Advice for the Sleepless

Sleeping on concrete during dance rehearsals seems to have done me no harm.

I was one of those people who could sleep anywhere, anywhere, except her own bed at night. I've slept on a pile of coats on a concrete floor with a musical rehearsal going on around me. But just put me in a nice, comfy bed in the dark at night and suddenly my head keeps me awake. All the bad things that happened, that I did, that I didn't prevent, that might happen, all run through my pointy little head and I can be up for hours. I can't take a nap during the day for fear it would keep me up for hours at bedtime.

Middle age has done nothing to soften this effect. I have more responsibilities, more bad things that did, might, will happen (two elderly parents with dementia was not mitigated by their passing - now I have to worry about my brain). I feel guilty about everything, which I can forget about during the day when I'm busy or desperately searching for distraction on the internet - and that's what that is, isn't it? Searching for a distraction from the Guilt Furies in one's head. [Okay, maybe that's just me.]

Now I have to tell you how much my husband loves me. Sitting on a dresser in our bedroom is the device that has saved me. We had already discovered that a car plus an audiobook is like unto a visit from your friendly neighborhood anesthetist for me. Good thing my husband is driving. When my husband is away, I would pull the little boombox out of the kitchen and load it up with Bart Ehrman or, if I needed cheering, Terry Pratchett to keep me company at bedtime. When it suddenly stopped, I would grope for the next cd in the lecture or the audiobook and insert it (this is where my husband, if he reads this, discovers where the scratches on his Ehrman lectures came from) in the dark, then go back to sleep.

No more! This new device is a Bose clock radio/cd player. We can awaken to radio or the cd. We can also listen to the cd for an hour and it slowly. Fades. Away. When I say "listen for an hour" - I exaggerate. I can manage one or two ten minute segments before I start purring. Who can think unhappy thoughts when Granny Weatherwax is excoriating some miscreant? [And, by the way, how come she's Granny Weatherwax if she's had no children? Is this some honorific upon achieving grey hair?] I have to advance the story one increment each night because I barely hear ten minutes before falling into blissful sleep.

You might think that this was hardly so wonderful for my husband to buy me a clock radio/cd player. He enjoys the benefits of it as well, although hardly anything keeps him awake. [Men are so lucky. How do they fall asleep like that?] He even told me that my reading at night didn't keep him awake. What makes him so wonderful is the fact that he hates Bose. My husband is an audiophile for whom sound means everything. If a brand needs to be advertised, it can't be any good. His audio equipment is labeled with obscure branding ... or none at all. The fact that he went to a Bose store and bought a Bose product for my birthday speaks volumes about how much he loves me. "Don't even ask how much it cost," he said, implying that it was more than the thing was worth.

I am entirely satisfied with this product. First of all, it has a remote. I'm so lazy that I want everything to be operated by remote: the lava lamp (it's plugged into a clicker), the fan (it came with one - I was delirious with delight) - very important to women of a Certain Age who get hot suddenly at night, and now the clock radio/cd player. In fact, it can't be operated at all without the remote. There are no buttons on this machine. If I lose the remote, I'm dead. I've had to memorize the button positions to operate it in the dark. Two down, one over from the right to start the cd. On the left, four down to turn down the volume. One more to the right to up the volume in case someone starts purring or the a/c came on.

This works for me. If you lie awake nights with those nagging thoughts, you might try this. If your spousal unit doesn't want to listen, get a library audiobook on your mp3. I always sleep on my right side, so I've just put both buds into my left ear before. I worry that this has become an addiction, but I'm getting so much more sleep! Now if I can just pull myself away from the internet long enough to lie down.