Surprise! I'm an idiot.

Before I became a mother, I used to love doing experiments on my body with drugs.

Many years ago, I was really into taking Ambien, and then not going to sleep. As most people know, when you take Ambien - especially extra Ambien - without being strapped down to your bed two seconds after swallowing it, you end up doing a lot of shit that seems logical at the time (it never is). You also wake up with amnesia, which is only cured by a forensic piecing together of the events based on the insane clues you left for yourself. For me, the memories would basically come back, but it usually took a few days.

I once hid soap. I have no idea who I was hiding it from (myself, maybe?), but I found it under the bathroom sink in an empty tampon box. Of course.

My sister often reminds me about the night I decided we desperately needed to have a sleepover in her bedroom. She had bunk beds, but I decided it made a lot more sense to drag my mattress through the hallway and throw it on her floor. I'm guessing my original plan was to stick it on top of the existing mattress on the top bunk, but fortunately Ambien does not bestow upon a person freakish strength.

Another time, I took it during singles group at my church. We ended up going to a diner, which we usually did afterward, and instead of ordering a cheeseburger like I always would, I decided to get ravioli. Don't order ravioli from a diner, seriously. Also, don't drive a car after taking Ambien. There could be only one other car on the road for miles, but you are guaranteed to hit that car.

The most elaborately bizarre experience was when I was spending the night at my friend Jamie's apartment. That was the evening I had a revelation - despite that I am the most terrible artist I've ever seen, I just knew that it was all going to change now that I'd discovered charcoal pastels and huge pieces of paper. I made several masterpieces, thrilled with my new-found talent. The next morning, I found a whole buncha huge pieces of paper filled with amorphous, smudgy blobs.

But that wasn't my only bout of creativity that night. "Give me that roll of tape!" I demanded of Jamie. She handed it to me with a sense of urgency usually reserved for stuff like lifeboat-boarding. She stood, awaiting further instructions. "I need something to tape!" I insisted. "Give me something to tape!" She became paralyzed with fear and indecision. It was now up to me. "The ketchup bottle! The ketchup bottle!" I commanded, as quick on my feet as ever. She practically threw it at me, so relieved to have the responsibility taken from her shoulders.

I began carefully winding the tape around the bottle, practically sweating with concentration. I finally reached the neck of the bottle and decided that it needed a good old ruffle. After that, I grabbed a pen, scribbled something on it, then handed it back to Jamie triumphantly, who dutifully stuck it into her fridge, for some arcane reason, since one should never have to suffer the pain of cold ketchup.

By the light of day, Jamie opened the fridge and discovered her ketchup and silently handed it to me, at the absolute threshold of how confused it's possible to look without your eyes running away from their sockets. I took the bottle. It read, "eat your ketchup now, children. there will be no ketchup in hell."

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