i have a difficult time blocking out noise when i am trying to sleep. it's always been this way. according to one of the stories of when i was an infant (which i obviously have no recollection of), supposedly if i was unable to go to sleep and instead wanted to stay awake and cry all night, all the person in charge had to do was either take me in a car for a moment or turn on a vaccuum cleaner and i was instantly lulled into a sound sleep. as an adolescent, i was able to fall asleep to music. though as i've gotten older, i notice that any little bit of a beat or melody is enough to keep me awake and listening no matter how tired i am or how much i want to go to sleep. and so it is that now, i am barely even able to go to sleep when there is any noise at all. i'm too interested and fascinated, following beats, listening for patterns, wondering what things are.

i currently live on a fairly busy street, very close to a traffic light and my apartment is by no means sound proof. in the middle of the night i can hear drunk people talking as they walk home from neighborhood bars, cars stopped at the light with loud bass systems and music blaring so loud that i can sometimes guess what the song is from my bed, vehicles that need new brakes and/or new mufflers, and the worst of all, i can hear every single truck that hits the little dip in the road as it speeds through the green light with all of the contents shaking a bit from the little dip. luckily, my old upstairs neighbor, ms. stompypants, moved away and the new tenant is, thus far, able to walk like a human being not an elephant.

needless to say, at night i am unable to drift off into a peaceful slumber without sleep props. i am currently using an eye mask (did i mention the obnoxiously bright street lights outside my window) and a sleepmate . all of these sounds are sounds from my sleepmate. listen 1, whitenoise, is the sound i usually use to drown out the noises from outside. the whitenoise is too high pitched for my taste and (this will probably make me sound insane) sometimes if i am unable to fall asleep i start picking up these patterns in the white noise that my brain turns into some fairly complicated series of beeps and blips and then it is even more impossible to fall asleep because i am suddenly composing a great electronic masterpiece. so, on top of the extremely loud high pitched whitenoise, (this will certainly make me seem like a crazy) i also wear earplugs.

the sleepmate comes with many other settings, listen 2 (rain), listen 3 (the ocean), listen 4 (babbling brook), listen 5 (crickets), and listen 6 (heartbeat). outside of the whitenoise, the only other sound i can stand from this noise generator is the ocean sound. i like the pitch of this one better than the whitenoise but in between the ocean waves i hear bits of traffic from outside. and i really don't think the ocean sound actually sounds like the ocean.

as for the rest... the sound of fake rain doesn't make me think it is raining. instead it makes me think that man should be better able to generate the sound of rain coming from a little box. the babbling brook makes me have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. the crickets makes me want to jump out of bed and live the rest of my life as a raving lunatic. i am unable to listen to the heartbeat at all, ever. i'm afraid i will start tearing up my floorboards in search of the tell tale heart.