Let's just say that my timing wasn't so good.

Last week, I had 15 minutes left on my 5 hour and 30 minute flight to Costa Rica and wouldn't you know it... my stomach was on fire. I'm sure that it had something to do with the 3 bags of Sour Cream & Onion Lays that my kids didn't eat, but that I had no problem snarfing down, or maybe it was just general travel anxiety...but whatever, I dug into my bag and pulled out my little Advil pill bottle (I carry all of my pills in that) and fished out what I thought was a store brand version of a Pepcid AC.

Now for a little back story. I sleep about 5 hours a night. At my last OBGYN appointment, my Doctor thought that I should be sleeping more and told me that as women get older and hormones start to fluctuate, sleep gets all messed up. This can lead to moodiness, lower resistance and a host of other undesirable symptoms. I wasn't complaining about not sleeping, in fact, when I did the math, I get an extra 45 days in a year on my schedule, but my OBGYN said I was definitely not getting enough sleep and that I should try an ambien and see if a full night of snoozing would make a difference in my general well being. I filled the prescription, generic of course, but I wanted to wait for the perfect time to use it. I threw a few into my little Advil pill bottle and thought that maybe I would try it on my next trip to LA. As it turns out, I was so busy when I went to LA that I didn't have time to sleep so I never used it.

By the time the plane landed in Costa Rica, I was out cold. Drooling, snoring, out like a light. My son had to shake me hard to wake me up.

"Mom...we're here!" he said.

"Where?" I whispered in a stupor. It was an easy 4 martini buzz. I couldn't figure out what the hell was going on. I had no idea where I was. My husband peered over his seat.

"What's wrong with you?" He thought I was joking.

"I'm so dizzy..." and then it occurred to me...

"Oops...I think I took an Ambien 20 minutes ago by mistake", I declared.

One of my reservations about using Ambien in the first place was what would happen if you took it and you had to wake up and put out a fire or something. I'm happy to report that you can wake up after taking an Ambien, and walk down some rickety stairs and drool in a bumpy ass cab ride to your hotel but you will not be able to clearly remember all of the details of the next 3 hours if you make yourself stay awake which is what I did.

When we got to the hotel and I fell into my bed, I do remember saying that I needed to take a short nap and I sent everyone off to have lunch. My husband bent over to kiss me and I shot him the stink eye, "Don't go all Tiger on me, you hear?"