Sleepless in the South

There really ought to be rules about this. Like, your reason is handicapped, your inhibitions are down, your faculties are impaired, and you definitely should not be allowed anywhere near a communication source of any sort. So, all that being said, the non-functioning, non-rational part of my brain says, “Meh! You’re totally sleepless and exhausted, so why not write a blog post!”
You know, cures for sleeplessness are sort of like cures for every other common ailment. They range from the disgusting to the absurd, to the boringly and quietly practical:
• Drink a glass of warm milk. This is only appealing if you are seriously pregnant, and not really then.
• Count sheep. My record is 1749….I had all sorts of psychedelic sheep but I never got a lick of sleep out of it.
• Write letters. I tried that once….my unfortunate correspondent wrote me back, “Um, how late at night did you write this? Did you know your handwriting gets illegible after a while?”
• Relax. Have you ever tried to consciously relax? Normally it makes me tense, but maybe that’s just me. It also tends to make every random thought that ever occurred to me all month decide to prance through my brain all at once and get tangled with each other. It’s a little weird to have your brain leap from “can I get away with bright yellow, bumblebee, pillowcases?” to “How come every time I have an insurance crises I can never get a human being on the phone?” Mostly it leads to very weird visions of local insurance agents harassing the local bee population for documents proving their estimated flight time for month or risking de-winging.
• Deep breathing. Last night I tried that as a cure for sleeplessness, I passed out from an overindulgence in oxygen. For the record, passing out and falling asleep are not the same thing. They are about as related as Loki and Thor.
• Take a walk. Walking is good…problem…my average walking speed is 3.5 mph, and once the heart gets pumping, sleep tends to run away.
• Drink a lot of vodka. It would probably work, but see point about passing out being fundamentally different than falling asleep.
• Get sleep meds. Never tried em’, probably should at some point. But, I just have an issue with forcibly inducing a natural reaction.
• Get totally exhausted. This is a terrible method, but unfortunately the one that tends to work best for me. Go sleepless, and in a night or two without good sleep, your body will be so tired out that you will eventually sleep.
• Do some simple, repetitive exercise. Knitting yourself to sleep! Good plan. Except, I don’t want to rip it all out the next day when I see what happens when I knit half asleep.

Okay, so the moral of the story is, if I get sleepless, I’m pretty much stuck. So all y’all get stuck with a blog post at 4 A.M. about nothing in particular.