Snow Melt

I Need to Make a Plan for June that will help me sleep

Soon June is going to be breaking out all over. I need to make a plan for June, not a schedule which I have difficulty keeping, but a plan so that I don't end up staying up until 11:00 or 11:30 PM Pacific Daylight Time on June 29 attempting to earn enough Gift Points to purchase another one-month premium membership. I can't stay up that late and get up at 4:00 AM to take medication. I have to either changes the medication time to 5:00 or 6:00 AM, which means I can't have anything to eat or drink until 6:00 or 7:00 AM.

I have to take the thyroid tablet on an empty stomach and I can't have anything except water for one hour after wards. If I stay up until 11:30 then I have difficulty getting up at 4:00 AM the next morning. If I hear the alarm (I use my cell phone alarm) I just push the doze button or I turn the alarm off in my sleep. I hate to say this because I hate to admit getting old, but I'm just getting too old to stay up late and get up early. Whoever said, "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man/woman healthy, wealthy, and wise", obviously never lived past fifty.

Part of the problem, is that when I lay my head down on my pillow no matter how sleepy I feel when I lay down, the minute my head touches the pillow I'm wide awake. I've tried not having coffee after 5:00 PM and I've tried hot milk before bed. Nothing works. Maybe I ought to try a different approach because I don't want to ask my doctor for sleeping pills. I take enough medication as it is and I don't need to take anymore.

Perhaps the problem is that I can't quiet my mind. When I lay down my mind, no matter how sleepy I maybe, wants to flit from one thing to another. It's like a monarch butterfly flitting from milkweed to milkweed, it doesn't want to stop thinking. I think about all sorts of things. I think about silly things. This doesn't happen all the time because once in a while I can lay down and not think about anything. The problem with my mind not wanting to shut down the thoughts has been worse since November 29, 2012, so perhaps Mom's death has something to do with my difficulty sleeping.

Those times when I do fall asleep then I wake up every hour or so. I only have to look at my cell phone once to check the time. The first time I wake up, I check the time after that it isn't necessary because I know that I will wake up every hour either on the hour or on the half-hour depending on when I went to sleep the first time. I need a plan for June, one that will help me sleep and accomplish the important stuff.

Sleep is a pleasant thought
a joyous celebration
an insomniac's expectation.

Thought of the Day: “Oh God, midnight’s not bad, you wake and go back to sleep, one or two’s not bad, you toss but sleep again. Five or six in the morning, there’s hope, for dawn’s just under the horizon. But three, now, Christ, three A.M.! Doctors say the body’s at low tide then. The soul is out. The blood moves slow. You’re the nearest to dead you’ll ever be save dying. Sleep is a patch of death, but three in the morn, full wide-eyed staring, is living death! You dream with your eyes open. God, if you had strength to rouse up, you’d slaughter your half-dreams with buckshot! But no, you lie pinned to a deep well-bottom that’s burned dry. The moon rolls by to look at you down there, with its idiot face. It’s a long way back to sunset, a far way on to dawn, so you summon all the fool things of your life, the stupid lovely things done with people known so very well who are now so very dead – And wasn’t it true, had he read somewhere, more people in hospitals die at 3 A.M. than at any other time...” - Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes