Reading keeps me awake! I'm so darn nosey that I remain wide awake to find out how its going to end! I have never ever fallen asleep to a book (unless of course its a boring ol' text book) and the opposite happens to me: I get wide awake.

So what do I do to sleep when I can't? I compose a book in my head. I have several really good chapters of about ten "books" that I alternately visit when I can't sleep. One is actually really good that I might try to put it down on paper - the others are so silly... really, they're BAD but they help me fall to sleep and they've been in my head for at least ten years so they are like old friends.

One other thing that works when I'm not in the creative mood - I list things that are regular household items, but we call them by their brand name - ya know, Windex, Q-Tips, Kleenex, Frosted Flakes, Oreos, Frisbess... I keep going until I get to 50 of them (trust me, I KNOW more than that from years of doing it.... but it gets harder as I go along because I start drifting off.) This is good for those of us who have that ADD sydrome! It keeps me from doing the same thing because I'm concentrating so hard on the next darn item that I don't wander away.

AND the last thing I do is try to list 50 Beatles songs. I haven't done that in a while and I'm mighty rusty - I might be able to do about 30 or so.