mycalicocat

After a bad night, I limit myself to mechanical work. I can balance a budget: I can't write a legislative proposal. I can answer e-mails: I can't create a new publication.

After a really bad night, I don't drive on the highways, which means I sometimes cancel appointments in the state capital. I figure I'm impaired, just like if I was intoxicated.

Once I realize I'm having one of those nights, I do try to elimate a variety of "peas under the mattress." An aspirin silences any little creaky achy muscles. A piece of bread means hunger won't get me out of bed. I'd love to remake the bed, but I rarely want it enough to wake up the blissfully snoring 200 pound baby beside me. I don't think those help me sleep at all, but they do help me be still and relaxed while awake.

Reading is the best activity. Without it, I'll find a work worry or relive some ancient loss in my mind (Once, I really did spend two hours trying to find a boy I adored when I was three years old using Google, and I got close enough to know he really did become an electrician.) If my eyes start to close, I just leave the light on. That way, opening them is like finishing a little nap, not like admitting complete defeat.
 

Mitch Warner?
 

I just fully woke up for a while (This is the sleepy followup night).I agree with you on the worrying --and going back in time. I think that's sort of the mental version of the princess-and-the-pea physical syndrome. My mother said that she had to read herself to sleep, because if she started thinking she'd wind up crying. She didn't say it as a statement about the sorrows of her life so much as an inclination to brood if her mind wasn't occupied.
However,while lying in bed doing nothing will lead me toward brooding or maximizing minor discomforts, something that's the reverse of that for me is long-distance driving. I don't even listen to the radio, and often do some very good problem solving and positive thinking.
 

One factor in mine, I think, is that I'm a natural owl. At times when I don't have to go to work, I'll stay up very late. I've turned the pattern around because of work requirements, but if it weren't for work, I'd probably be a nocturnal creature anyway. (If I have insomnia on a Friday night, for example, I just get up and find something to do!)
 

Yes, Mitch Warner. When we were three, we played side by side: I fed my dolls and he "worked" on a set of extension cords he connected and disconnected with great fascination. I found a site that looked like one for alumni at an alternative school, where a Mitch Warner wrote "My sister Heather and her husband needed an electrician, so that's where I'm living right now."

When I was four, we moved away. At about two in the morning, I can still summon up a flicker of grief over that tragic loss, which is one of the great signs that insomnia is morphing into absurdity.

Knowing that Miss Violet's "two mystery a night" quota was to keep from reliving legitimate sorrows is helpful. It tells me the pattern I'm living is bred in the bone, so I'd better keep the mysteries in stock.
 

The reason we were friends is that one night close to midnight, Stan knocked on our door at Shaler Lane and asked if they could borrow some cinnamon because they really wanted some cinnamon toast and we were the only ones with our downstairs lights on. Sygnia brought the remaining cinnamon back the next day and a friendship began. You've gotta love a man who'll go looking for somebody with their lights on at midnight just to borrow cinnamon.
 

Just struck me that we got so off on a tangent that some of you might not be able to make any sense out of my cinnamon-borrower story. sporcupine mentions her loss of a childhood friend named Mitch Warner. Stan and Sygnia were Mitch's mom and dad. We knew these people years and years ago in Cambridge, Mass., when sporcupine was a tiny child and I was still in my early twenties.
 

Just call me when you find yourself tossing and turning...I am usually awake!
Have an old copy of Les Miserables by the bed side but sometimes I watch "Seinfeld" at 2 am, "King of the Hill" at 2:30 a.m. (Peggy Hill has a great line during one episode that goes something like "don't be a try-baby, be a do-baby!") or best of all, one station frequently has all-night marathons of "X-Files"!
I use close captioning so it doesn't disturb hubby.
 

Sheba -i dont have a tv in the bedroom, but now that I know Seinfeld's on at 2 a.m. I may try the sofa.
I can beat "Les Miserables." I have a 658 page book on the history of clocks.
I am glad to know from all three of you that I am not weirdly alone.
 

I promise that you're wierdly together. (That's not the right opposite, is it?)
 

i rarely have this problem because i'm usually chronically sleep deprived. i usually cope when it happens by getting a snack, putting some laundry in the machine, and moving to the couch with a book. the best thing is to try to not think about sleep and then it usually happens. my body thinks i'm just doing chores and usually shuts down pretty quickly.
 

I did learn not to spend money to go to classical music concerts. I'd unwind a little, relax, and realize what has been true all along: what I really want is an extra four hours of sleep. But by then I'd have 20 people between me and the door, and another four blocks between me and the bed...
 

Glad to hear somebody else feels that way. I love classical music on CD or while driving, but I really have had a hard time sitting still WATCHING it happen.