Who or what ruins your sleep?

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For me it's usually the cats. I would lock them the hell out of my room, except then they scratch at the door, and that's worse.

The only time the dog wakes me is occasionally when he's in his crate (which is at the foot of my bed). He sometimes does the poor little martyr dog bit -- he sighs, he tosses around, he tries to get comfortable, all very loudly and dramatically so I'll know just how wretched the crate is and how bad I am for not letting him sleep with me. (He's lying, though. Last night he went back into his crate voluntarily on two occasions, so it can't be all bad.)

Sometimes Jeremy plays computer games very loudly on the other side of the wall where my bed is, but I can usually block that out by shutting the door.

Trains, ambulances, and shopping carts? I don't hear those things anymore.

-- Anonymous, January 26, 2000

Answers

Some nights I just can't sleep soundly. I can't get the covers or the pillows just right, I can't get my neck at the right angle to stop the tingly pain in my arm, I can't stop my mind from going around and around like a squirrel in a wheel.

I normally sleep with earplugs and I put on an eyeshade if I need to. Luckily, the man in my life usually goes to bed at the same time I do, or is considerate about noise if he doesn't. The cats run around at night sometimes, but rarely wake me. Thank god.

-- Anonymous, January 26, 2000

Snoring dogs (Pugs! not Rottweilers or Poodles), snoring men (the ex! thank doG not this one), scary things (TV, movies, your APB stories, ) and the SNOW PLOW!!! I hate the snow plow and wish it would wait until daylight to do the road. Everyone up where I live has a four or all wheel drive vehicle so wait til I wake up for heaven's sake!!!

-- Anonymous, January 26, 2000
I am, unfortunately, a very light sleeper. Noise from the people upstairs walking around wakes me, as do sirens and snowplows and garbage trucks. The cat wakes me on a nightly basis, running around and jumping into and out of boxes. I'd wake him up from one of his 1000 naps during the day, but his claws are sharper than mine.

-- Anonymous, January 26, 2000
The week I don't get to take birth control pills. My new motto: A week without hormones is like, well, like a week without sleep.

-- Anonymous, January 26, 2000
Mittens......it's always Mittens. Every morning at 3:30 or 4:30 or 5 he lets out this loud MEOOOOOOOOW which means "I have to pee...get up and let me out!" I stagger to the front door, let him out and try to get back to sleep. Sometimes when he sticks his nose out the door and finds out how cold it is outside, he changes his mind, but I won't let him change his mind since I got out of bed for him so I shove him out the door. What really ticks me off is when I wake up for my bathroom break before he does (we're both at that age, you know), and I am just getting back to sleep....and MEOOOOOOOOOOW! Arghhhhhh!! My other problem is that when it is very cold outside and the bedroom gets chillier than usual, most of the cats (I have 8) want to sleep on top of me to get my body warmth. They are all pretty good about not disturbing me, but I wake up stiff because I can't turn over.

-- Anonymous, January 26, 2000
I'm pregnant, so what do you think?

-- Anonymous, January 26, 2000
I think I have a monopoly on this one--singing people wake me up.

The first time was a large man at 12:30 in the morning. He was on the steps of my complex singing Micheal Jackson's "Billie Jean". I think he was trying to serenade someone (I assume he had been accused of fathering someone's child whom he had not--is Billie Jean really an appropriate serenade in any other situation?) After about five minutes of singing I looked outside and he had brilliantly incorporated that Running Man dance move into his routine. However, his object of desire apparently didn't appreciate it...I heard a woman's voice screaming for him to stop and then about five minutes after that I heard sirens and our little songbird jumped in his car and sped off....

Also get woken up by my landlord's crappy band practicing at all hours. So that's another singer...

And the poor girl who lives in the apartment next to mine really has a thing for Celine Dion. If it could have been ANYONE except for Celine, I think I could deal with it. Apparently this girl (in my complex, not Celine) has been unlucky in love so I hear Celine all of the time-- Celine and my neighbor, that is--she doesn't seem to notice that if you crank up the stereo then try to sing OVER it--people can probably hear you all too well.

Lucky for me, I'm moving out of the building in less than a month. Yippee! Then I will just have my bed-hogging boyfriend to wake me up. However, it is sweet compared to Celine all day and all night.

-- Anonymous, January 26, 2000

The dog.

There's something that makes a regular trip through the backyard at 2am, probably an opossum. Nook starts his hellhound bark and scratches at the sliding glass door. I freak out because I think an axe murderer (do they even have those anymore?) is coming to get me. I fall asleep again when I realise they'll have to chop through the stupid dog first, and I'm sure I'll hear when that happens.

Every night. 2am. I should leave him outside to eat that stupid marsu

-- Anonymous, January 26, 2000

The kids in the apartment across the way who either play loudly in the breezeway or knock on our bedroom window to attract our cats so they can see them.

In our apt in VA, we could hear the upstairs apartment's plumbing, and someone up there went through a bizarre phase where the toilet would flush continuously all night long. I'm serious. I used to have to go sleep on the couch, and it was still audible. I counted one time. 30 flushes in one hour. And no, it wasn't broken plumbing, because it didn't happen during the day, but would start up around 11pm.

-- Anonymous, January 26, 2000

Everything.

The cars pulling up into the parking lot outside. Water in the pipes. Sabs snoring next to me. Pearl deciding that it's more comfy on my chest than at my side. Mephisto wanting to come in at 6am. Pearl wanting to get OUT at any time of day when she is in heat.

The neighbors downstairs and their GOSH DARN FREAKIN' SALSA MUSIC that they can't seem to understand the concept of "Please turn your music down so that I can't HEAR it, not just down a notch so that you feel like you've made an effort to be good-neighborly."

But the cats and Sabs' snoring are definitely the worst offenders.

Sabs could sleep through WWIII, but I, I wake up at the slightest shift in the floorboards.

Oh yeah and that cat scratching at the door thing -- Gyah. That will even get Sabs if it's late enough/early enough, whatever in the morning.

We have no carpet left right under the door from Tiger scratching to get in or out as the case may be.

The damn brat is gonna cost us our deposit on the apartment.

Ah well. Next place we get -- I'm going to insist on hardwood floors.

-- Anonymous, January 26, 2000

I have to officially take back every mean thing I said about my dog this morning. We are sharing a post-work bag of popcorn, and he's the cutest damn thing you ever saw. He sits patiently by the microwave waiting for it to be done, and then he whines a little while I put it in a bowl. Then he runs to take his position by my computer, just far enough away so that I can flip a piece of popcorn to him now and then. He catches them in his mouth most of the time. I think it's the catching he enjoys, because if he misses one, he usually leaves it for the cats.

In other words, I'll put up with a little late night wackiness for this kind of cute action.

-- Anonymous, January 26, 2000

Things that wake me up:

My children. Usually Erica. Mikey only wakes me at specified times. If someone turns the heat up past 70degrees. I die of heat when I'm sleeping. Light shining directly into my eyes.

That's it.

-- Anonymous, January 26, 2000

I have a month-old baby. I guess the answer to this question is pretty obvious.

Painfully obvious, you might say...

-- Anonymous, January 27, 2000

For me , it's John. He plays the TV way too loud. Last night I woke up about ever hour to the basketball highlights replaying on the news. I didn't wake up enough to get off my butt and turn the stupid thing off though.

The other thing that keeps me up is the furball. He's been biting me in my sleep lately. Getting used to it thought. The other night he bit my wrist and I pushed* him off the bed. At least John told me that happened, because I don't remember. But, I have the red teeth scratches on my wrist as proof.

*correction from husband. He says I threw the cat off the bed and cursed at him the whole time. Sorry, no recollection.

Jane Doe

-- Anonymous, January 27, 2000

Sometimes my Ginger has a night like you described Doc had. Nothing will keep her happy in that crate, sometiems. She's learning to sleep in a bed, but I don't often let her do it all night because she still has accidents in the house for no good reason. And she freaks in her crate if we don't give her a towel to sleep on. She used to have a pillow and a mat but she chewed them up and I took them away.

Most nights she sleeps like a rock, but once in a while she's a hellion.

Not much else wakes me. I can sleep through the alarm. I need the televsion on to fall asleep. And I can sleep throught Dave's very loud snoring without a problem. If I wake up in the morning and he's snoring loud I often can't get back to sleep.

The only other thing besides the dogs that can wake me is the phone. Scares the daylights out of me at 4 AM.

If it's too quiet in the house, the thoughts in my head race around too much and I can't fall asleep. That's why I need the television on to fall alseep.

Colleen

-- Anonymous, January 27, 2000

This is making me really grateful for the quiet neighborhood we live in, without noisy roommates, dogs, children, etc....

-- Anonymous, January 27, 2000
Beth...you just described four out of seven nights of sleep for me.

When my dog sleeps through the night, I consider myself a very lucky girl.

Sigh.

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2000

My sleep used to be ruined by both noisy neighbors and my husband, who snores and snorts very loudly. Now it's just ruined by neighbors on occasion, but not by my husband. I just read an article about women who have husbands who snore loudly - it said that not getting a sound night's sleep is very unhealthy for the women, and that if their husbands can't or won't get their snoring fixed, they should definitely sleep in another room. So at long last, I am vindicated on this one, for my desire to sleep alone for the past several years.

In one forum, I actually had some jerky old man tell me that I was about to get divorced over this, just because *his* wife left him shortly after she started sleeping in another room. I have a feeling it wasn't his snoring that really drove her away though.

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2000

Two things ruin my sleep. One them is one of my cats who thinks that anytime between 3 and 5:30 is acceptable to tell me it's time for breakfast. It's really not til 6:30. So I throw her out of the room and shut the door. Then she yowls. It's high pitched an annoying. The other cat doesn't like to have any doors shut so he scratches oon the door. I can't win.

The other thing is someone in my complex with a faulty car alarm that goes off every single night at around 1:30 or so. Right in front of my building. Horn blaring, lights flashing. For ten minutes. Other residents and I have complained and complained. It will stop for a few days, then start again. Aye yi yi.

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2000

Friday morning trash pick up. Also, my roommates. They like to have lots of people over, and since my room is just off the kitchen/dining room area, they sit right outside my room and make so much racket. I'm just too light of a sleeper to live in an apartment building or with other people. I need to move to the country where I can fall asleep to the quiet call of crickets or something.

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2000
G (aka Mssr. NotTheInternDotCom) snores. That doesn't usually wake me up. What does wake me is when he rolls over to me, I start to snuggle in, and then he starts ripping right into my ear.

Peeing lately wakes me up. I don't know why I have to pee all the night lately, I'm not pregnant. G also contributes to this. It could be a non-event that I could sleep through, but sometimes when I try to get out of bed, he latches onto me, so I have to think about how to go about it.

Howard doesn't whine or do any of the aforementioned dog stuff. He gave up on sleeping in bed when G and I shacked up. No, what Howard does is wait for some covers to drip off the bed onto the floor. Then he plants his froofy big butt on him and works them off some more. We'll wake up cold while the dog snores in this humongous nest.

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2000

My cat always sleeps through the night now (after years of me prodding her during her early-evening naps, she has finally converted to diurnal from nocturnal) but what really keeps me awake are the burglars, rapists, and homicidal maniacs who rustle in the bushes outside, rattle the doorknobs, and creep up the stairs while I'm trying to fall asleep.

It's this goddamn house. The house is owned by my ex-boyfriend [not Wil, a more recent ex] who is kindly allowing me to live here while he spruces it up for the real estate market and I scramble for a new place to live. It's five bedrooms, set far back from the one-lane road with a creek on one side and a stand of isolating juniper trees on the other; the structure is about fifteen years old and still settling. The floors creak when no one walks on them and the bathtubs make strange hollow noises, expanding and contracting as the house heats and cools. It is entirely vacant except for the room in which I live and a pile of boxes -- my inessential items such as books and dishes, ready for the next move -- in the front room. Also understand that I have a substantial hearing loss in my right ear and it's impossible for me to tell from which direction sounds are coming, and every crunch on the gravel road outside causes a landslide of panic.

I managed to alleviate the problem by rummaging around until I found the ex's Winchester .30-.06, which he takes with him when hiking in Alaska to fend off bear and moose. Before he broke up with me a couple of weeks ago, he unloaded it and hid it and the ammunition separately, in order to prevent me from killing myself out of despair, but how well can one really conceal a three-feet-plus rifle in an empty house? I found the bullets behind a stack of abandoned towels in the linen closet.

Now that I have it under my bed my sense of security has been almost entirely restored. I am curious as to how exactly I was supposed to commit suicide with it, since I don't think I would be able to reach the trigger with the barrel up against my head. [Note that I am neither curious nor stupid enough to model the position and find out for certain.] If I could accurately fire it with my toes I think I would abandon the idea of death and sign on Jim Ro

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2000

...Jim Rose's Sideshow Freaks.

Those extra carriage returns at the end don't actually stop my posts from getting cut off, I guess.

Oh, those of you with racing-mind problems that keep you awake might want to look into melatonin. Start with 500 micrograms and increase the dosage if that doesn't work. I don't know why they even sell the 3-mg tablets; that's enough to put a polar bear into a coma.

Hey, Beth, I ought to have specified that [speaking of herbal remedies] I use the liquid kava kava. The pills never did much for me except upset my stomach. I prefer the kava kava suspended in glycerine over the alcohol-preserved stuff, too, but it's hard to find except at the Herbalist. The kava kava preserved in alcohol that one can find is always 50-80% grain alcohol. Hell, I'd be relaxed too.

Man, if you'd told me two years ago that I'd be into this herbal shit, I'd have laughed in your face. It's amazing the things one discovers when one is too poor to buy real drugs.

[random gibberish to be tru

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2000

Pamie: I can't believe you didn't phone the police when you heard the 30 flushes per hour starting at 11:00 PM. That's how murderers get rid of bodies, piece by piece!!! Did any people go missing in the neighborhood?

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2000
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