I’m so exhausted, I’ve turned over the blog to an advocacy group today.
It’s Infomercial Time! This guest blog is by Dr. Cozy Futon, Executive Director of Physicians for Bedrest, a non profit health care group advocating completion of the Job of Rest – America’s most pressing national duty.
Are you one of the 1/3 of all Americans who can’t concentrate because they don’t get enough sleep?
Sure, I can repeat it. I said, “Are you one of the 1/3 of ALL AMERICANS who CAN’T CONCENTRATE because they don’t get enough sleep?”
You may have heard me the first time, but you weren’t able to process it because your brain is fried from excessive awakiness. Just yesterday, the CDC revealed the results of a new survey – the finding is that far too many people shortchange themselves on sleep, and their health is affected.
A major part of the problem – Americans don’t see sleep as an important component of good health care. But the truth is – sleep can be a great tonic. Things happen inside the body during sleep that we still don’t understand. And why don’t we understand? We’re too tired to figure it out.
Physicians for Bedrest believes sleep is a key to solving many of the world’s problems:
* Turmoil in the middle east? More sleep for dictators!
* Labor strife in the Midwest? Everybody take a nap, you’ll be less cranky!
* Unbalanced budgets? Sleepers spend less than money and use fewer resources than people who are awake.
Let’s take a closer look at that last one.
Everybody knows we’ve got a money problem in our state capitals, at the federal level, and even in our homes. There is simply not enough money to finance all the things we want to do! And this ever increasing “wanting” is something that only comes from people who are awake. Awake people want goods, they want services, and they want security – in many cases they want these things as a way to ease distress brought on by sleep deprivation. By contrast, a sleeping person has most of their needs satisfied, by definition! They are at rest!
The CDC report says 70 million Americans get less than 7 hours rest, when the recommended amount is between 8 and 9 hours daily.
Look at the numbers!
If you get 6.5 hours instead of 8.5 hours, you’re 24% under your sleep target!
70 million people who are 24% more awake than they should be translates to an additional 16.8 million people driving on our roads, eating our food, picketing our legislatures and insulting our public employees! Our physical, political, and emotional infrastructures can’t stand the strain!And if those numbers don’t seem right to you, what do you expect? Your brain is foggy from playing Angry Birds all night. Just accept my statistics and take a nap, you knucklehead!
The situation seems dire but we can get through it if we only close our eyes (make sure you’re not operating heavy equipment) and imagine a better, more well rested future. C’mon, America. Let’s sleep on it!
Thanks to Dr. Futon for her soothing, swimming words. When I briefly scanned her text, that’s what the words appeared to be up to – the backstroke. Impressive. I wonder how she makes them do that? To save time and energy, I’ll simply agree with everything she said and move on.
Promoting healthy sleep is a good idea, and as Dr. Futon suggests, it could be patriotic. But like any marketing campaign you have to make sure you’re reaching the right audience. What we don’t want is to miss the mark and accidentally persuade those who are already getting enough sleep, to sleep more.
Are you one of the people who needs to Sleep for America?
Trail Baboon 
Stay in Bed to Shine Baboons:
Yes indeedy I am. However, in my own defense, I give myself the time to sleep, but my aging brain does not seem to want to cooperate. The hours between 2-4 am seem to be when my brain thinks I need to be awake. Then I lay there listening to audiobooks or I get up and watch TV.
I am noticing my own winter weariness this week. Perhaps an induced hibernation period until the end of March is the answer. Then I will wake up and winter will be over. I would also have made up all my lost sleep in those weeks.
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I am deep in the national sleep debt due to a confederacy of diseases. My wife, on the other hand, has a long bank account due to her suite of illnesses.
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So your household has perhaps achieved a balanced sleep budget?
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Like the guy with one foot in ice water and one foot in boiling water being told it’s ok the water temperature is average
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Good morning to all,
8 to 9 hours of sleep? No, I haven’t sleep that much for many years. I would be glad to get 7 hours. If I get more than 6, I’m doing good. However, as a retired person who spends most of my time at home, I’m not using up too many resources, may be a little extra use of electricity to light up the house in the morning.
I actually like the early morning hours when the world is a little more peaceful because most people are sleeping. The trouble is that I also like the evening hours when a lot of social activities happen and I’m not good at taking naps. I would sleep a little better if I could calm down and not worry so much, but how do you do that?
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this morning i awoke, jumped up and was downstairs ready for my usual routine until i looked at the clock. 4:45 maybe i’ve already gone on DST so that means i need to be in bed and sleeping by 8 pm. in a little over a week, that’s essentially what i’ll be doing. uffda.
i’m in Jacque’s camp also – i’m in bed for 8 hours but i sleep for about 6. my husband takes pre-sleep naps most of the evening and then when the light goes out he is asleep in about 15 seconds. is that a guy thing???? sheesh. or maybe i just need more exercise….
a gracious good day to You All
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Hard to imagine more exercise than the goats give you!
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So, how do the goats take to all of this messing around with the clock? Do they just give you the look when you come in at the “wrong” time or do you get to work them into it gradually?
My memory of babies and toddlers is that they take to it not at all.
In this 24/7 world, is there really any point to messing with the clocks? I don’t know about you night owls, but as a morning person, I am agin’ it!
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I agree about the messing with the clocks, MID. It is no good for a person like me who already has trouble establishing a good patern of sleep. Say no to daylight saving!!!!
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they know the time – there’s a clock in the barn but i’m the only one that looks at it. they don’t need no stinkin’ clock.
they are pretty flexible, within limits. i don’t like moving the milking time around in big hunks though. but right now it’s only Dream. and by the time i’m milking Alba, we’ll be on DST.
for my part, i’m in the Jim iCG camp.
when i’m awake at night i think about names for the kids.
Names: Alba’s need to end with an A (only Girl names – don’t ask) Chimera, Felina, Supra, Mocha, Freya, Sola but NON-FOOD
Lassi’s need to be associated with a beverage or food made from milk like Chai, Smoothy, Cajeta, Flan, and Doodh or Macchiato for buck
Kona’s need to be coffee-associated (or, failing that, Hawaiian)
café noir, café au lait, Kaffee mit Schlag, Lattè, Cappuccino, Espresso, Mocha, – probably only Girls’ names.
now going out to ready the kidding pens!!!
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For Lassi’s kids, how about Tilset and Kefir?
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had to look up tilset – cheese a good idea – cow’s milk cheese though? but there’s a whole world of goats’ milk cheeses out there! thanks, MIG. and i like Kefir also.
sorry for drifting off topic, there – a bad tendency of mine.
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yes, Danish cow’s milk cheese, but we really love it and it just sounded like a good name 😉
and really, do you want to name a goat Gjetost (which I see literally translates to “goat cheese”)–mentally picturing biB standing in the pasture calling-Gjeeeeeee-tooooooost!
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yes, what the calling name sounds like is important 🙂
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If it’s a guy thing it’s a lucky guy thing not a universal
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Would love to participate in Sleep for America, but I am afraid that there is no funding for that program in our household (I did do my bit by nodding off during Harry Potter at the Riverview here and there last night-no idea how they actually get to Malfoy Manor in the movie).
S&h gets a special grant as a 12-year-old and also by virtue of being in the program to raise the overall national average height.Conference day too, so no school (good thing I remembered that before I woke him up)!
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Last night was fairly typical. I had a nice nap during the afternoon watching the rerun of the “This Old House” show that I’d slept through the evening before. I don’t even remember what type of house they are fixing. Then I slept through the evening news except when I had to let the dog out, and I think I might have heard the “s-word” because the anchors were staring daggers at poor Belinda Jensen. Then I settled down to some of my favorite TV shows. I saw the beginning of a really creepy “CSI,” with horribly decomposing bodies in a garbage house, but I slept through the part where they nail the culprit. Katie got me up then for another trip to the backyard. I started “The Mentalist” but missed the last 50 minutes of it. Since I like these shows the good news is that when they come around in summer re-run, I won’t even recognize the start of them and can sleep through them again.
The early evening was pleasant but fuzzy. Jay Letterman had some funny lines, or was it David Leno? Katie woke me up to go out. Then it was 1 AM, more or less, and I was wide awake. Since I don’t have cable I had to choose between TPT reruns about the technology of war or several starlets in a studio pretending their perfect complexions came out of bottles.
I had a better answer: if you are enterprising on the internet, you can see hours and hours of re-runs of “Doc Martin,” which I did and I actually remember some of them. By about 5 in the morning I was getting fuzzy-headed again, which I took to be time to take a nap. After letting Katie out.
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Letterman said Hefner is going to have an open-casket wedding.
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They will just lay him out and talk about the first thing that pops up
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I don’t know how your husband can take evening naps and still sleep well at night, barb. To improve my sleep habits, I try to stay active in the evening which usually allows me to sleep better. I’m sure all those naps that you take in the evening are a big factor in causing you to be awake during the night, Steve.
I do need to not be too active late in the evening before bed time, because I will have trouble getting to sleep if I am too active at that time. If I just sit and watch TV in the evening I will fall asleep in front of the TV and then not get as much sleep at night. I can watch TV and not fall asleep if I have something I can work on while watching TV.
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“All those naps . . . are a big factor . . . ” Hmm, d’ya think? While pondering my “sleep cycle,” I have considered the possibility that a dozen naps an evening might have some kind of effect! So what is my best alternative? I should stay active in the evenings? Cool. I was thinking about a stationary bicycle, but I think I could sleep on one of those. Maybe my best bet is one of those bucking Brahma things they have in cowboy bars!
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Well, Steve, that bucking Brahma might be what you need. I like working on my seed collection or something likr that, but that might not be active enough for you.
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Steve, I always thought the perfect TV set up would involve hooking the set to a generator powered by a stationary bike.
As long as you wanted to watch, you’d have to pedal. There’d be no sleeping through The Mentalist! But your thigh muscles might become unmanageably large, even as your brain shrinks to almost nothing.
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Thanks Steve and Clyde. You just gave me my morning chuckles.
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I catch my leave it to beaver reruns on tvland on the Internet. I think Andy is there too. That’s my idea of a restful smile as I doze off.
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OMG…sounds like one of my typical nights…though I don’t have the tv hooked up to internet so if I don’t have a netflix BBC mystery to lull me to sleep, I have to settle for Fraser or Daniel Boone or Seinfeld or “Adventures of Christine” — but after 1:30 am I won’t watch the infomercials so it’s the BBC radio….and hope the news isn’t so dreadful that it keeps me awake.
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My sleep habbits are all over the place I will crash and burn for three nights in a row crawlinging into bed at 10 and waking at 6 or 7 then for three weeks straight I will be up until 12 and waking at 6, I roll with it and never get a nap. It just doesn’t happen. It always sounds perfectly feasible but never happens. I had to laugh the other day when I pulled the I will change clothes later on routine on myself again. I never change clothed. I got up pulled on whatever was ther and the look was not too good but I told myself I would get to it later and switch something either the pants or the shirt to make myself presentable, well 7 pm rolls around and there I am dressed like a dork going to something where I should care about how I look . Sleep is that way too. I am always going to get caught up but then life gets into the picture and whammo the day has a mind of it’s own. Here is what is on the schedule, here is what needs to get done and here is what comes up while I am tending to the stuff that is called for, whats the old saying life is what happens to you while you are trying to live. Sleep… Dream on
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“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”
J. Lennon
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Bingo thanks
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I am usually blessed with good sleep, usually get 7-8 hours. Most nights I can get back to sleep after the middle of night bathroom trip, which I’ve probably noted (a la Nora Ephron) is caused by that second glass of wine – unless you are of a certain age, when it just goes with the territory. I lie awake probably once a week somewhere in the night, often after I’ve been folk dancing, or a big challenge coming that needs some processing. Husband has even been sleeping pretty well again… we feel pretty lucky on that score.
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I’m green with envy, yellow with resentment, and blue with no-sleep induced depression
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You’re what we call a colorful person, Jacque!
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Drinking alcohol interrupts my sleep. Sure it makes it easier to get to sleep, but it causes the middle of the night insomnia for me.
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dont drink it in the middle of the night
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Morning–
I’m usually averaging about 6 hours / night… but then there is the week before a production and it drops to about 3-4 hours / night. Then I get in this late night cycle that takes a while to get out of again…
I’ve been in one of those weeks for the last month. Code Red Mt. Dew and Snickers bars keep me going. Notice I didn’t say “A Diet of Mt. Dew and Snickers” cause that’ll kill ya. But they do keep me going.
… I should have stock in them…
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Billy rose funny girl in where he buys the seltzer water company so he can feel good about making 3 cents every time he drinks a bottle.
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I have memory of one particularly bad tech week where I was so pumped full of caffeine that even when I did want to get a couple hours of sleep all I could do is lie in bed and twitch…I have been a tad more scrupulous in watching my caffeine intake since then. A tad.
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My senior year of college I was on a strict regimen of as much coffee as I could slam in the caf first thing in the morning, coffee at lunch and supper and ending the day with a nice big goblet of port.
Much better than the non-stop coffee laced with cream and sugar I adopted in grad school. Lack of food in grad school was probably also not such a good thing, but again, un-funded mandate.
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I spent many years sleeping when time allowed and it is a tough habit to kick. Now I do try to look after it because I know it will come up and whack me if I try to get by on less than 6 hours. Used to get by on 4 for weeks at a a time. I always remember the study that put people in a room with no clock or radios so they are trying to eliminate time references and leave the people locked up for weeks to discover what the natural clock will evolve to. Ended up that 30 hours up and six asleep was the chosen cycle when let to the bodies picking and choosing. I just have a hard time with that schedule.
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I am generally in the 7-8 hour range, depending on what needs to get done yet after Daughter goes to bed and how good the book is that I’m currently reading. I can often get in an extra hour or two on Saturday mornings as Daughter, left to her own devices, will sleep until at least 8 on Saturdays and Sundays (sometimes later), so I can sleep in to (often Husband will get up with her on Saturdays, and this allows me yet another 1/2 hour or hour). But then, just when I think maybe I’m catching up and feeling well rested, Something Happens. Daughter has a string of nightmares so I’m up with her (I have read that these come at times when Things Are Happening developmentally in her brain – which is grand, but doesn’t help me get more sleep), Husband gets sick and his coughing and snorfling wakes me up, I have an extra glass of wine with dinner and it disrupts my sleep pattern (see above reference to Nora Ephron)…
Today, I think there is a midday nap in my future. I am working from home as they are moving everyone on my floor at work to a new building and spreading us out over two floors (we had people, quite literally, working in the aisles). Monday I have to remember to go to the D building rather than the C building, and then I have to find my way to my new cubicle (I have a vague sense of where it will be – but couldn’t visit my new location to scope it out as the facilities folks still had the floor locked off when I tried to go on a field trip to find it on Wednesday). Probably will need the extra acuity from a full night’s rest to remember all that at 8:30 on a Monday morning…
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All that space and they have people working in the aisle. Be in awe of the fact that best buy just keeps on selling big screen tvsas the world does a death spiral around it. My kids need 300 dollar headphones too.I alway wonder if I hired twice as many people would twice as much get done.
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The theory was that by closing off 4 floors in one of the buildings (after the Big Layoff 2 years ago), they were saving money by not heating and lighting those buildings. A good theory, at least for awhile. Then The Powers That Be realized that the .com part of the business was humming along quite nicely and, hey, let’s hire a few more folks to expand our online offerings and set up a bunch of mobile web stuff and add these bells and whistles…and pretty soon people are sitting in the aisles. They are as conservative as the next place about hiring people, but also realized pretty quickly that they lost too many people in the Big Layoff, I think. And they need those people to sell you your $300 headphones. 😉
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If I could have another glass of wine every time my husband snorfles, that is just about the best reason I can think of for having a husband. I’ll have to rewrite my Match.com ad a little, crossing out the part about seeking a lady gardener with long legs and adding the bit about the snorfling guy. Or I could just forget about having a man in my bed–men are SO repulsive at night!–and just do the wine as needed.
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There you go. (snort/snorfle)
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Yeah, just go straight for the wine. You could find a nice woman willing to snore and snorfle for you – but she might also come with other unusual habits. Plus, wine doesn’t get cranky when you leave the seat up or insist that you pick your socks up off the floor. 🙂
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Wisdom from Nora Batty: “Husbands are for life and not just Christmas.”
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Dang it, you mean I can’t return him with a receipt, Clyde? I was hoping to exchange him for a Colin Firth model…
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Anna! A little respect, please. My Match.com ad used to say in black and white that I put the toilet seat back down, and in fact I do. I also added a line about how I was so progressive that I could share the TV clicker with the right woman. I finally took that line out because I’m pretty sure it made most women assume I am gay.
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Steve – for the record, I am the one who leaves socks on the floor and dishes in the sink in our house and Husband is the one who cries at movies…and we both snore (we don’t watch enough TV for control of the remote to be an issue).
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Anna, re: daughter’s nightmares. S&h to this day keeps his “nightmare” books near the bed, just in case. He figured out early on that some of them were a good antidote to nightmares and he could just turn on the light, read the book and go back to sleep.
of course, now he considers nightmares as fodder for rpg characters (I try not to worry about this)
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Mostly she doesn’t remember them in the morning – at least so far. And I’m trying to keep her away from RPGs for at least a little longer…D&D is only a gateway to….fandom. 😉
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thanks, I feel so much better now 😉
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I’ve just been through similar upheaval at work and am happy with the results. I hope your new workspace makes you as happy as mine made me!
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Aside from losing the purple walls (each floor has one of four color schemes – we are either moving to a blue or a green floor – thankfully not one of the orange ones), I think it will be a good move. I’ll be on the third floor, rather than five, so it will be easier to make it a habit to take the stairs vs. elevator. Plus, I’ll be farther away from the break area, and I don’t think on the end of the row, so fewer folks will stand outside my cube and chat (and put their hand on my cube wall and rock it – hey! I’m working here! your shaking my workspace!). But I’ll miss purple walls.
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My agency is located on 5 floors of a former college dorm built in the early 1960’s. There are lots of bathrooms with non-working showers in odd places and everything is sort of dingy. A friend and coworker of mine, an addiction counselor, attended the college where our building is located and actually lived in what is my play therapy room. He tells me that there are lots of wild spirits in that room, given he had not yet started on his path to sobriety when he lived there. The governor put money in the Human Services budget to build a brand new human service center here, and it hasn’t been axed by the legislators yet. We were expecting it to be the first thing to go, but the ND legislature seems to be out to get Higher Education this go-round instead of Human Services, so perhaps I will have a shiny, brand new office building in the next couple of years.
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Renee, because MSU Old Main has been turned into a retried living space, there are/were a couple of people in Mankato who live/lived in the space where they taught college.
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OT: I think in was Barbara in Robbinsdale who requested my chocolate chip cookie recipe (though divulging it here means I may have to find other bribes for Ben and Jim in CG should I ever need to bribe them….). I have been using this recipe for over 30 years – I have yet to find a recipe I like as much (but I am biased).
Anna’s Chocolate Chip Cookies (with a nod to the old Boys and Girls Cookbook that it came from 30+ years ago)
2/3 c shortening
2/3 c butter
1 c sugar
1 c brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
3 c flour
1 tsp soda
1 tsp salt
12 oz bag of chocolate chips
Cream the butter, shortening and sugar together then add the vanilla and eggs. Mix in the flour, soda and salt. Stir in the chocolate chips last. Spoon onto ungreased cookie sheets.
Bake at 375 degrees for 8-10 minutes. Makes a whole bunch of cookies. (If your my big brother, you might like these with beer…though I prefer a glass of milk or a cup of coffee.)
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THANKS, Anna. 🙂
We’re heading off to Iowa for a couple of days. Have a great weekend, Babooners – I’ll check in if I can.
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safe travels!
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Thanks Anna, they sound delicious.
This recipe has been re-posted at Kitchen Congress.
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Having the recipe does not for a bribe make….
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that was my thought 🙂
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Morning all. I’m still laughing after reading Steve’s bit!
When I have too much going on (like this week), I tend to wake up a little earlier than usual with my brain starting the daily to-do list. And I can fall asleep on the sofa watching tv with the best of them, although I’m not in Steve’s class.
I’ve found over the years my sleep depends mightily on daylight. In the summer time, I do w/ less sleep because once the sun starts to light the sky and the birds get going, it’s all over. But in the winter I get plenty of sleep and I have to use one of those light-up alarm clocks or I would sleep late every day!
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I often wake up at about 3:00am and lay there for a while, then go back to sleep at 5:00 just in time for the alarm to go off at 5:45. I started taking vitamin B complex before going to sleep, and that has helped, but I still sleep pretty light. It says in our job descriptions for the State of ND that sleeping on the job is grounds for dismissal. Sometimes I am so tired at work it is hard to keep my eyes open. It is especially hard when I am in a play therapy session and the child wants to surprise me with some art project or costume or other and instructs me to close my eyes. It is so tempting to just drift off (I sometimes have to keep my eyes closed for a long time, let me tell you) that I am lucky to not fall off my chair. Its a small chair, close to the ground, but still. It is also hard to not drift off during a relaxation recording.
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I fell asleep once at an old job – thankfully, not someplace where it would have been grounds for dismissal. Not sure how long I slept, but there was drooling involved and I woke myself up snoring…I blame the anti-histamines I was taking.
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Vitamin B complex helps with sleep?
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All I know is that I have been sleeping much better since I started taking it.
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Wonder if this is part of Husband’s nighttime restlessness? He is often low in B vitamins (and prone to B-related anemia). Hmm…
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I think the theory is that B vitamins help restore adrenal function. Adrenal fatigue is thought to be a factor in some cases of insomnia, particularly if you drop off easily but then wake up and lie awake for a couple of hours.
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i throw 3 or 4 vitiamin b capsules in a tall glass of scotch and i’m able to sleep fairly easily.
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I think Dale should interview your adrenal gland for a second opinion on the situation.
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I think canja is a Brazilian dish. It is so simple I’m embarrassed to offer it as a recipe, but it is a dish you can tinker with to make it suit your family. Specifically, if your family is carnivorous, sautee chicken breast meat and include it in the dish.
Canja
8 c healthy chicken broth
1 onion, thinly sliced
4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
2 green bell peppers, cubed
3-5 jalapeno peppers, seeded and finely diced
1 large (double size) can of chopped tomatoes
1 1/2 c rice
fresh parsley
Tabasco sauce
Heat broth and dump in the rice. Bring to a boil. Partially cover the pot and let it simmer for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, sautee onion, garlic, peppers and chilies in a tiny bit of vegetable oil. (Add chicken if desired.) When rice is cooked, dump the veggies in it and add the tomatoes. Heat it all up. I used to fret about how many hot peppers to use but now use Tabasco sauce to give the final dish some pop. A nice covering of fresh parsley looks and tastes good when you serve canja. If you serve this dish as a leftover, expect to need another can of broth.
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Thanks Steve!
You can also find this at Kitchen Congress.
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when you have rice in a recipe like this i always wonder if the 1 1/2 cups is before you cook it or after. is there a general rule of thumb or shall i just fake it.
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It’s great to hear from Physicians for Bedrest, Dale! It’s been awhile since they’ve added their two cents to the national discussion about debt.
I’ve been sleeping better since this winter’s upheaval at work. Certain long-standing, serious issues have been resolved and I’ve had some much-needed affirmations about my role and worth as an employee. I’ve got a swell new workspace and I can go home without a battle going on in my head about some of my coworkers and the situations they were causing. Stress really does inhibit sleep. There were some nights that I simply didn’t sleep at all.
Though there has been some improvement, I am awake with you, Jacque, between the hours of 2:30 and 5 a.m. At 5 a.m., I fall back to sleep very soundly and will sleep through the alarm clock. On Wednesday I slept until 6:30 with the alarm singing classical music to me for an hour. What is it about the hours between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. anyway?
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Didn’t you know – 2 am, 3 am, 4 am and 5 am were feeling sorely neglected. Underserved. Ignored. They do not take kindly to this. It wasn’t so bad in the days before Hours Were Named, but once they became named and designated, well, inevitably jealousies and grievances arose – why were they getting short shrift, especially since 2 pm and 3pm were so noisily getting so much attention? Mother Nature, in her wisdom, decided that the best way to keep those four hours quiet and happier was to designate those hours be attended to by college students, parents of small children and a smattering of those between the ages of 40 and 80 to leaven the mix.
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Now I’m looking forward to being 80….
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I always say it’s time to rise, but the shinin’ will have to wait until after coffee, proving that I’m operating on a sleep deficit. Can anyone who has 4 children and a full time job reasonably expect 8 hours of sleep a night? I don’t know, but sleep and diet are the two components of wellness on which I need to focus. I’ve got the exercise down pat.
Happy Friday!
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OT.
MiG… if you go over for a little tomorrow, look for teenager and me! We should be hanging around between 10-11, listening to music and chomping on baked goods.
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we may stop in-I’m hoping to go up to our Capitol, just to walk around, just because we can.
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That’s how I’m feeling about the bakery tomorrow. Since teenager is wanting to go, I’m not asking why!!
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Sleep is becoming an obsession of mine since I have been taking meds that make me sleepy. I just went into to clinic to discusss why I feel tired all the time and why I almost didn’t go to work last Friday because I thought it was Saturday. Apparently having a pulse of 48 explains my fatigue. Time for another adjustment.
You know you’ve gotten a lot of medical care when you are swapping books with your doctor. Luckily he’s a good guy but I yearn to be alert. The world needs more lerts!
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we need you to be a lert also, B-A!
has your doc checked your potassium level?
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Thanks for asking, Barb. It was checked today and is good
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But what good books are you recommending for your doc?
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thyroid checked, I assume?
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If sleeping were an olympic sport, my wife would be a gold medalist. She can sleep 14 hours straight like nothing. I sometimes wonder if I should be spraying for tsetse flies…
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I want some of what she has. 🙂
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I have all the same kinds of problems everyone else has been mentioning – difficulty staying awake when watching TV, inability to sleep if I have alcoholic beverages too close to bedtime, and waking up at around 4 in the morning, tired but perversely unable to get back to sleep. I try to limit alcohol and caffeine consumption, and like Jim, when I watch TV I do something else at the same time to keep alert. I don’t watch too much TV anyway, but I do like to see a movie now and then if I can keep my eyes open.
The best remedy is to have a weekend with no obligations to fulfill. There is an oft-quoted Spanish proverb, “How beautiful it is to do nothing, and then rest afterward.” Doesn’t happen often enough.
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great proverb linda.
i think it all a head job. i go to a concert or a play or a movie theater and i am certain to get a 15 minute nap and miss something i really want to see. it is just that when the butt hits the plush i get relaxed and away i go. my chiropractor congradulated me on improved sleep because i no longer fall asleep on his table.
makes me wonder sometimes what would happen if i put together a string of sleep filled nights, good excersize and a healthy diet. i always tell my kids if they fed an animal the crap that they eat they’d be arrested for abuse. i am guilty too. maybe early tonight huh?
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