Insomnia Advice: Bring it On :-)

I have been suffering from insomnia since I was a very young child.  I think much of the reason that I learned how to read before I was three is that my parents told me I had to stay in bed, even if I couldn't sleep, and ... well, there's only so  much you can do.

As you can imagine, I've heard every trick in the book.  Most of them are legal ...

I can honestly say that I have tried to battle my insomnia (which, if you are my Facebook friend, you are all too familiar with since I have a tendency to start ranting on FB when I can't sleep, which is with an unfortunate frequency).

But I've pretty much come to terms with it, all joking aside.  I've had a sleep study done (I learned that I have "ideopathic" issues falling asleep and staying asleep once I get there ... it was very useful ;-)), I developed good "sleep hygiene" (which is basically having a set routine and using relaxation techniques and such), and I have a prescription for Ambien that I use only when I am on the verge of going completely bananas from lack of sleep.

I have tried virtually everything to deal with my sleeping issues with the exception of hypnosis.  I am honestly pretty scared of hypnosis, because in addition to having horrible insomnia, I have horrible nightmares most of the time when I do sleep.  These nightmares are in general based around one of those traumatic life events that scar you forever, and I have dealt with it as much as I am going to.

I even hesitate to use Ambien overmuch because I get trapped in my nightmares sometimes, and I can't even wake up.  It's like being in a Nightmare on Elm Street  movie ;-)

But seriously, I am hoping that you will share your experiences with (and advice pertaining to) insomnia here.

I am compiling a list of things that I have tried and/or had recommended.  I have bolded what has worked for me on some level.

*  Melatonin
*  Ambien
*  Marijuana
*  Nyquil
*  Ginger root
*  Warm milk
*  Honeycomb
*  Reading
*  Watching television
*  Eliminating caffeine
*  Relaxation techniques (for awhile, counting backwards from 100 while actually visualizing each number worked)
*  Sex
*  Exercise
*  Intentionally staying up all night to "get caught up"
*  Advil PM
*  Music
*  Changing pillow positions/beds/and so on
*  Sleeping in a dark room
*  Muscle relaxants (Valium, Flexeril)
*  Sleeping in a bright room
*  Alcohol
*  Getting punished for bugging my parents in the middle of the night when I was a little kid
*  Warm bath

So, yeah, I think that's pretty much the gamut, other than the hypnosis thing, which I am not prepared to tackle.  I don't know that I ever will be, truth be told.

Do you have any advice (or encouragement) for struggling insomniacs out there?  Share in the comments :-)

Five on a Friday

It's been a pretty low-key week, actually ... no summer school or professional development, so I've been just sort of enjoying the quiet (other than the road rage guy in the grocery store parking lot).

But here are five things for the week:

1. Addie flew home from visiting my sister in Maryland all by herself. She'd driven down with my mother but had a party she wanted to go to on Sunday, so she flew back all by herself. I was thrilled to see her, but I wasn't half as thrilled as Belle was.


2. Addie got a job! She's volunteering at a library, which basically means cleaning a lot of shelves, but I'm glad to see her getting a taste of helping out ... not to mention it's something to put on a resume, plus it's going to look good on her National Honor Society application.

3. Belle has been bored all week. She's spent the past six weeks attending summer camp which, even though it was only three hours a day plus a weekly all-day field trip, kept her pretty busy. She's one of those kids that never stops moving, so it's been interesting trying to accommodate her activity needs when I finally have an actual week off for the first time in forever. I think we've figured it out, though :-)

4. I brought four bags of old clothes to Goodwill today. This doesn't sound very impressive, I know, unless of course you actually know me. Packrat doesn't begin to describe it ;). Going from a four bedroom house to one tiny bedroom at my mother's house resulted in most of my clothes (and Belle's clothes--we share our tiny bedroom, although Addie has her own room)living in trash bags for the past year.

5. I'm on a wicked Ann Rule kick at the moment. She writes true crime books, which are usually not my thing (other than Helter Skelter, which is one of my all-time favorite books), but one of my friends suggested I read Everything She Ever Wanted because the main character (this passive aggressive, controlling woman who makes herself sick for attention and poisons people with arsenic) sounded a lot like my former mother-in-law. Haha, it was an accurate prediction.

So that was my week ... I probably won't have another one this quiet until next summer ;-)

Kids Finding Fun in Random Ways : )

Belle and I are at Andy's for the night. Belle and his daughter, Dawn, played outside for a long time this afternoon, sledding and then some game of their own invention on the swing set.

It's so nice being here for a variety of reasons, not the least is which that Dawn is great at making up her own games. It's really good for Belle to be around someone her own age with the kind of imagination that Dawn has. Belle spends much of her time with adults (or with Addie, who treats Belle like a little princess), so having the opportunity to interact long-term with a child like Dawn is a real treat for her.

While dinner was cooking, Andy pulled the string on a party popper in the living room ... which definitely got the attention of Belle and Dawn. The girls took turns pulling party poppers, enjoying the noise (naturally) but having perhaps an even better time with the leftover debris.



I've learned a lot over the past few months about what makes children happy. You'd think, being a teacher, I'd know, but I guess that a) it's different when it's your own kids you're dealing with and b) my area of expertise is high school students. I never thought I'd see the day when my little Belle was content playing with scraps of ribboned paper forced out of a tiny tube.

The girls were even more amused, by the way, when Andy started chasing them with the vacuum cleaner as he was cleaning the mess off the carpet.



Do you think it's valuable for kids to learn to play driven by their imagination? Why is this such a novel concept? What are some memories from your childhood that didn't involve items bought from a store?

What's Your Guilty Pleasure on Television?

I spent much of my life completely ambivalent about television. I mean, when I was a kid I spent Saturday mornings watching cartoons with Adam and Mary, but I was never obsessed with TV like so many people are. There were so many good books to read, know what I mean?

I was student teaching when the 9/11 attacks happened (I swear this connects to the topic at hand). My class was in the library starting a project when the librarian started having hysterics and screaming, "They're bombing the White House!" I do not do well in emergency situations, and this was of course the ultimate emergency situation. When I finally got home, my stepdad was watching the news. For the first time ever, he was not able to reassure me that I was safe, that my world was going to be okay. He was the bravest person I've ever met, and he just sat on the couch watching the news unfold, his eyes glued to the TV screen. I sat with him trying to keep my anxiety attack under control; strange as this sounds, the talking heads on the screen were reassuring to me. They were people, alive and scared and knocked to their knees, just like me. I watched the news almost obsessively after that. I slept with the cable news channel on, finding what comfort I could from staying on top of the "breaking news alerts", for over a year.

As a result, television lost its repugnancy for me. I slowly but surely branched out from the news and eventually learned to sleep without the television on, but I had become used to the TV as a means of relaxation, of coping with stress. I found that not all television was mindless drivel, that there was some stuff on the boob tube that could actually make me think and help me learn.

I'm not going to pretend that I watch all educational television, although I spend a disproportionate amount of time on the History Channel, National Geographic, Discovery (I adore Shark Week), and PBS (I think "Antiques Roadshow" is amazing). I never got into reality TV--I'm one of the few people I know that have never seen a single episode of either "Survivor" or "American Idol" or anything in between. Nope, I found my niche with the crime/drama/detective/courtroom shows. I enjoy the "Law and Order" shows, the "CSI" shows, things like that.

My ultimate guilty pleasure on television, though, is "NCIS", a show about Naval investigators. There are always twists that leave me guessing until the very end, the characters are incredibly rich (despite the outward shallowness of some of them), and the show does not take the easy road like many seem to. The line between good guy and bad guy blurs, the lead character deals with stress by building boats and drinking bourbon in his basement in a manner both tragically sad and eminently real, and the show sends the message that there is a place in the world for everyone to succeed. For some reason, watching an episode of "NCIS" gives me a level of pleasure that, in the past, I've only experienced when in the grip of an unbelievably good book.

So what are your thoughts on television? What is/are your favorite show(s)? Why? What role does television play in your life? Do you think there's a point of too much TV-watching? I worry as a teacher that my students spend too much time watching television (and playing video games, but don't even get me started on the V.G. word). What do you think?