We've all experienced a sleepless night from time to time. As someone who has struggled with insomnia my entire life (even as a baby, according to my understandably perplexed family), I have tried everything to improve my sleep. Melatonin pills? Check. Yoga and meditation? Check. Drinking a big glass of tart cherry juice before bed? Check...and all it did was wake me up to use the bathroom.

When you're unable to sleep well night after night, just the thought of bedtime - the tossing! the turning! - can be enough to propel your cycle of insomnia. It doesn't help that every health article seems to scream about the dangers of not getting enough sleep. I'll spare you the lecture - it's not like we're intentionally getting inadequate sleep. You know practicing good sleep hygiene is beneficial, so you try to keep a consistent sleep schedule and avoid caffeine in the evening. What else can you do?

Here are 10 of the best things to help ease your bedtime anxiety, straigh…

I have the flu, so this is going to be a short post. Never mind that I often skip blogging altogether when I am healthy. (Update: This turned out to be a pretty decent post. Yay sick me!)

I should be at work today and not at home witnessing how stupid our dogs are. Pica just yawned and the sound caused Biscuit to bark, which made Pica bark. Now they are both barking hysterically at the glass front door. (Yes, glass front door. It is super obvious that there is no one there.) (Update: UPS just dropped off 2 packages and neither dog had any idea.)

1. Water tastes gross.

You know you're supposed to stay hydrated when you have the flu. Staying hydrated is never a problem for me. I love water...except that when you have the flu, water tastes gross. Like, you can taste the sickness. The universe has a cruel sense of humor sometimes. If you're caring for someone with the flu (hint, hint, SN), bring them hot tea with honey, juice, a smoothie, water with those fizzy Emergen-C packets, so…

Hello, bloggy friends. I’m here to regale you with tales of my Halloween adventures…on November 6th. Yes, I’d say procrastination is still quite the problem for me.
For the first time in the nearly 15 years we’ve been together, SN actually wore a Halloween costume! His first instinct when I told him I’d picked the perfect couples costume for us was to be a grump, insisting that he couldn’t dress up because he had an important meeting with the Air Force that day and he was not willing to change his clothes. He wouldn’t even consider swapping one tie for a different tie. Oh, I know him so well. That’s exactly why I factored his fancy work clothes into the costume.

How did I get my notoriously stubborn SN to join in on the fun?

Me: I've come up with the perfect couples costume for us.

SN: Oh no, absolutely not, no way, not going to happen (etc, etc). I'm not wearing a costume to work and I am not getting changed after work. You can just forget it.

(I love him, but isn't he just th…