Top 10 tips to get a good night’s sleep

Posted on 03. Apr, 2009 by kchristieh in health, shopping

I have not been sleeping enough lately. I know, I know: that’s bad. But I have so much to do, and I get so much more done after the rest of the world goes to bed. Hopefully this weekend I’ll get some good sleep.

Here are my secrets to a good night’s sleep. They’re all low-cost and drug-free. They may be silly, but they work for me.

1. Wear knit gloves if your hands get cold.
2. Always wear socks.
3. Wear pajama pants that don’t ride up your legs.
4. Put a heavy blanket on top of the bedspread.
5. Don’t let your dog or cat sleep on your bed.
6. When necessary, have a good pair of earplugs by your bedside. I’ve tested many, and by far the best are the generic CVS brand silicone earplugs.
7. Close all shades, curtains and doors to the room to block the light.
8. Make sure all alarm clocks are on their darkest setting and aren’t set to turn on. (Mostly a concern in a hotel room.)
9. Leave your cell phone and laptop in a different room, or at least on silent and upside down / closed so they won’t light up the room.
10. If you have the luxury of sleeping past sunrise, wear an eye mask.

Which brings us to this week’s Etsy Find! I have an excellent travel eye mask I purchased at Distant Lands many years ago. It has a molded bridge that goes over the nose, so no light sneaks up to the eyes.

But it sure is tempting to wear the hand made “FREAK Them Out Sleep Eye Mask FreakyOldWoman Nightmare FOW” sold by FreakyOldWoman on Etsy.

Freaky, huh? But check this out:

Eeeek! Maybe this mask could work by scaring off your snoring sleep partner.

Actually, it does look like it’s a nice size, and I like the thick elastic band that holds it on.

Can you imagine how much you’d scare your children if you wore this in front of them? They’d be scarred for life.

Sleep under the trees in this magnificent bed

Posted on 20. Mar, 2009 by kchristieh in shopping

Instead of an Etsy find, this Friday I’m featuring the bed of my dreams. You can find it at Shawn Lovell Metalworks. Too bad it costs $15,000. But it’s really cool anyway.  :)

Imagine how much fun this could be: you could decorate it for Christmas, or put Easter eggs and a stuffed bird in the nest. Or maybe you’re not silly like I am.

Best cheap stocking stuffer: CVS earplugs

Posted on 07. Dec, 2008 by kchristieh in shopping

I’m a light sleeper. That would be great if I were one of my ancestors, and needed to be on the alert for wild animals or marauding tribes. But in suburbia in 2008, it means I hear the freeway, the cars driving past, the guests who wake up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and the dog up the street. I’m lucky that’s all I hear; I can’t imagine how sleep-deprived I’d be if I lived in a densely populated city.

I’ve become a connoisseur of fine earplugs. The foam ones that you scrunch up and shove in your ears are the worst: they usually fall out by the middle of the night, and don’t offer much hearing protection. Awhile back I discovered silicone earplugs made by BioEars, and even blogged about them. They work very well, but I recently found something even better and cheaper. When our local CVS store didn’t have any BioEars in stock, I decided to spend $1.99 and try their generic brand of “Ultra-Soft Silicone Earplugs with Microbial Protection.” Oh. My. Gosh!! They work incredibly well. They form easily to the shape of your ear, and are just a little bit sticky, which makes them far less likely to fall out. They block noise incredibly well, to the point where I just hear my breathing and heartbeat. Sure, if there’s something really loud, I hear it. When I wear these, I sleep very soundly and have lots of dreams. Amazing dreams. But I don’t bore you with those.
I’m going to buy some as stocking stuffers for my relatives this year. At just $1.99 for two pairs, you can’t beat them!!

PS – DON’T get the Tyr silicone earplugs for swimming. They’re completely useless.

Here are links to past stocking stuffers:

• Monkey Key Covers
• Bottle Camp Tripod
• Twist Magnet Pen (but the ones I gave didn’t have Dora on them!!)

Sleeping is legal once again

Posted on 31. Oct, 2007 by kchristieh in cool websites, non-profits, politics, startling statistics

Here’s a sad statistic: there are approximately 74,000 homeless people in Los Angeles County’s 4,060 square miles, but only 17,000 shelter beds for them. That means that only 23% of the homeless can sleep in a shelter bed on a given night.

As if that’s not bad enough, lately the LAPD has been cracking down on sleeping on the street. According to today’s NY Times story, Some Respite, if Little Cheer, for Skid Row Homeless,

Under pressure from the American Civil Liberties Union, Los Angeles agreed on Oct. 10 not to appeal a federal court order and will instead allow sleeping on the sidewalk, at least until the city provides 1,250 new beds in low-income housing.

The deal partly rolls back a zero-tolerance crackdown on petty offenses in the Skid Row area, including sleeping in public places, that was undertaken late last year by Police Chief William J. Bratton. The effort has reduced by about half the 8,000 homeless who frequented the area a year ago, according to police estimates.

Gee, wow. Another 1,250 beds will mean that 24.7% of the homeless will have access to a shelter bed. If you’ve got to be homeless, you might as well be in a warm place like L.A., but clearly something’s not working here.

By the way, check out this animated Cartifact map that the NY Times story refers to. It shows how fluid the downtown Los Angeles homeless population is.

One group that is working to help the people of Skid Row is the Inner City Law Center. They help “homeless and low-income clients obtain the housing, healthcare, and government benefits to which they are entitled under the law.”

I just finished re-designing their website. Hopefully it’ll raise their profile even more.

Bedtime Beats: The Secret to Sleep

Posted on 13. Sep, 2006 by kchristieh in music, my life, parenting

The UPS man just brought me my new “Bedtime Beats: The Secret to Sleep” CD’s. They contain relaxing classical music set to 60-80 beats per minute, about the same as a human heart. They say these songs are perfect for falling asleep to and help produce a sound sleep.

I can’t wait to load them on my daughter’s iPod – she says that even when she goes to bed, she doesn’t fall asleep for awhile. (see previous post about teen sleep habits) She listens to classical music now, but I think this will be better since there won’t be any loud timpanis or fast trumpet solos to wake her up again.

I love the warning on the CD case: “Not to be listened to while driving!”

Let the kids sleep in more

Posted on 04. Sep, 2006 by kchristieh in articles, education, parenting

It’s 7:28 am at Casa Hernandez, and both kids are still asleep. Last night, each of them independently said, “Wow. It’s our last non-school night of the summer!” I told them to sleep as long as they wanted. It’s been a tough summer for sleep for both of them. My daughter had cross-country practices at 6 am each day, and my son attended several camps where kids stayed up late and got up early. (NOTE: when my husband returned from jogging a little while ago, he said the cross-country team was practicing. Whoops! My daughter thought they were practicing this afternoon…oh well!!)

There was a great editorial by Stephen Moore in Friday’s Wall St. Journal titled “Want to Improve Education? Let Kids Sleep” Here’s an excerpt:

This controversy over early school start times is raging in hundreds of communities today, pitting parents against unbending school bureaucracies. Surveys of teen’s parents in school districts with early start times find that as many as 90% favor a later starting bell. If ever there were a case study in how public school boards ignore the wishes of their “customers,” it is this.

Meanwhile, research overwhelmingly confirms that lack of sleep in adolescents has become a horrendous health problem in America. The National Sleep Foundation finds that teens now average between 6.5 and seven hours of uninterrupted sleep on a weeknight and only one in five gets the recommended nine hours. Of course computer games, chat rooms, sports schedules and the like have a lot to do with the late nights.

But so do their biological clocks. Studies show that spurting growth hormones in teens alter their circadian rhythm and naturally turn them into night owls, physiologically uninterested in 9:30 p.m. bedtimes and fiercely opposed to 6:15 a.m. wake-up calls. (This fact suggests that I myself am still in late puberty.)

I especially like his conclusion:

We’re a society fixated on public policies that are “for the children,” yet we tolerate school schedules that harm students and, worse yet, make what should be the best years of their lives needlessly miserable. Communities spend billions of dollars a year — with so-so success in fighting teen drug use — but sleep deprivation has all of the same disabling symptoms while being far more widespread. Perhaps it’s time for a new campaign: This is your teenager’s brain; this is your teen’s brain (a fried egg) on six hours’ sleep.

I wonder if reminding schools that alert kids score higher on tests (aka the Holy Grail) would encourage them to start school later? Still, you’d have to get all the nearby school districts to get on the same schedule, otherwise after school athletic event start times would be messed up, and some kids would have to miss three periods at the end of the day instead of two, which is already too many.

My kids are not morning people. My daughter set up her iPod alarm clock to play “Eye of the Tiger” at 5:30 am each day this summer to get her in the mood for cross-country. She’s so sick of the song now that she gets mad at her brother when he plays it on his guitar, even though the teacher assigned it.

Rock-a-bye baby, on the freeway…

Posted on 02. Aug, 2006 by kchristieh in travel

Scary story of the day, from the Pasadena Star News, about a poll of 1,048 drivers by the Pew Research Center:

6 percent said they had fallen asleep while driving in the past year

Amazing that they’re still alive to say that…hope I don’t have to share the road with any of them!

Back from camp

Posted on 29. Jul, 2006 by kchristieh in parenting, sports, tv

They’re back! One kid was at soccer camp in Santa Barbara, the other was at church camp near Big Bear. Both had a fabulous time, though my son complained that the soccer camp didn’t allow enough nightime sleep. (11:30 bedtime, 6:30 am wake time isn’t enough for a 12-year-old.) The house was quieter and cleaner without them, but not nearly as much fun. It was a taste of what the “empty nest” will be like in five years. We’ll survive it, of course, but I’m not nearly ready. Will I be then?

Both kids slept all afternoon, then we ate dinner and watched a few Tivo’d shows. We discovered that one taste of crystal meth can begin a lifetime addiction, even for a PTA president (Oprah), a rabid anti-illegal immigration Minuteman can open his mind to why illegal immigrants come here (30 Days), Julian Bond will make a great Black friend to Stephen Colbert, and white poodles look best in white outfits (Project Runway). Tomorrow we’ll watch last week’s episode of The Messengers, where contestants spend a night on LA’s Skid Row and then make a speech about it. Yep, it was a regular TV fiesta here tonight. But the kids were a little too tired to do much else.