So that's what it takes

I love my sleep. I'm not a napper (unless I'm sick or pregnant), but I love my night time sleep with a passion. And I used to be exceptionally good at it, once upon a time.

When I was single (sleeping alone in my snug little bed) and not on blood pressure medication (necessitating at least one groggy trip to the bathroom every night), I used to fall asleep in mere minutes and stay dreamily snoozing for the entire night.

Imagine that. Sleeping all night long.

I don't have a hungry baby wailing to be fed or a toddler who wakes up crying for me in the night, and yet it's been years since I've sleep right through to the dawn's early light. Years.

I blame it on the medication, the shared (and therefore not always quiet) sleeping arrangements, occasional pregnancies (of varying lengths), and my body's inability to regulate its temperature when confronted with the heat of another warm body. All in all, it makes for nights of tossing, turning and peeing. And occasional sleeping.

But that changed on Saturday night, and I have a bowl full of bad chicken to thank for it.

Maybe it wasn't the chicken fettucine. It could have been a 24-hour bug, but I suspect fowl play. And it kept me up half the night on Friday shaking from feverish chills and using the toilet and waste basket simultaneously. If you know what I mean.

By Saturday night I was quite literally spent. Drained of just about everything, but mostly energy. And so I slept the blissful sleep of the young, closing my eyes sometimes around 11:00pm and not opening them again until almost nine hours later.

Despite missing my favourite holiday party of the year and having to spend the entire weekend before Christmas in a germ-infested exile, I look back fondly on that rotten chicken pasta because it brought me the first complete, uninterrupted night of sleep I've had for as long as I can remember.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade my occasionally noisy Beloved for anything, nor am I particularly interested in spending another 24 hours in the bathroom - and I'm still devastated to have missed my sister's drop-in Christmas party - but oh the sleep. The delicious luxury of a full night's sleep.

It was almost worth it. Almost