A few nights back I was tossing and turning, annoying Jupiter the cat beyond endurance until finally he felt impelled to jump off the bed. Was it the wind, whistling and knocking against the house as if it meant to blow it to kingdom come, or the full moon keeping me awake? Was I fretting about the imminent end of democracy, or simply worrying that the wind was going to strip the leaves from the trees before peak leaf?

I do worry about peak leaf. Every autumn it is on my mind. I remember remarking as I drove my daughter, Molly, to grade school one long-ago morning, “Oh my goodness, look at that bush! Isn’t it beautiful? It’s crimson! Or is it scarlet?”

“Mom, you say exactly the same thing every time we drive past this house,” Molly pointed out.

At first I didn’t believe it. I thought it was only my grandmother Rose and my mother who were set off by certain calendar dates, words, smells and sights to reliably utter the same pronouncements, time after time. After Molly told me, I realized that I repeat myself all the time. I imagine it gets worse with age.

Rose was constantly going back to Waco, Texas, in her mind. The least little thing would send her. In high school, my sister brought home a friend named Vince Scilla.

“Scilla,” Rose murmured thoughtfully, always ladylike. “There were no Scillas in Waco.”

For Rose, repetition was a compulsion, not unlike that of the Ancient Mariner in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

“Since then, at an uncertain hour,

“That agony returns:

“And till my ghastly tale is told,

“This heart within me burns.”

The rest of the family were like the wedding guest in the poem, who “cannot choose but hear” as the Ancient Mariner “spake forth.”

Rose, to her credit, remembered “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” and quoted it in reference to herself. She couldn’t stop.

Insomnia also frequently involves repetitive, compulsive thought patterns. Whether these thoughts revolve around thwarted love, remorse, pandemic disease, wildfires or the bills that cover your desk like the snowdrifts in Saranac Lake in February, thinking about it now is not going to help. You know this, but still, there you lie, worries repeating like a broken record in your head (If you are old enough to know what a broken record sounds like).

If you share a bedroom with someone, you know that he or she will not like being awakened just because you can’t sleep.

On the other hand, it is very irritating to listen to a loved one’s tranquil snores as you lie awake in a snit. This is especially true when, as is often the case, the person who lies sleeping next to you is the cause of your agitation, due to something said or done during the day, or perhaps several years ago. Little does this person know that he or she is creating deep resentment inside you simply by being unconscious. You will naturally feel that this person SHOULD know, and under the circumstances has no right to be asleep.

My father used to say “Nothing of any value is said after midnight.” I think this is also true of the cycling worries that keep us awake at night. My friend Beatrice said that her therapist gave her a rubber band to wear on her wrist. She was supposed to snap it whenever she caught herself ruminating about people — in her case, a certain person — over whom she had no control.

Another friend, Pete Ski, suggested that a bungee cord around the neck would be more to the purpose. He figured it would speed up the behavior modification process. Still, snapping yourself with rubber bands, or even bungee cords, won’t help you get back to sleep.

Just when you think that sleep will never come, you fall without warning into a profound slumber. Later, as you drink coffee and attempt to look sharp, your coworkers ask you what on earth you were doing the night before to make you such a wreck. What will you tell them? That you lay awake worrying about peak leaf? Or will you let them imagine you were out on the town?

Get some sleep, and have a good week.

(Martha Allen, of Keene Valley, has been writing for the News since 1996.)