Sleepless nights.

I adore sleep. I have no shame calling it a night whenever I feel the intoxicating allure of sleep draping over my eyes—be it as early 8PM, I don’t care. Melatonin and I are good and consistent pals and like a small infant, I have sleep-trained myself with tried-and-true rituals that I’ve practiced for years, telling my body “sweet dreams are ahead of us, it’s time to rest and unwind.”

But I’ll have spells of difficult sleep for whatever reason every now and then and here are the things my half-asleep logic finds reasonable to do if I’m lying awake:

1.     Think really hard about falling back asleep

2.     Recount everything I ate the day before

3.     Listen to whichever audiobook I have whose narrator has the most buttery voice

4.     Eat a banana in the dark

5.     Use the loo in the dark

6.     Lay on the couch in the living room for a while

7.     Put on socks

8.     Take off socks

9.     Reorganize the blankets on my bed

10.  Push my face into the pillow

11.  Drink my weight in water

12.  Use the loo in the dark again

13.  Contemplate how tired I’ll be if I just started my day at 1AM

14.  Redecorate my house in my mind

15.  Contemplate putting on shoes and going for a McDonalds Sausage and Egg McGriddle —insomnia or an early airport drop off is the only time this is justified

If worst comes to worst, you can find me on the couch watching an episode of Dateline wrapped in a blanket, the comforting voice of Lester Holt’s investigative reporting wooing me back to sleep.