My Secret Late-Night Pleasure

I have decided that it's time for me to share my secret late-night pleasure with the world. This really has been a secret, but I suspect that my husband might know something about it, even though I haven't yet shared it with him openly.

Don't worry. This blog is still rated G (okay, maybe a spicy PG sometimes).

Here it is: Every night, very late at night, when I am in bed and after I am sure my husband is asleep, I privately indulge in one of my greatest pleasures. Keeping the lights turned off and scooching way over to my side of the bed, I pull up the covers and try to stay very still so I don't wake my husband.

Then I reach over the side of the bed and feel around on the floor until I find what I'm looking for. That's where I keep it, plugged in at night so it can recharge, and hidden just under the dust ruffle of the bed so no one can see it, although I'm not sure why I do that because I am certainly not ashamed of it nor am I worried that anyone would steal it here in my bedroom late at night. Before I bring it up into bed with me I usually turn one last time to check and make sure that my husband really is asleep. Once I am certain that he is, I get down to business.

I pull my iPhone into bed with me, tap the Kindle app, and choose a book to read. Sometimes I pull the covers up over my head and read under the covers so the light won't disturb my husband, and I feel just like I did when I was a kid and I would read under the covers late at night with a flashlight.

I don't just read books. Sometimes, I'll go into Google Reader and read 50 or 60 blogs. Other times, I'll disappear into Twitter, tweeting and re-tweeting until the wee hours of the morning.

At some point during all this reading creative ideas start to pop into my head and I quickly open my Awesome Note app. My fingers fly across the touchscreen as a record of the ideas either in my journal folder, the marketing folder for work, the grant folder, or my to do list. Sometimes I head over to Facebook and post a comment or two before writing my gratitude list for the day and taking some time to chat with God before I go to sleep.

Every now and then, my husband moves like he's going to roll over to my side of the bed and I hide the phone quickly under my pillow, only pulling it out again when I know it's safe.

This is my time. It's just me and God and words and ideas flowing freely, uninterrupted by the demands of my life. It's not the same as reading during the day because something or someone will inevitably interrupt that time or I will interrupt myself because there other things I could or should be doing.

But not now. This is my time. There's nothing else I should be doing. This is exactly what I should be doing.

This is my secret late-night pleasure.

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