Halloween’s over and daylight saving time is almost upon us, which means we once again "fall back" and have to re-train the brain to go to sleep on time.

Unless you’re one of the smart people who live in Saskatchewan and don’t bother with re-setting your clocks (Moose Jaw's suddenly so much more appealing).
 

You know, there was a time when I was a great sleeper. I could fall asleep anytime, anywhere. But that was before I had kids. Now, it’s just a fiasco. A pin drop could wake me and scupper the night’s rest. All those night feedings and listening to baby’s cues messed up the lot. And even though they’re now 6 and 9, I still wake with a sense of panic: Are the kids ok? Are they breathing? Am I?

Photography, David Whipple, Unsplash.com

So, I turned to my local pharmacist to get the skinny on some “sleep aids.”
 

Nighttime formula cold medicine: perfect if you need to wait for A Midnight Hour wake-up from something other than a night feeder.

Melatonin: gives some people Amazing, Technicolor Dream episodes so vivid and so frightening they actually fear sleeping.

Magnesium: is the calming mineral, which, if you take too much, also makes your guts explode. The next morning can be like Black Velvet expelling from you.

OTC tablets: aka, the Foggy Mountain Breakdown. You wake up feeling like you’d be fine if you could just pull back the curtain, or at least ignore the man behind it…
 

But you know, there’s a whole world of things to do at 3 a.m. Like filling in your kids school permission slips and catching up on TV shows you PVR’ed but somehow never seem to watch.
 

I, for one, will be sticking to my old stand-by, OTR. That stands for Old Time Radio. You’d be amazed what an episode of Burns and Allen or Gunsmoke can do, and yes, The Shadow does know...