Thing I Love

One day last fall, my husband came home from work early to take care of me when I was feeling sick. Ostensibly, this means he checked in to make sure I was still alive and then got on the phone with clients, but hey, I'll take what I can get. What makes this particular look-after so sweet is that he brought with him a little giftie - a new iPod Touch for me. It was a first version one, so it still has some glitches that I understand the newer version doesn't have, but I sure was cool for a few weeks before everyone got on the bandwagon. And it gave me something to do other than contemplate my eventual demise. (I'm morbid in sickness.)

Cut to this weekend when my husband, in another generous techie gesture, got me the software upgrade (those installation things are so tedious to do for oneself) and then bought me one of the new applications: Ambiance.

Here's where I tell you about a little problem I have: I am regrettably noise-sensitive for a person who lives amongst millions of people in a downtown neighbourhood. Like, noise makes me sort of insane. I mean, people I know think I'm insane and recommend treatment. Just ask my childhood friend Hilary, who remembers being woken up a dozen times nightly whenever we did sleepovers (which was practically every night) because I cannot bear the sound of people breathing. Like, my own child was relegated to her own room at 5 days of age not because I didn't believe in co-sleeping, but because she was so noisy it wrecked my only chance at 20 minutes of groggy sleep to have her in the bed. And don't get me started on bass noise. That, my friends, is enough to make me homicidal. Really. Or ready to move to Ottawa. (BTW, people in Ottawa are incredibly polite and orderly and don't believe in bothering one's neighbours with tooth-stabbing bass thud. And they're bilingual!) This little challenge has caused rifts in friendship, marital strife. My own parents thought I was a freak for telling them, during my teenage years, to keep the noise down please.

Earplugs are for sissies. I'm sorry but earplugs do nothing to absorb the pound of bass noise - or the screeching of tires or the moving of furniture. And, I don't mean to imply that I'm living in some heathen neighbourhood of bass-wielding, drag-racing, late night redecorators - but some summer weekends are a magnet for the unsavory element. I'm like an urban chick from the ears down - but those babies are suburban all the way.

OK - you get the picture, which is why, when my husband went to the effort of researching and then installing this new rela-plication (just made that up, get it?), which allows me to choose between 4 shades of white noise, trains or subways and 10 different versions of running water - each able to mask less desirable sounds - I took it in the loving spirit in which it was most obviously offered. Not to mention it was sexily self-preservational. That boy is so multitasking it's ridiculous.