counting sheep

I've taken to counting sheep lately. It's a classic remedy to insomnia that never worked for me as a child. I dont quite understand how that concept is so prevalent in children's ideas about how to fall asleep, when there is probably the rare child whose attention span will allow him or her to get past sheep 7. or maybe that was just me. Usually i would just like in bed until my wandering thoughts became unbearable, then i'd turn the lights back on to read or draw, wait for my mother to discover that i hadn't yet drifted off and then to bring me a mixture of orange juice and brandy that was disgusting as well as extremely effective.

I often have fits of insomnia; more often recently than ever before. I became concerned when alcohol couldn't even break my body's determination to maintain its suffering. I gave up caffeine. In the interest of possibly losing the bags under my eyes, vision-blurring headaches, and face pain from constant yawning, i forwent my daily dose of coca cola... unless it was for breakfast... because then it would be keeping me up during the day... which was okay because, Lord knows, narcoleptic episodes aren't conducive to keeping jobs, or staying alive when you have to commute to those jobs. I bought a six pack of coca cola last week and how many are left in my fridge? 5! normally they'd be gone by day two. Though i long for the cool, refreshing, sugary, cola-ness, i need sleep more.

I try yoga. Yoga... is hard. Two minutes of it and i become significantly warmer. Three minutes and im sweating. At minute five, i'm cursing yoga's inception, and swearing that if i have to do 'downward dog' one more time that i'm gonna have to punch a puppy to make myself feel better. Afterwards, however, i must admit that i feel quite relaxed and very much relieved... to be done. I know then and there that i'm gonna have the best sleep that night... unfortunately lately that sleep doesn't usually come until the following day's afternoon.

I sleep on my hands. I don't know what it is about me but pressure on my limbs often puts me right out. Maybe i'm autistic. Sounds logical to me... at this hour. Sometimes i purposely pile a large portion of my wardrobe on top of my covers, then climb underneath carefully so as to not topple any onto the floor, because the weight of all the clothes relaxes me. In the summer, when it's too hot to do that, i choose sleep positions that involve me stuffing my arms underneath my person or pressed between my legs. If i sleep on a couch, cuz sometimes that helps, i'll jam my leg, and maybe an arm, between the cushions. Sometimes it works. During the bad insomnia, it doesn't.

I wonder if turning off the tv would help. This would be an obvious solution because i find that often, when i'm a few seconds away from the point of no return, something from the television will catch my attention and jar me from my potential sleep. I, however, am privy to information about me that you aren't... and that information is that i have an easier time falling asleep to really fascinating television programming, than to mouse noise. Not that i'm scared of them. Not that i haven't seen a family of mice run across the floor right to the foot of the couch that i was sitting on. Not that i haven't woken up to find a mouse crawling around like 10 inches from my head. They don't scare me... they just disgust me. So I just accepted that they're too smart for the traps, that there's nothing i can do, and then i turn on the tv and let denial take over. If i can't hear them, they must be gone, right? Right?

So turning off the tv's not an option. This led me to the old classic: counting sheep. The first night i'd gotten to the 360's... when i started severely jumbling the order of the numbers seconds before the sheep became melded into my crazy dream. It worked! The second night i only made it to the 200's. The next night, i don't even think i made it to 100, but that was because i got so bored with the fact that i was counting sheep, despite my mentally dying them various fall and neon colors, that i had to stop counting. I did, however, fall asleep soon after i had quit. The next night i decided to count colorful cows... and then ballerinas... and then b-boys. That was all one night... the week of little sleep is beginning to short circuit my ability to concentrate on one thing.

I suppose instead of sitting here blogging and watcing reruns of kim possible, i should be counting sheep, or purple washing machines jumping over a fence, or sheep jumping over purple washing machines, or dinosaurs. But i don't want to. I want to be able to just close my eyes and fall asleep. Sleep is one of the main things that i shouldn't have to work in order to achieve. Geez! Where's my mom with orange juice and brandy when i need her?