A few years ago I came to realize that having caffeine of any sort means not getting to sleep until 3am. The fact that I stopped sleeping well the second I got pregnant with my first daughter in 1994 doesn’t help things either, although I don’t think caffeine did much to me back then. It’s an age thing I guess.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about it since I had the Quartet and our wonderful accompanist over for a BBQ last night, and we got in to talking about caffeine after dinner, when it was decided we should all just stick to alcohol – that coffee stuff is too dangerous to our systems after… I think the consensus was 4pm. I shocked the crowd with my recollection of one night when I had had caffeine of some sort, and lay, wide awake, listening to my husband snore in my ear. No amount of poking would wake that sucker up, or get him to turn over, he was that tired and deeply asleep.

“Hrm.” Sez I.

Rooting around in my bedside table, I found just the thing! A blue sharpie marker. I love sharpies. I have them in all the colours of the rainbow, I do. Dunno why it was in my bedroom, but I was pleased to find it – it was just the thing!

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I drew a mustache or goatee or Vulcan eyebrows on my man. Not even I would go that far when the guy had to go to work in a few hours. Not with a sharpie, anyway. ;)

I started very softly and stealthily on his arm. A small heart, right up there on the bicep. Ohh, nice. The words “I love you” came next. He didn’t even break stride in his snores, so I got bolder. I started playing connect the dots on his shoulder – you have to understand that my hubby, being a red-head, has about a gazillion freckles on his bod. I got bored with that after a while though, and since he was on his back, I veeerrrryyyyy lightly drew circles around his nipples, and as I recall, joined them with a line through his chest hair. If he were awake, or even close to it, that would have sent him over the edge. He slept right through it. Yay me! I was getting pretty giddy at this point, and close to being able to go to sleep, so the last thing I did was return to his shoulder and, with my usual flourish, signed my work.

It took him about 10 minutes the next morning to notice, and I woke up with him leaning over me with a deranged look on his face, and he was trying so hard not to crack up. I knew instantly that I should not have had that caffeine the evening before, because if there’s anything my hubby loves… it’s payback.