Salon post: Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care...

[jenett]

Welcome to this week's salon post. I get us started with a couple of questions, but feel free to bring up totally different things if you'd rather.

(This is a public post, feel free to encourage other people to drop by, just note the 'if posting anonymously, include a name people can call you in responses' rule.)

Topic of the week
It feels like everything I'm reading is about sleep recently - okay, and I'm most of the way through Dr. Matthew Walker's Why We Sleep which is being recommended in a lot of those conversations.

So, my question for the week is "What works for you about sleep" and I'm sort of deeply curious about what people's preferences in bedding and making bed comfy are, if there are parts of that you're willing to share.

What I've been up to
Still on "Trial of a Timelord" in the Doctor Who rewatch (I have been dipping into other things, notably QI, which is also on BritBox, which is a weird clever British quiz show. (elisem and her husband introduced me to it last year.)


House rules:
* Consider this a conversation in my living room, only with a lot more seating. I reserve the right to redirect, screen, and otherwise moderate stuff, but would vastly prefer not to have to.

* If you don't have a DW account or want to post anonymously, please include a name we can call you in this particular post. (You can say AnonymousOne or your favourite colour or whatever. Just something to help keep conversations clear.)

* If you've got a question or concern, feel free to PM me.

Comments

[rosefox]

I have delayed sleep phase syndrome, so for a long time I slept very little and very badly. Then I fixed my schedule to accommodate my body clock, and now I sleep extremely well.

I like a fairly firm mattress, a side-sleeper foam pillow (a recent change from two regular firm pillows), and crisp sheets in jewel tones (though I don't mind white ones). I use two king-size pillows for body pillows, to replace the giant stuffed bear and giant stuffed lizard I used to rely on for comfort when I was in LDRs and lonely at night. It's been so long since I slept next to an actual other person that I don't think I'd be able to do it easily. I like the theory of having a cat sleep on my bed but the practice has never worked well; they always wake me up.

I sleep under two quilts and a blanket no matter the weather, and am considering getting a weighted blanket for the summer; that's not urgent, though, because I'm always cold and glad to snuggle under lots of blankets.

I used to hate white noise. Then I developed tinnitus. Now I sleep with a custom mix of brown noise and ambient sounds playing from my phone or tablet, plus my air conditioner fan on to block noise from the rest of the apartment. Since everyone else in the house—including the cats and the toddler—gets up much earlier than I do, that's very important.

[jenett]

One of my concerns with the wool blanket was whether it'd feel like enough weight (I have the absolutely lightest one they make, which is lighter than a number of other places I found) because I like the weight but do not need the heat.

(And my cat will apply the tip of one claw very precisely to exposed appendages, mostly feet, so my feet need to be tucked under something if I don't want to wake up thrashing at that in the middle of the night.)