Hear, Hear!

Today’s prompt:

Do you hear what I hear? Tell us about a sound. What do you hear in your house or at work?

Right now, I am attempting to ignore my four year old as she scolds our two kittens for antagonizing the cokatiel. One of my sons is listening to a lesson for school on his brother’s Kindle Fire. I can hear our four zebra finches beeping and chattering away in their little voices, sounding like feathered clown cars and creaky gears.

One of the other kids is practicing the piano—the same eight measures over and over again, perfecting the intricate fingering. He broke his arm eight weeks ago, making him unable to play, and he’s been stressing about his upcoming music festival—he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to participate, but the cast came off two days ago, and he’s making up for lost time, determined to master the music in time to compete.

One of the kittens just streaked past the dog, making him jump and bark his head off, pawing at his crate door. Guess I’ll go put the kittens away before I let him out. Our Border Collie has a strong prey drive, and I worry one of these days he’ll catch one of them.

E-mail notifications are pinging as I sit at the computer, tick-ticking away at this post.  I can hear the big rigs carrying fill dirt or sugar beets rumbling down the rural highway behind my house and the not-so-distant train announcing it’s crossing the road on the tracks less than a mile away.  When we moved out here, to Nowhere’sville, we didn’t know about the trains—and they kept us up at nights—their horns and whistles shrieking on the hour at 1:00, 2:00, and at 3:30.  Now, we don’t even notice them---but visiting guests always do.

Finally, the boy on the piano is getting those measures right—sounds like he’s satisfied, as he’s now stumbling through a different piece.  He’s persistent. He’ll get it.

This post is part of Think Kit by SmallBox.