there's no sleep in guyana

You guys. Oh my goodness.

I went to bed early last night. Early as in, with Amelia at 7:30. I was SO tired my body hurt. 

But I couldn't sleep. 

The dogs. Oh, the dogs. We've got a heard of about 8 dogs that live on our street. Sickly, unwanted, mangy stray mutts. They're the worst dogs too. They snap at bikers and pedestrians. They case cars. They bark. Sometimes ALL NIGHT LONG. And it's not distant barking either, they congregate at the house directly across the street from mine. And the stray dogs sit and bark at the gated dogs. And so the gated dogs bark at the stray dogs. 

I can't tell you how much sleep I've lost because of these mangy mutts.

Last night, they really had a lot to bark about, apparently. 

They barked until 2 am. 

And I'm a super light sleeper. I always have been, and I don't know how not to be a light sleeper. 

So finally all if quiet. For about an hour. 

And then, I bet you can't guess what I heard at THREE AM. 

My drunk/high/wasted next door neighbor got on some sort of loudspeaker (they've had a karaoke machine in the past, perhaps that's what it was) and imparted his drunken wisdom to the neighborhood. 

I caught random words such as, "journey," "ok, man," and "yes, yes, yes." With this monotone ha-ha-ha laughter interspersed though out. 

It went on for an hour.  He turned on music too. 

Neighbors from the closest houses came out and yelled at the man. You could hear a choir of, "SHUT UP!" ringing out.

They gave up after about 45 minutes of yelling. 

After an hour he put the microphone down and continued his ranting/monologue/diatribe/whatever on the porch. When he had an especially important point, he'd pick up the microphone and yell what sounded like gibberish into it. 

I finally fell asleep around 5 am. 

My dear, sweet children work up an hour later. It was all I could do to reach over and whack my husband and grunt at him. He had been awakened by the neighbor and I knew he lost sleep last night too. 

But bless his heart. That man got up and quieted the children and let me sleep. 

I don't know what I would have done without those blessed 3 1/2 hours of sleep. Or my chai tea. 

So this morning I want to know:

What are your sure-fire ways to get to sleep on nights you struggle to fall asleep?

PS: It would be wrong of me to hook my classical music up to our speakers and point them at this house, right? Yeah, I probably shouldn't do that...