How you doin'? Did you get enough rest over the weekend -- catch up on your sleep? If not, join the club.

Oh yes, the subject of sleep is near and dear to my heart, and I can tell you from personal experience that none of us is getting enough, and last week the good folks at the National Sleep Foundation made it official -- yet again -- with the results of their annual Sleep in America poll. This time with the twist of gathering data comparing whites, blacks, Asians and Hispanics.

It didn't surprise me one bit to see that no group had a majority reporting the good, solid seven to eight hours of sleep most often recommended by doctors for optimal health. I myself had been clocking in at a shameful four or five hours per night for the last few years, and it took several months of being miserable for my doctor to finally convince me that the deficit would kill me sooner than later. Through diligent work, I've now slept an average of 8.09 hours a night over the last 77 days, but it certainly hasn't been easy.

There's just too much to do in place of sleeping -- and I don't mean just chores.

Sure, most people lose sleep over things that are bothering them, but Hispanics ... well, for us it's an art form. According to the study, Hispanics are the group most likely to say they're kept awake by financial, employment, personal relationship and/or health-related concerns -- 38 percent of Hispanics, compared with 33 percent of African Americans and about 25 percent each of whites and Asians.

This is me, my family, and my friends' families: sleepers so light that morning dew forming on the lawn can rip one out of a sound sleep, providing ample time to fret about how the family will ever pay for their funeral someday.

This is not an exaggeration; it's a variation of death -- or the road to it -- that keeps Latinos awake at night. The economy, love/family and health worries are just the smoke trail spewing out of top of the angst express. According to the National Sleep Foundation, about 2 in 10 Hispanics and African Americans say their sleep is disturbed every night or almost every night by at least one of these concerns.

I have none of these worries, so I lay awake at night worrying about my parent's worry levels. Crazy, I know -- but that's culture for you.

Growing up in my household -- a traditional "Hispanics in America" home with the babies and the elders all under one roof -- it was a common occurrence for the grandmas to be up in the middle of the night fretting, and for long-faced fathers to look to the breakfast table for something warm to take the chill out of a long, agonizing night -- "Oh, I was just up ... thinking."

And let's not even get started on the aches and pains. This same study reports that Hispanics are more likely than blacks and Asians, and twice as likely as whites, to say that health concerns have disturbed their sleep at least a few nights a week. Even I succumb to this one regularly.

Incredibly, you'd think the good vibes from having the highest rate of sex before falling asleep (10 percent of both blacks and Hispanics claim to have sex every night or almost every night in the hour before going to sleep, compared with 4 percent of whites and 1 percent of Asians, for those of you keeping score at home) would keep the mind from awakening to torment the self with anxieties.

But no.

It's a darned shame, really. All this losing sleep over the things you can't control rather than resting up to take action on all the things you can control is killing us all.

I've mended my ways and am aiming for a solid 8.5-hour average over a 100-day period, and I'm hoping the warm milk and the thick, data-laden public policy reports will get me there serenely.