not be believed. He’s just jealous because up until about two months ago, he snored like a head-on Amtrak collision. I, on the other hand, am as cute and quiet as a newborn beagle puppy when I sleep.)
With the single exception of a three-week period last month in which I kept waking up at about 2 a.m. and usually just stayed up (got caught up on some bills, cleaned out some cabinets, and – oh! did you know that Law & Order SVU really is on 24 hours a day?), I’ve always bragged about my ability to enjoy a good night’s sleep.
I’ve listened to people talk about insomnia, how they’re eating Ambien like they’re Skittles, and I have Facebook evidence that many of my friends make their cleverest comments between 3 and 4 a.m. For me, it’s like listening to someone talk about how they survived the Holocaust. Other than that one exception, I couldn’t fathom being super tired and not being able to fall asleep.
No guest room for me? I’ll just sleep here in the corner of the kitchen next to this dog dish, thanks.
Sleep Number Bed stuck on the wrong number? I can sleep on numbers 0 through infinity.
Seven cups of coffee at 1 a.m. because it seemed like a good idea to drink caffeine when everyone else at the party had moved to shots of tequila? I’ll be asleep just like them, except I’ll brush my teeth first and put a top on.
For the most part, the sleep queenship has worked out pretty well for me. There have been a couple incidents where it worked against me, made me look like a homeless junkie, but I in fact was just innocently catching Z’s.
Once in college, I was at a party that had started at about 3 in the afternoon and I had stayed up late studying the night before, so somewhere around 6 or 7 o’clock I was sitting on the floor leading up against a wall, talking and having a beer. The next thing I knew, I opened my eyes and was at another party, which had started at about 8 with a whole different group of people. I know that one made me look bad in front of strangers who didn’t know about me and my sleep methods.
When I was pregnant, this happened more often. We had another couple over for dinner once and I was sitting in a chair carrying on a normal conversation and the next thing I knew, the room was empty and Tim was washing dishes. He told me they stayed about an hour after I went unconscious in the middle of my story about how I fell asleep at that college party.
I also slept during all of my haircuts when I was pregnant. My hairdresser never complained that my bobbing head threatened a scissor stabbing accident. I tipped extra for the nap.
I was just reading about a study that concluded that sleep apnea is responsible for more sleep problems than was previously thought. Researchers in Woolloongabba, Australia, did research (possibly because they live in Woolloongabba and knew that their findings, however absurd, would make the international news because everyone wants to try to pronounce that town name) where they listened to people sleep and recorded breathing patterns.
[Side note here: Who has that job? Really? It must be in the middle of the night to get the subjects to fall asleep on cue. So someone’s job is to work the midnight shift listening to people sleep. I hope there were snacks. Because if not, I’d bet the scientists fell asleep, too, and just wrote down a bunch of numbers and squiggly lines on the forms and said, “Oh yeah, he’s got apnea. I’m pretty sure – yep – they’ve all got apnea.”]
If you’ve ever slept with someone who has actual apnea, it could give you yourself a breathtaking seizure. Exhale, no inhale . . . Another exhale, still no inhale . . . Exhale of the last possible amount of air a human could still hold in their lungs, yet still no inhale . . . Squeezing out a stunning 1/8 teaspoon more exhale . . . SN-O-O-O-O-O-RT! Oh thank you God, he’s alive!
Sleep apnea is the only reason why snorers aren’t murdered in their sleep by their wives. We would kill them just to shut them up, but then they stop breathing and we start to think of all the things we love about them. One being that they’ll wake up with the alarm while we Sleep Queens sleep away.