What I Do When I Can't Sleep at Night

1. Lie awake and stare at the same spot on my wall I've stared at since I last rearranged my room, ten (or more) years ago.

2. Read!

3. Watch TV shows on my laptop--usually funny ones or stupid ones or addictive ones (tonight it was America's Next Top Model).

4. Think about how sucky my upcoming morning/day will be when I've not had enough sleep to have the energy, or the...consciousness, I need for living it.

5. I do a lot of #4.

6. I think about how I could solve all the problems in my life, if only I just followed certain steps (see step #4).

7. I wonder what I will do over the weekend (see step #4).

8. I consider getting up and making a snack, because it must be time for another meal, right? It's halfway through the night! So...it's like the lunch of nighttime that I should be having now. (And, for the record, the incredibly flawed last sentence, the one before THIS sentence, sounds really funny in my head. Try saying it out loud in various ways, maybe it will to you as well.)

9. I start singing songs from The Sound of Music in my head. Rather, I sing one song, "My Favorite Things," because the rhythm (to me) reminds me of the rocking of a cradle, and is soothing. Usually, it has a lullaby effect and I am able to doze off. This worked all through Europe, when I discovered the travel alarm clock my friend Stacy brought with her worked like a metronome for that particular song. It was magical, like a mini white-noise machine, only less annoying, because in my head it was music.

10. I read blogs I usually overlook, because I have too many blogs on my reading list to keep up with them all, no matter what I do.

My new FAVORITE thing to do on sleepless nights (other than stalking Twitter), is a very fun thing that some of you, those with e-readers, might want to try out.

I go to Amazon, I head into the Kindle store. Once there, I look up an author's name, a book title, or just skim new releases. I request a sample of every book I see, especially YA titles. When I wake up in the morning, I turn on my Kindle's wireless connection and let the samples download. Tonight, I'm trying out work by Margo Lanagan and Diana Peterfreund, as well as How to Ditch Your Fairy by Justine Larbalestier and Dash and Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan--Oh and just now I requested one for The Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters by Natalie Standiford. (Doesn't this new option really beat #4-7?)

Happy reading!