yes please(36)

My first-period class in high school started at seven thirty A.M. We lived in a ranch house with two bathrooms and my mom taught special ed at our high school, so Mom, Greg, and I would be angling for the shower at the same time. I would snooze until the last possible second and then rush to get ready. My hair would still be wet and often frozen by the time I walked from my house to the car of whatever friend was driving me to school. I never rode with my mom. I generally preferred to ride with Rob, who played his U2 cassettes and wore acid-wash jeans. I would fight sleep in my first couple of classes, until lunch came at 10:20 A.M., when I would eat the ten thousand calories given to every American teenager. I would get home from school at 1:45 and crash hard on the couch, waking up only to watch my beloved General Hospital or do homework or sluggishly walk to softball practice. I was always tired. I am always tired. I now read articles about how great sleep is and how important it is and I cry because I want it so bad and I am so mad at how great everyone else seems to be at it.



I got some relief from my sleep problem once I started working at SNL (this sounds crazy, I realize that). It was truly a vampire life and one that suited my internal clock. At the time I did not have children, so I was able to stay up very late and sleep very late. I remember ten A.M. feeling incredibly early and three A.M. being my usual bedtime. This was my life for seven years. New York City is the perfect place to be awake in the middle of the night. I would rub shoulders with the nurses and truck drivers. I would watch newspapers being delivered and the workout maniacs getting in their first runs of the day. I would watch wired rich kids stumble out of clubs and old Italian men water down the sidewalks. Being awake and sober at four A.M. is a much different experience from being wasted and stumbling home. I have certainly done both. I remember a particularly awful night when I went to a club and stayed out all night, only to have to shoot a commercial parody the next morning. I was tired and wired as I shivered in a freezing trailer getting a spray tan to look like Fergie. The host that week was Jon Heder and we were supposed to be playing the Black Eyed Peas. We had to dance in the middle of a New Jersey highway at six A.M. I think Jon was the only one who had slept the previous night. Kenan Thompson kept pretending to take calls from himself asking why he had done this to himself. It was a long day.

But nothing during my SNL years prepared me for children.

The thing about little babies is that you are always afraid they are going to die. At least in the beginning. You are constantly checking to make sure they didn’t die and you haven’t killed them. Because of this, it’s truly impossible to sleep when you are a new mother. The other thing about little babies is that you don’t get the weekends off. You don’t get a Saturday where you can catch up. The sleep deprivation after children is so real. I liken it to what it must feel like to walk on the moon and to cry the whole time because you had heard that the moon was supposed to be great but in truth it totally sucks. I started working on Parks and Recreation when my first child, Archie, was three months old, and I can remember a few times when I fell asleep standing up, with my eyes open. I slept wherever I could. Twenty minutes at lunch. During production meetings. In my car. I remember being filled with rage when childless people would talk about brunch. I had my second son, Abel, and aged a hundred years in his first year. I had a hard time getting my body back after baby number two. I am still excellent at sleeping in places that aren’t my bed. I can sleep on an airplane like a boss. Sometimes I look forward to travel for just that reason.

My children forced me to realize the true value of sleep and made me want to conquer my inability to get any. I try to believe what Annie from Annie says, when she reminds us that tomorrow is only a day away. Sleep can completely change your entire outlook on life. One good night’s sleep can help you realize that you shouldn’t break up with someone, or you are being too hard on your friend, or you actually will win the race or the game or get the job. Sleep helps you win at life. So at the ripe old age of forty, I decided to go to a sleep center and see if I could get better at sleep. I was spending a lot of time in Beverly Hills, which is the strangest place in the world. It is also the capital of doctors. If you have never been to a doctor’s office in Beverly Hills, you haven’t lived. Every single waiting room looks like a gorgeous apartment owned by a Persian billionaire. I rolled up to a fancy sleep center at the assigned ten P.M. call time. I had spent the entire day not drinking caffeine, as instructed. I am a tea girl. Coffee smells so good but my stomach doesn’t like it. Tea is what my mom and I would drink together in the afternoon, and what Archie and I sometimes sip when we want to have serious talks. I abstained from tea too, yet was still worried about my chances of falling asleep. I knew I was going to be hooked up to wires so they could record my snoring and check me for sleep apnea, and I seriously doubted I would be able to go down. I wondered out loud if anyone had ever stayed up all night. The sweet and gentle technician shook his head no. He asked why I was sent to him and I tilted my head and in a very flirty way said to him, “I am told I snore.”

What I should have said was “Throughout my life I have been told I snore so loudly that it sounds like I am dying or choking. I come from a family of snorers and we all used to record each other to show each other the damning evidence. I am convinced my body is trying to gently strangle me to death.”

I was led into a small room that looked like the weirdest Holiday Inn you have ever seen. A bed and a lamp did not distract from the multiple pulleys, wires, clips and clamps. I was hooked up like a puppet while I continued to make small talk with the technician. He had a terrific bedside manner, which is extremely important when you are the only man on duty in a weird sleeping center. I cracked bad dirty jokes as he hooked me up with electrodes. I sheepishly asked him about his kids as he showed me a crazy breathing machine he would try on me later. He turned off the light and shut the door and I laughed out loud. “There is no way I can sleep here,” I thought. And then I fell asleep. Eventually. The rest was all weird memories of being nudged, hooked up again, and turned over. I was gently woken up eight hours later and felt like shit, which was disappointing. I think I had expected to feel terrific, or at least pleasantly buffed and shined. He told me the doctor would read my results and come speak to me. I asked him if I had snored. He gently nodded and said, “A little.”