I keep meaning to bring a speaker in and I keep not doing it. So it's the little grey radio, antenna snapped off years ago, and it sits on the windowsill where it gets exactly one station if the window is open a crack and none if it isn't. Right now it's a mattress warehouse jingle, and I've heard it so many times that I've started humming it while I mix washes, which is a new low.

The thing is I can't work in silence. Tried it. Spent a whole afternoon staring at a half-finished panel of my mother's old kitchen wallpaper and the silence got so loud I could hear the radiator tick. Put the radio back on and got three hours in.

My friend June works with headphones and full albums and no interruptions, very disciplined, and I've decided I don't want that. I want the mattress jingle and the traffic report and the local guy who does the obituaries on Sundays. It's company. Somebody's in the room.

Anyway. The panel is still ugly but it's less ugly with noise.