Thursday 13, Insomnia Edition

The Scratching Post is back with another Thursday 13 entry. Lately it seems as if I'm always complaining about the same thing. Sleep. I slept in, I've got jet lag, my toes were out of the covers all night and got frostbite in the frigid San Diego air, our Maximum Leader hogs the bed and so on. Well, buckle in and strap on your helmets, because this is another one of those.

13 things to do when you have insomnia.

1. Prepare for it. I TiVo'd the Monday night Raiders-Chargers game. Talk about boring! Re-watching it at 2AM should put anyone back to sleep. Memo to Marty Schottenheimer: The year is 2006, not 1006. The forward pass is legal. What a dinosaur.

2. After laying awake for an hour (even watching the game) do not decide to just get up because you'll have to get up in a few hours anyway. No matter how pessimistic you are, you can always get back to sleep. That hour or two will save you the next day.

3. Count sheep. Real sheep. Arrange with a local farm to have FedEx deliver sheep to your house in the middle of the night so you can count them. If you arrange them in a circle, you can count up to any number as you will be too tired to remember which sheep you started with.

4. Find the cat and bring her to bed. Imitate her. This is like learning art from Renoir. There is no creature better at sleeping in the world. They are patient teachers, too.

5. Get some regular exercise during the day. If supporting your kids' schedule keeps you in the car and the kitchen all the time, preventing you from working out, teach them to drive and cook. Some say 9 years old is too young for driving a car, but I'm not talking a stick shift here, just an automatic. Handling sharp knives and uncooked pork poses no problems for the well-prepared child.

6. Remember that caffeine is not your friend in the afternoon. While you may have had a hard time sleeping the previous night, its siren song and seductive ways around 3PM when you need to go to a perfectly dreadful staff meeting will rob you of your sleep that night. If you must get a cup of coffee to stay awake while your coworkers travel a verbal Mobius Strip for hours, don't drink it, dip body parts in it instead. The scalding will keep you awake just as well and it's easier to sleep with second degree burns than with caffeine in your blood.

7. Have a book to read on your nightstand. A frightfully boring book. I recommend a Real Analysis text or perhaps a Physical Chemistry book. The proof is left to the reader.

8. Feed your animals before going to bed. When I woke last night, I heard Jacob the Syrian Hamster going at it in his exercise wheel. It was a happy sound until I realized that I forgot to feed him. Getting out of bed insures that it will take an extra 15 minutes to get back to sleep, but the guilt of not having given the little guy his crunchings and munchings is even worse.

9. Make sure the bed is securely made before getting in it in the first place. Nothing is worse than waking up in the middle of the night with your toes sticking out down below and realizing that nothing short of getting up and making the bed will stop it. Even in San Diego, there's a 10-15 degree temperature differential between under the covers and out of the covers and your toes refuse to be treated like second-class citizens. They will keep you awake just out of spite.

10. Do not think about your blog. You may have no idea what you will do for a Thursday 13 post the next morning, but thinking about it will only make you wake up more. Just relax. When you sit down at the keyboard with your coffee in the morning, the post will come to you.

11. Pray. Jesus, Mary and Joseph all had some sleepless nights, too. They understand.

12. Do not watch the clock. That will only stress you out more and keep you from getting to sleep. The endless calculations of "if I get to sleep now, I will still be able to get x hours of sleep before I have to get up" are not restful thoughts.

Finally, I have this suggestion for dealing with insomnia.

13. Give up trying to sleep. Devote yourself to staying awake 24 hours a day. Sleep is over rated.


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