A new year is upon us, and some folks are making lists. Try this list. Name five things you can do in bed. Yes, I know it sounds like something you’d see on a Cosmo cover, but that’s not where I’m going with this.

If you’d like to play along, make a mental list right now of five things you can do in bed. Each person’s list will be different, and that’s a good thing. There are no wrong answers. When you have your list ready, continue reading.

All right, here’s my list. The first two are the obvious ones, so I’ll just name them and move on. My first two are sleeping and … the other thing. Let’s be romantic and call it cuddling, along with its many variations.

Now for the other three things on my list of things you can do in bed. Watching movies on TV is number 3 on my list. Was it on your list? I almost never watch the news in bed. When I’m in bed I want to be entertained, so a good movie (comedy, drama, whatever) is a great way to relax at the end of the day. My one rule is no commercials, so it’s a DVD or a classic movie on TCM.

In our home the favorite thing to watch in bed is the Hercule Poirot mysteries. Even if you’re watching one you’ve seen several times before, and you remember how it ends, it’s still fun to watch Poirot and Hastings and Miss Lemon and Chief Inspector Jap, to see the period settings and costumes, and to enjoy some excellent writing and acting.

Number 4 on my list of things you can do in bed is daydreaming. If you’re in bed late at night, and your dreams have not yet begun, it’s a good time to daydream. With the events of the day sliding into the past, you can look forward to the next day, or the coming week, and imagine how events might play out. If there’s something you’re trying to figure out, you can let it float through your mind, then lie back and let the mind solve it while you sleep. This is good for fiction writers with plotting problems, of course.

Finally, number 5 on my list of things you can do in bed is … reading. Did reading make your list?Curling up with a good book. And it doesn’t have to be at night. For some reason I’d rather read in bed than anywhere else.

Perhaps it’s because the body’s relaxed and the mind is not distracted. It’s that escape from distractions, from the noise of the world, that makes the bed the perfect place to read. I’m in my home … I’ve closed the doors … I’ve turned off my phone … I’m in the inner sanctum of my bedroom … and I’m in my bed, in the center of my personal cocoon. What books are on my nightstand? I’ll tell you later. Right now I’m reading. In bed. Do not disturb.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 4th, 2010 at 12:05 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.