side roads

you got your baptists and your side baptists...I guess...whatever that means.

Today's theme is noise. Whenever I have a migraine, I get more sensitive to noise, but I'm pretty sensitive to noise anyway. I listen to TV down really low, unless it's a movie with variable sound and I have to turn it up not to miss the low parts. Really, if I walk out of the room, I can't even hear that I have the TV on from the other room. At work there are loud intercoms, loud buzzers, and loud kids. I can usually tune most of it out except for the intercom and bells that are REALLY loud. Today there was a more subtle noise that persisted all day and drove me NUTS. It was a vibration noise, like an old car that rattles, only it came from the pipes that cross the ceiling. I don't know why they made that noise or why it made that noise more today than other days. I don't know what starts the rattle, where it comes from exactly, or why it drives me NUTS, but there it is. All day long. I think my nerves were jangled, so that now, in the evening, when I should be relaxing after chili and ice-cream, I'm annoyed by the helicopter that just flew over, the airplane I can hear in the distance that seems to be out of tune, the clacking of a calculator, the mutterings of someone as thay clack on the calculator, and the phone ringing that seems inordinately loud. I want to put on earphones. I feel a little autistic. I'm hypersensitive to the point that I can't even watch TV. And I don't even have a migraine.

I can usually tune out things pretty well and I'm not typically easily distracted, but some days the sound of the world is too much. I think sound pollution is way underestimated. That, and light pollution. So many trees have been cut down in my neighborhood that it is much noisier than it used to be. I can hear boats, trains, traffic, dogs, sirens that I couldn't hear before.

One summer in Wyoming I heard two sirens in 6 weeks. It was great. I'm ok with the quiet.