RandomBliss: Being Read to Sleep

A recent shot of our small, city park.

Listening to: One of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies; his voice gives me goosebumps. And yes, he is taking his singing seriously; here's his band. (I love their name.)

Bliss: Ahhh, the need to cuddle under blankets during some evening BBC viewing. A very warm bath -- warm enough to steam the mirror for the first time since early spring.

(For more suggestions on getting good sleep, check out this old post.)

For a very large part of my life, I have been a poor sleeper. I would wake often during the night and then couldn't go back to sleep.

This comes from early years during which big dramas would happen around two or three in the morning.

And now, though I have gotten better at sleeping, I still go through cycles of poor sleep. Often right before bed, I get what we refer to as my "night grouches." For no reason at all (not really), my mood just changes. In an instant, I am grumpy where I was perfectly happy the minute before.

Anticipatory grump.

Something in my body still worries that night time and sleep time are fraught with dangers.

This is when my partner pulls out the big guns...or more appropriately, the big books.

There is nothing more soothing than falling asleep to the sound of a book being read to you by a loved one. We know this about small children. Almost every new parent uses books or storytelling at bedtime to induce sleep.

Somewhere along the line, we start reading to ourselves. But it's not the same.

And too many of us read books that are too serious at bedtime and could very well be the cause of bad sleep.

Right now, I am falling asleep to the beautiful and poetic writings of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, a book I never bothered to read, believe it or not. (The geek in me is so ashamed!) When we are done with this book, we're going to work our way through the Lord of the Rings, but first we have to find smaller editions.

That's one of the rules for picking books for bedtime reading: the size and heft have to be comfortable for the reader.

Rule number one, though, is not to read anything that is going to disturb you. Also, nothing too very funny. Laughter to the point of crying (we've made this mistake) is not conducive to sleep.

Another rule: no nonfiction. Novels are best.

And children's novels, young adult novels, can be the best of all. One of my favorite bedtime books is The Secret Garden. James and the Giant Peach is a wonderfully weird read. The Harry Potter books, on the other hand, turned out to give me nightmares. Really.

Picture books are perfect too. I'm a big fan of Bedtime for Frances and Bread and Jam for Frances and the Miss Spider books.

Of course, if you don't have a person to read to you or your partner or spouse is uncomfortable reading aloud (and lots of people are), then we can thank the goddess of good books for books on CD!