This is not elegant, but it is super functional

That (below) is the corner of my bed.

The head of the bed is up on post concrete blocks which I got at Lowe's. We had to take the castor off the legs of the bed to fit in the space made for the post. I highly recommend the blocks to anyone with issues. Makes a huge difference. I put felt pads down in the holes so the leg is not scrapping against the concrete.

I had to look it up because it was bugging me. The block is concrete. Cement is used to hold all the materials together to make the block.

I also got a power strip that plugs into the wall socket sideways, so it has a very thin profile. It is plugged into a socket behind my bed and the strip is mounted to the wall next to my bed. That keeps my cords high. So I can have a device plugged in on my nightstand or in bed with me. And the cords do not get tangled and the strip does not flip around.


Example of sideways plug - the black one (not the gray one).

And that power strip is attached to my wall using Command strips (where you pull the tab to release it from the wall when you want to disconnect the whole thing years down the road). I got the mega weight command strips. There is a strip on the top of the power strip and on the bottom of the power strip. I did not want to mount it to wall with screws. This way I can move it. Or can take it down as technology evolves.

My iphone is the top cord. My ipad is the next cord. An old cell phone is the last cord, so I can always call 911 from that phone if somehow my iphone is not there.

Sleeping in a normally made bed

I have been out of town a lot in the last several years.

So I have slept in a lot of different beds.

And I have actually been able to sleep.

The trick/method/key for me has been to put a blanket against me, under the covers.

One end of that blanket is folded under my feet.

I think I have mentioned I make sure to go to bed with warm feet. That allows me to fall asleep.

The blanket folded under my feet keeps them warm, makes me feel just tucked enough so I stay asleep.

Until last week I have used a blanket wrapped around the foot of my bed to really feel tucked. This is how our local Amish make a bed. A quilt placed horizontally and ticked firmly in the sides of the bed. That served me well for many years.

Last week I remade my bed with a sweatshirt blanket under the covers against me, two woven blankets, a quilt, another quilt folded at my feet. I tucked the two woven blankets at the foot of the bed. Nothing was tucked at the sides.

So I went from a bed wrapped like a mummy, to a bed only tucked at the end.

And I am sleeping.

This might be the most flexible I have been about being able to sleep in many years.




I take a sweatshirt blanket where ever I go.

I keep one in the car. I take one on a train, bus, plane.

If I have a sweatshirt blanket, I have been able to sleep everywhere/anywhere.

It is the combination of the thickness/weight and also the cotton.

It keeps air from "getting me" because it is snug against me.





I am still sleeping with white noise. I prefer a floor fan. But I can make due with white noise app on my iPad.





I now need circulating air.

I am not sure if I have always needed circulating air or if it is age related.

At home I sleep with the ceiling fan on a low setting. I know I need it, because if someone turns it off and I do not realize it, going to bed in the dark, I am awake and feeling suffocated a few hours later. Good science experiment.

Normal for me is going to sleep and staying asleep, not waking once.

If we are in a hotel room, we simply keep the temperature of the room low and then I am fine.

I think I mentioned, years ago I was asleep in a hotel and oldest was up grading papers. He said as the temperature of the room rose, just before the air conditioning flipped on, I became very restless. He lowered the setting and I slept easily. Good science experiment.




If we have traveled by car, I often take a floor fan with us. I always take one to Mayo. The circulating air, plus the white noise, helps. I sleep better, if someone is prepping for something, it helps them too. Circulating air helps middle with nausea hugely, for example.

In Europe, many hotels had electric fans available through housekeeping. That helped. Fans are inexpensive enough that if we flew somewhere and we're staying for an extended time, I would buy one and then just leave it there.





So that might not all sound very flexible. Dragging a sweatshirt blanket with me, taking a box fan if we can, turning the temperature if rooms down, etc. But this is the most flexible I have been, and sleeping easily, maybe in forever.





My husband thinks using props to help children sleep or relax just teaches the child to be dependent on the prop.

I am sure that is true. But it is worth it, in my opinion, if it works.

If the child is not going to sleep or not going to relax without the prop, then what is the point of with holding a tool that is going to work?

And my dependency is getting better. I have easy tools, doable tools.

As I read posts or talk to people, there are very few who sleep through the night. Very few. In the past year there have been a lot of posts about people sleeping with a monitoring device and realizing just how very bad their sleep is. At best people seem to be up once or twice to use the bathroom.

Yes, I take meds to help me sleep. Remember that. It is important. And I have my tools.

And the result is I sleep through the night pretty much every night. The nights I don't are because someone turned off the ceiling fan or changed the house heat setting unbeknownst to me. That just happens a few times a year. And if I wake, I know it is for a reason. I check the ceiling fan and the thermostat first. It is usually one of those two things.

My expectation and my reality is to not worry about sleep and to be able to go to sleep easily and be able to stay asleep. And no nightmares. It has been years and years since I had one.

I think this is a correlation to my expectations/reality/life with food. I expect food not to be a problem in my own home too.

And stress. I expect my family to live proactively. I expect us to do things as simply as possible. I expect good communication. I expect the house to settle down for the night early.

Weighted Blankets (does anyone else identify with this?)

I think I have mentioned I love the feel of the heavy vest dentist offices use during x-rays.

I know I have mentioned (sleeping so much better with) tucked blankets on the lower half of my bed which simulate weight. (I got conditioned to cats sleeping on my legs when I was little. Created havoc with my undiagnosed asthma. But I got conditioned to the weight (and warmth) on my feet and legs.)

Our little six year old has a weighted blanket which she loves. It has pockets/compartments of pellets.

Here is the site.

These blankets with pellets should never go in the dryer -

"Are your pellets non-toxic?

"poly says: In their current state the pellets are non-toxic. If you melt, heat or change their structure the pellets become toxic. Also, like any plastic, pellets cannot be digested."

I mentioned middle and I are on the road. (We still are).

I have been using my heavy sweatshirt blanket everywhere we have gone. I use it folded, on my lap, in planes, trains, buses, autos.

(I also sleep with it tucked under my legs and then pulled over me which creates a weighted feeling. I put hotel blankets over my legs.)

I have a C shaped neck pillow with me too. It is the dense kind. I has not worked on my neck, but it works great in my lap during the day in transit. It gives me somewhere to put my hands. It puts weight on my lap.

I realize weighted blankets would have helped me as a child.

Trying to stay awake in order to fall asleep

Paradoxical Intention***. I thought - I have pretty good power of focus. I am worried I could make myself stay awake for hours. And then I thought - self do not think you are smarter than the questionnaire or the field of study. Self - Do not think you are the exception. Self - Try it."

***Is this where your mind went? Did you say to yourself - please don't anyone go out and buy a truck load of their food drug of choice thinking they will stare it down in the name of paradoxical intention. That would not be the right name, it would be self sabotage or self enabling or denial. I say that with a smile and I know there are those of you, reading, whose minds went the same way. But I have SEEN that type of paradoxical intention in blog land before. In book land and TV show land too. Can you take an alcoholic and have them stare down an alcohol warehouse? It is the same thing to me.

What brought this back to mind is this post, Suffer from Insomnia? Try this Counter-Intuitive Trick, when it popped in my email inbox earlier this week.

Yes, I left Gretchen a note about Viktor Frankl.

White noise machine

Middle's boy's mom got this for him. It is a white noise machine. He uses it pretty much where ever he sleeps, unless middle has it, then he sleeps with a floor fan, like I do.

Middle just finished summer school. She had a roommate, she was in a noisy dorm, and she did not have a window air conditioning unit.

The last two years, she has had a window unit put in her room (asthma and allergies). And that allowed her to use the unit as white noise. Whether she had it set for cold air or was just using the fan, it worked great to mask the noise of her dorm. I slept in her room many times last year, she was at the junction of two halls, could not hear a thing outside her room.

Middle sleeps with an air filter running at home.

I sleep with a floor/box fan running on medium at home.

We are both white noise people.

When her summer school room was very noisy, her boy brought her his white noise machine to try. She and her roommate loved it.

You can see from the size (below) that it is very convenient.

So, she and her roommate used his white noise machine for their last several weeks of school.

It came home with them one weekend so I could try it.

I loved it too.

So, I ordered two. One for middle and one for me.

Mine is in my travel case, with the rest of my packed things, so I can just GO anytime needed. I still use my floor fan at home.

Middle has hers (white noise machine) because she will be in the same type of room (central air, not window unit) next (her last already!) year. She will have the same roommate who needs white noise too.

I ordered ours from Amazon.

I ordered two single units. I got free shipping.

There was also an entry to buy a dual pack. I could not figure out why the dual was more expensive than ordering two of the singles. I must have been missing something. But if you are ordering, check it both ways to get the best deal.

This little unit will solve a lot of travel problems for me. I need white noise. Taking a boxed fan is not very convenient, but we have done it. Sometimes we count on being able to use the fan on the heating/air system in a hotel room. Sometimes these can be left on all night, sometimes they turn off and on many times during the night. That on and off thing is a real problem for me.

Oldest will be home later this summer. I am going to have him try my new unit to see how it works for him. He travels a lot. He is a white noise person.

Youngest refuses to be a white noise person because she does not want to be dependent on a machine.  I understand, but that philosophy makes it harder to live with her. The rest of have to sort of live our noise life around her sleep schedule. We have a pretty quiet house. We no longer have a house phone line, so that is not ringing (actually most of the time I had the ringer turned off because that jarring noise really bugged me). There are doors on nearly every room in the house and we use them. We keep music and TV's volume at a very reasonable level. The whole house winds down in evening hours. We had a nearly silent garage door opener installed. We are quiet- ish people. I would prefer she sleep with white noise and just accept dependence like the rest of us, but so far she refuses.

My husband would prefer not to sleep with white noise, but acquiesces because I have to have it. And  there is a huge difference in my quality of life with sleep vs without sleep. And my quality of life impacts everyone else's quality of life.

All of us use white noise vs sounds from nature or music. I think some of us need the white noise to block other jarring sounds. And some of us need the noise of the white noise itself AND the noise blocking. I am in that second category, dual need.

Celia Sandys (pronounced Sands), daughter of Sir Winston Churchill's eldest child, Diana, and Cabinet Minister Duncan Sandys

I am not sure if I have ever written about this. 

There was a special on PBS. 

The topic was Winston Churchill and it was narrated by his granddaughter. 

From a cursory search, it must be Chasing Churchill. It is available on Amazon, I have put it on my wishlist so the next time I order, I will get it. 

I never saw the whole show. 

I would watch for a tiny bit of time and her very soothing British accent would put me to sleep immediately. 

My whole family was much amused by this falling to sleep thing. 

It was highly effective on nights I could not sleep. 

I used it for a very long time. 

I should never have deleted it because it was so effective.

Sweatshirt blankets

Sweatshirt blankets can be found in most university bookstores (these days).

This is the closest link I could find. Cotton/poly blend, heavy, 50 x 60 is a close match.

I am not sure if they are a new thing. We started seeing them when the oldest started undergrad college 5 years ago. I do not remember seeing them when my husband and I were in college (1979-1983). So somewhere in that 25 year time span, sweatshirt blankets were designed and began being marketed.

I think the first one we bought was for my mother's husband - because, in the end, it was very difficult to come up with gift ideas for him.

I put a sweatshirt blanket on my birthday or Christmas list last year. Mine is green and has oldest's undergrad college emblem on it. It lives in my car. I use it ALL THE TIME.

Oldest has a blue one, also from his undergrad school. His lives in his apartment.

Thank goodness I thought to ask him to throw it in the car before he picked me up at the airport last Saturday. I napped with it in the car. I used it under the hotel sheets/blankets, next to my body, each night. I need a room that is pretty cold to sleep well, but then freeze.  It is two fold, I do better if I breathe cold air, I get cold easily.

When oldest and youngest travel with me, they bring a twin size fleece blanket which they use in bed the same way (because they are sleeping in the same cold room, with me).

Sweatshirt blankets would make a very good gift idea for many people. College emblem ones are good in some families. Special ones with a family crest or family name would be another idea.