It's three weeks into the Sleep Challenge Arianna Huffington and I are doing to encourage women to stop cheating themselves of zzzs, and I gotta tell you, I'm into it. I'm waking up without an alarm clock, I've got energy, I mysteriously lost three pounds while eating beef chili and nachos. Oh, and for the first time in probably 10 years, I've only fallen asleep when I meant to, as opposed to on planes, trains, automobiles, over romantic dinners or during family events. Seriously, you won't believe some of the places I've dozed off in the past.
It's not a new thing: I fell asleep on one of my first dates with my husband (what can I say? It happened to be a busy time in my life, and it turned out he understood, having once fallen asleep himself standing up wearing a Gumby costume and leaning against a parking meter-but I digress). After I had two babies and began engaging in the usual headless-chicken act of working motherhood, things only got more extreme. This fall, I was in L.A. on business, having done a several-city sprint with lots of late nights and early-morning flights. I ducked out of one event early to spend the evening with a dear friend I hadn't seen in a year. We ordered takeout, caught up about our lives, and then retired to the couch with a bottle of wine for some serious girl talk. That was the plan, anyway. By the time I woke up two hours later, she'd watched two back-to-back episodes of Big Love and cleaned her entire living room. "You better go," she said sympathetically. "Your car's outside."
Mortifying, no? I thought so-but look, I only had myself to blame. Prior to the Sleep Challenge, my philosophy on rest could pretty much have been summed up by the Rob Lowe character in Thank You For Smoking who, when asked when he sleeps, replies cheerfully, "Sunday." And my working-mom friends all have similar stories (one, a former high-ranking public official, confesses that she regularly wakes up on her couch in pitch black darkness, her husband having turned off the lights and given up on her). But now I'm enjoying seeing how the more rested half lives-and I don't think I want to give it up.
So that's my embarrassing confession. Your turn! What have you fallen asleep in the middle of? Church? Class? Um, sex? (You wouldn't be alone; seven percent of women in one poll apparently had.) Tell me in the comments below: I will never again fall asleep during _____.
P.S.: Thanks to the many of you who have e-mailed me suggestions for sleep aids (no, not the drug kind); I'm road-testing them and will rouse myself from my lavender-scented coma to report back soon.
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I mean, who falls asleep during surgery? Me, clearly!
To improve my sleep and get that extra sleep time here is what I did.
I re-arranged the bed and the room, Took out the T.V and clutter. We installed a ceiling fan for better air cirulation. We got a new, better quailty mattress, a wool-filled comforter and some very good sheet sets. It's amazing how little changes can make a big diffrence in a person's sleep quailty.
Imagine my embarrassment when I snapped awake in shock to the downbeat of the music as the band started playing without me! I think that I pretended that I had sneezed or something equally rediculous. To my chagrin, the conductor later pulled me aside to see if my health was good, thinking I was deathly ill. I "confessed" to being a bit "under the weather" when I was nothing more than flat hungover and hurting from two or three hour's sleep for nights on end!
Ahhh.....to be 22 again!
I was a student at the Armed Forces School of Music, Little Creek, Virginia.
We had weekly Friday morning formations and this particular formation was in support of a class of graduating students.
In fine student tradition, I rarely slept a full night, opting to party as long and as hard as my young body would humanly allow before hitting the rack for a couple of hours sleep before classes in the morning.
However...
I topped myself one cold winter morning by falling asleep in formation. We were standing at parade rest, observing the passing of the graduating class. I am sure that I fell asleep when the officers were giving speeches and these ceremonies were often quite long.
I recall standing as straight as I possibly could and raising my eyebrows as high as possible to try to keep my eyelids from slamming shut. I was sure that I had pulled it off when we fell out of formation until I was grabbed by an officer, face shinning and grinning in glee. He informed me that he and four other officers had placed bets on wether I would pass out/fall asleep and fall out of the formation.
Apparently, I had been waving gently back and forth, swaying as far back as my body would allow before snapping forward to avoid falling over. I did this for about an hour, through the entire graduation ceremony.