Starin' at the Ceiling

I'm coming to the end of my rope with the sleepless nights. I tried what the pharmacist told me was a harmless little ‘sleep-aid’ the night before last and was a stone in the bed still at quarter of 8– and I usually get up 6:00.  So last night when insomnia once again came to stay and the sheets felt like sand and my sad little feet kept cramping, I finally tried the scalding bath method. This involves filling the tub to sternum height with water just short of the boiling point and sliding into it. I always expect to melt like Jell-O and that's what happens sort of. After about  ten minutes I can feel even my bones softening. Then, moments short of a swoon, I get out, open the bathroom window, and sit on the edge of the tub in just a towel reading my Newsweek as my body slowly chills. Some 30 minutes later, whip-sawed by thermal contrast, I begin to feel sleepy.Only last night this didn't work. I lay in the bed. I turned on my phone and took pictures of the moon which never works because even with your cell phone a flash goes off and all you get is your window treatments. I thought about Steve Buscemi, and about the movie I’d sneaked away to see at noontime. I thought about that lame sleep-aid and then remembered my Irish mom who always did what her Irish dad did too for the fever and the cold and the pain in the belly: I laced a glass of hot milk with two fingers of whiskey and drank it down, talking to the moon until sleep overtook me. It doesn't make intoxicate me; it doesn't even make me mellow. It just sort of pushes my reset button which is sometimes all a person really needs.