Nocturnal admissions

This morning I should have been driving across the Chesapeake Bay bridge to see Kelley at Sunporch Quilts about quilting George. I met up with Kelley at the Annapolis Quilt Guild show back in June and I got to see some of her work on display there (one quilt ribboned, I believe). But instead I am sitting around and waiting for the Ikea delivery truck to show up with my new sofa bed, which will be installed in my sewing room. Because, you see, I need a place to sleep. Alone. That's right, alone. I realize I am about to tread into some very dangerous waters here, but I might as well get it over with.

I do not sleep with my husband.

I can already hear a certain number of people gasping in horror, and another percentage of those are already clutching their pearls and priming their index fingers to start typing a very sanctimonious comment about how they have not slept apart from their beloveds a single night in their entire marriage (except for that time he got busted for pot in Japan) and how happy they have been to not have a decent night's sleep in thirty years because what's a little rest compared to the contentment engendered by spending the night with your face lodged in someone's hairy armpit? Granted, that's hard to argue with; nevertheless I learned after many years of terrible sleep and increasing crankiness that sleeping apart was better for our marriage than sleeping together.

I never liked sharing a bed with another person; I don't even like sleeping in the same room with someone else. I am so particular about how I sleep, that someone else's movements and noises just drive me batshit insane. David went through a period of time in the year before I got pregnant with Harper where he would kick his leg in this convulsive way every 2 minutes or so throughout the night. It was so startling each time, and so disruptive, that eventually I ended up on sleeping medication in order to get through it. The leg kicking thing went away as mysteriously as it had appeared, but since then his snoring has gotten worse as well as his very animated nighttime conversations. He's such a taciturn man in the daytime - I guess he gets it all out of his system while he's sleeping.

For a while we solved the problem by taking turns sleeping on the couch, but then Harper graduated to a big bed and was constitutionally incapable of sleeping on her own. And here is another of those issues that gets people all ready to hop up on their high horse and tell me either that they are STILL sleeping with their children (who are now in college) and that it has made their precious pumpkins secure and loving individuals who will never, ever get laid, or that their children have always slept alone, in a pit, chained to the wall and this has made them secure and fiercely independent individuals who now use fantasies of matricide to lull themselves to sleep.

 I have slept with my kids since Harper was 2 years old, so for about 5 years now.

Believe it or not, my marriage is solid, and my kids are awesome, and despite the musical beds, everyone is pretty content. Except me. I had just managed to get Harper to start sleeping in her own bed, by herself, with her sister in the crib next to her, when Devon graduated to a big bed. She proved just as incapable of sleeping on her own as Harper, and when Harper saw the concessions I was willing to make to help Devon get to sleep, she knew she had me back in her clutches. Their bedroom was moved to the playroom, which has a couch, and I brought peace to the household by sleeping on that couch every night, while David slept in the bed in the master bedroom upstairs. On Friday and Saturday nights, when he doesn't have to go to work the next day and the kids don't have to get ready for school, we switch.

My BP meds have been causing sleep problems, among other things, and so I have been longing to have my own room to sleep in. My sewing/writing room is big enough, and with just a bit of furniture rearranging we could fit a bed or a daybed or, as we finally decided on, a sofa bed. Devon is getting older and less dependent on me to be there all night. We received a small windfall recently and decided that a place for me to sleep was at the top of the list of things to spend it on. Thus Ikea, and today's delivery.

In quilting news, I am making pointy Dresden plates:

This is one of five that will go on a table runner for my sister-in-law. The fabric is from the Aster Manor FQ bundle that my QH editors gave me, and the pattern comes from the Moda bakeshop. I found the instructions less than stellar, but it appears that I did everything right despite that. I actually kept the girls up a wee bit past their bedtime so that I could finish this one, and when I showed it to them they burst into applause. Even David was impressed and usually anything with a flower print makes him squirmy and uncomfortable.

So now that I'm essentially moving into my office, I wonder how long it will be before I decide to install a kitchenette and just live in here full time. Will sleeping in my sewing room make me dream of quilts? Will I post more? Will there be late night Twitter updates? And how long will it be before somebody tries to shove in the bed next to me?

And will my marriage and my children survive the trauma?