silence is golden, music I like is silver, static is bronze, and other people's music against my will is canned peas

My coworker was showing me the settings on her small white noise/nature noise machine. Besides rain and surf (which they all have—my thrift store 1980s version has Surf I and Surf II, with a total of 5 knobs to control those yeah) hers has a babbling water setting that she says you do not want to use at bedtime. “Or maybe you just have a weak bladder,” I said and then, after she played it and I returned from the restroom, “never mind.” She has “Country Night” which has crickets, and “Windy Night” (my sister would hate that one! Would most people want to hear the wind howling? Surfers might or Heidi might after she left Grandfather’s hut in the Alps. It made us laugh and start planning other settings. Tsunami, Forest Fire...) and “Pond”, with small water noises and frogs, very nice.

Her noise machine is an alarm clock, too, including train, rooster crowing, and her favorite alarm: foghorn. “I wish the foghorn was included in the surf sounds because I like it so much. But it isn’t. You can push the button while the surf plays, though. Sometimes I do lay in the dark listening to the surf and pressing the foghorn alarm every so often.” Aw. Her mix. Horizontal DJ. She said no, she never had listened to the surf while pressing the rooster button, to pretend she was at the beach with chickens, but she was sure that would be awesome.

I don’t have a picture of it so you have to just look at some pictures of other things at work. They are upsetting things from the scruffy break room.

The cop cookie jar that says “STEP AWAY FROM THE COOKIE JAR” when a person touches it. It never has cookies in it and it is so loud that nobody sets it off to listen to it. Some new people don’t even know it talks. An IT guy brought it in. I shall resume my efforts to give it away to temp employees.





The chair legs that have sharp metal on the bottom so they catch on the carpet when you try to move the chair up to the table, or back.





HEY WHAT IS A DREAM CATCHER DOING IN THE BREAK ROOM? I really dislike those. I want my dreams to be free range non captured, thank you. Behind it you see a smelly candle which does not let off its mysterious and beautiful aroma anymore because of the dust on it.