Insomnia is terrible. I know this because I'm exhibiting one of the key symptoms of insomnia, which is I'm awake writing a pointless blog entry at 4am. How terrible is insomnia? It's so terrible that it has its own formula:

You probably have already figured this out, but that stands for:

The Unknowable Incalculable Terribleness of Insomnia = (The number of Insomnia Days x the Current Insomnia Hours) divided by the number of Hours until Sunrise all multiplied by the inverse Number of Twinkies in the house.

The first thing that you will probably experience with insomnia is the magnification of sounds. As you lie awake, you can hear the ticking of your clock or watch. You can hear the neighbor's llama bleating  chortling  baying, your cat pacing back and forth because soon it will get food (only 17 hours to go), and the clanging of dust as it collects on things in the room. You can also hear everything that your spouse is doing: their tossing and turning, their breathing, their mumbling in morse code, and (if you have this sort of spouse, which of course I do not) their snoring which sounds almost exactly like a band of angry bluegrass Meerkats being short shrifted by the managed of a truck stop in Bedford, PA*.

At some point you'll probably make the decision that it's better to get out of bed and write a pointless blog entry than it would be to lie in bed and wish you were asleep, under water, building adobe huts in the Gobi Desert**, or writing a pointless blog entry. Bizarre thoughts start to go through your mind, lying there in the bed. Such as getting up, getting in the car, and driving to dot dot dash dash dot dash dot...

So I know what you're thinking: Of course you can't sleep! You're going to Disney World! While yes, that's a good guess I can tell immediately when I'm having a Going-to-Disney-World case of insomnia and no this is not one of those things. This is more like Are-the-Aliens-Going-to-Abduct-Me-Again-Tonight-for-More-Experiments kind of insomnia, which is probably at the other end of the insomnia spectrum. It's almost like I'm George Clooney, and I'm worried about where my next paycheck will come from because Nestlé won't return my phone calls.

So what to do? I've actually spent some time on the Internet researching possible options.*** And so I've bleated  chortled  compiled a list of great ideas:

1. Drink warm milk. This idea was generously offered at the American Dairy Association's website. Drinking warm milk will put you to sleep almost immediately. In fact, the site warns you to drink the warm milk in bed, because people have actually passed out getting to their bedroom after FOOLISHLY sipping on their way back from the kitchen. If this doesn't work out, you're supposed to drink more milk. If that doesn't work out, have some cheese.

2. Count sheep. This apparently only works if you have hundreds of sheep. For those of us who only have a dozen or two it's not very likely that we'll get to sleep unless we recount them many times.

3. Have a Golden Delicious Twinkie. New research actually shows that eating Golden Delicious Twinkies while drinking warm milk with your sheep will not only cause you to fall asleep, but it will cure acne, cause hair to grow in good places and dash dash dash dot dash dot dot dash dot dash. It appears to affect the sheep in the same way, which is great for wool production or for teen sheep who are going through those awkward high school years. (This idea was found on the Golden Delicious Twinkie Website and is in no way endorsed by the American Sheep Association, Mr. Morse or the Japanese Mafia.)

4. Take some serious hardcore medication. This idea was found on multiple websites. The concept here is that you take some mild-altering drug that duplicates the affect of Twinkies and Warm Milk in your bloodstream. You then fall asleep, even if your neighbor's llama is out back partying with angry meerkats performing "Man of Constant Sorrow" in morse code. It's amusing watching commercials for some of these medications on television, as they tout the wonderful benefits of the drug and then cut to an idyllic scene of baby bunnies frolicking amongst daisies and butterflies with a sun rising in the background and the voice-over soothingly warning that possible side effects may include sleepiness, tiredness, a feeling of being sleepy and tired, fatigue, a tired fatigue-y feeling, and sometimes maybe once in a long while kidney failure, liver failure, heart failure, bladder failure, mid-term failure, bounced checks and permanent sleep which some people in the non-pharmaceutical world occasionally refer to as "death."

Of course, Insomnia is so Unknowingly Incalculably Terrible that Hitler could show in a pink tutu dressed as a Pfizer Rep and offer you a bottle of something called "Sleepy Time Pills" and you would give him one of your livers**** for even half an adult dose.

I see by my clock that it's only 4:36 now. I have to stop writing and go see what all of the racket is in the kitchen. It sounds like the sheep are in the dot dash dash dot dash dot dot again...

*Sorry, It IS 4am.

**The author wishes to express his concern that it's possible that there is no adobe in the Gobi Desert, which would make building huts out of adobe there very difficult, but probably not as difficult as sleeping five hours in a row.

***Okay that was a flat out lie.

****We've had this discussion before.