This Isn't Settling, Photo 29

You know those days when your mind is racing as you try to fall asleep? I've been having more and more of them lately and I'm not sure why. It's hugely frustrating, to be sure, as I'm not getting a decent night's sleep and find myself dozing off about 10:30 and 2:30 during the day, not good when you need to get work done. After consultation with my rheumatologist, she said melantonin would be okay to take with all the other stuff I take on a daily basis. (I never worried about drug interactions and now, anything new is met with suspicion.) Melantonin is not a sleep drug, in the class that Sominex or the prescription drugs are. It's a natural aid that aims to just calm you down enough to have you fall asleep, not knock you out. With sleep drugs, I awaken feeling "weird", is the best way to describe it. With Melantonin, I awaken as usual, but I fall asleep faster and it helps me stay asleep. As with any drug, your mileage may vary.

I keep a bottle in the medicine chest. I don't use it every day, only on those days when my mind is racing ahead 2 weeks or thinking of all those witty retorts I should have said 4 months ago or wondering if I have enough clean clothes to get through the week or what's that sound. The bottle was nearly empty so, because I had to pick up the next month of meds at CVS, I thought I would check their price. Well, what do you know. There's a "buy one get one" sale. I snapped up 2 bottles.

When I got home and went to put the bottle away, I actually looked at them.

There's no cotton in the bottle. Each bottle holds a quarter amount of pills. If I mixed the two together, I'd get a half a bottle full. To say I was shocked would be something of an understatement.

I probably should have taken these back and complained. I'm fairly sure it would not have mattered. The price was much less for these than for other brands of melantonin. You can be certain, I will look now at every single bottle of something that I buy.

I'm presenting this to you as a warning. If this is the trend, to only fill a quarter or a half of a bottle and then put the thing on sale, just know that you're not getting your money's worth. And also, look at the wasted space and wasted petroleum used to manufacture the bottles. So many are still not being recycled. All around, this is a bad deal. Check before you buy.

Beverage:  Scottish Breakfast tea

Deb