It’s an experiment.

Before we begin today’s post, let’s get an important fact you’ll need to know out there in the open:I require A LOT of sleep.

I really need sleep. I do not function well without it and if you’ve been with me when I haven’t had enough, you’ve probably noticed the crazed giddiness, followed by quietness, followed by me begging you to let me take a nap. I don’t/can’t pull all-nighters. The closest I came was in grad school when I had a take-home exam I had to have done at a certain time the next day. I’m not sure what I wrote on that exam!

I’ve been like this since I was a child. I need sleep! My mom jokes that she had to break me from naps when I went to kindergarten. . .AND I ONLY WENT FOR A HALF DAY! But seriously, if I still thought I could get away with it, I’d so take a nap every afternoon at work! My brother has always been able to function on way less sleep than me, but I really need 7-8 and sometimes even 9 hours of good sleep to deal.

So, now that you know that, understand this: I haven’t been sleeping well. Yes, I’ve been sleeping, but it’s been fitful and light, full of tossing and turning and waking up a lot. I had kind of given up hope of ever sleeping through an entire night again. Then came Saturday. I went over to some friends’ house for a rollicking game of croquet, a cook-out, and then a no-holds-barred game of Taboo. And at this little get-together, there was nothing to drink that contained caffeine. (That’s important!)

So, I came home and went to bed, eventually. And woke up on Sunday morning completely refreshed, having slept the whole night through. No staring at the clock. No tossing and turning. I was ecstatic!

But Sunday night didn’t end with the same results. Being the person I am, I began looking for what was different. The answer was clear: caffeine consumption.

That led me to the current experiment. I am stopping all caffeinated drinks after a certain time each night this week to test my theory. I have one night completed in my little experiment and the no-caffeine-after 7 p.m. hypothesis seems to be working well.

So, don’t mock me if I go out somewhere with you some evening and order Sprite. Because, really, you want me to get my sleep. And my beauty sleep.

Just trust me.