My wife is taking singing lessons. Yeah.

Writing takes quite a bit of focus — at least it does for me. I grew up in a large family, so I've been exposed to a fair amount of chaos. I've lived in college dorms, shared apartments with four or five other crazy people, worked in busy newsrooms and offices, and as an adult have been around kids ages zero through time-to-go-out-into-the-world-now-puhlease. As for music, I can be quite comfortable with hard and loud. So what happened to me this morning, I can't quite explain.

These days I do most of my writing in a home office. Just a few feet outside the door to my office, my wife has a Casio keyboard/piano. And this morning, while I was trying to concentrate on a particularly complex science article, she decided to sit at the Casio, where she tapped out a few notes and began to practice her scales. You see, she recently started taking singing lessons.

I was, of course, immediately distracted. Distracted enough to open my desk drawer, withdraw a digital recorder, and press the red record button. Here's what I heard:

After a few seconds, there was a pause, so I looked back at my computer monitor, sighed, and tried to get my mind back into the weird quantum physics point I was in the midst of making. During this brief interlude, our cat, Miltie, must have navigated under the desk at which I was seated, and he chose that moment to jump up in my lap.

And my wife, Lizzie, chose that moment to resume her scales. And not knowing what else to do, I pressed the red button again on the digital recorder, and captured this:

And, of course, I had my next blog post for SteemIt, which is this one. The fact is, when she's warmed up sufficiently, Lizzie has a beautiful singing voice. And there is nothing quite so much as I love in this world as to hear her singing. As for Miltie, he's usually warmed up pretty much at a moment's notice. And I love him almost as much as Lizzie.

But something about the interruption sent me in search of the photo that accompanies this post, apparently of an invention called "The Isolator." I could've used that thing — often — in the past, and have an inkling behind the inspiration that must have generated its creation.

Full disclosure here: The fact is, the more complex the article, the more easily I'm distracted. So part of this is on me.