Shakin' It

If you have never lived in an old house, perhaps you did not know this about them: They are loud. There tends to be not a lot of buffering of sound anywhere in the house, so that if anyone is walking around upstairs, it sounds as if that person is about two inches above your head and could fall through at any moment. In our house, we have the added bonus of big old heating ducts that transmit sound wonderfully, as well as the Secret Stair, which serves as a perfect conductor of noise from the downstairs to the upstairs.

And then there are the floors.

I suspect in a modern house--such as all the houses I ever lived in before living here--the floors are anchored quite firmly to some kind of subfloor. In Arizona, the floors are also almost always tile. Solid. Unyielding. Totally unlike our floors.

Our floors are wood. Old wood boards, to be specific. The boards are laid over wooden floor joists, but of course, in between those joists is . . . space. Space for the floor boards to bounce up and down a little. Plus, some of the floor boards are just loose. This is all normal and inevitable for a floor that was installed 160 years ago, but it does make for some noisy movement.

You walk across our living room and the lamps on the table rattle. You walk across the dining room and the silver on the sideboard shakes. And when I say "you," I mean ANYONE. Even Cubby, who weighs all of 22 pounds, makes things rattle when he stomps around.

I don't think the floor is in imminent danger of collapsing (OHGODKNOCKONWOOD), but it is sort of disconcerting to dance around the living room with Cubby* and listen to the lamp across the room shake.

At least he'll never be able to sneak out of the house when he's a teenager without us knowing.

* Not that I dance around the living room to REO Speedwagon's greatest hits with my toddler**.

** I totally dance around the living room to REO Speedwagon's greatest hits with my toddler.