Sleeping

It is of the opinion of my little group of helpers that sleep is important. Who'd have thought, huh?

Anyway, so I try to calm down as much as I can so I can sleep as well as I can. There are several ways this can be achieved: working out in some way (I don't do this much right now, but I try!), making a routine and sticking to it, not reading, writing, or watching TV in bed, making your room as dark and clean as possible.

I do a couple other things, I have a stuffed lion that has a heat pack and lavender, I have a little ladybug that emits stars, both of which sound very childish, but I like them.

The last little gadget I have is a sound machine. It has four settings, but at night, I can really only use one. I'm not sure if they meant for this machine to be calming or what, if they did they failed on my part. One of the settings is a heart beat, which reminds me of some horror film. The other two that do not calm me at night fail for the same Hitchcock reason.

The birds.

One is a morning sunrise which is nothing but birds, which inspires me to get up and challenge the day, rather than sleep.

The other is a beach, which normally I would love, but the sound goes kind of like this:
swooooosh, ciish, wooosh *SQUAWK!* swoooooosh....
I tried to use it as my bedtime soundtrack, but eventually I was hearing the "squawk" even when the sound machine was off. I still hear it, on occasion, when I go to bed.

My current noise is a babbling brook or something, which sometimes makes me think I need to go to the restroom, so I think I may have to get rid of that particular night time ritual.