[Blarg]

I'm noise sensitive too, a little. Mouth noises are disgusting to me, unless it's a mouth working on my anatomy. Especially if you can hear the wet gloppy gurgling of someone eating, it puts me off my food. I don't think I'm all that unusual that way though; most people seem at least a little put off by mouth sonds, and turned off while eating if they hear it.

I think part of it is that my folks raised me to be very polite and have good manners at the table. I grew up feeling that trying to have good manners wasn't a burden, but something you could feel good about. It made you more bearable and welcome at the table. I don't know where the 7th fork goes or anything like that; just simple good manners like not making big snot sucking sounds while people are eating, not smacking your lips, gurgling, slurping your soup or from your glass, chewing with your mouth open, shoveling food in your face, banging your silverware around, gasping, burping, picking your teeth, picking your nose, biting your silverware pr knocking your teeth with it so it clanks, flossing, clipping toenails, milking goats, beating confessions out of prisoners, etc.

I always thought of certain limits on bad manners as natural, but it has become less common. Now when I see bad manners, I tend to think of them as either intentional and therefore disrespectful, or proof of idiocy, boorishness, or being raised poorly. Bad, slurpy, grunty table manners gross me out and offend me. Though I know many people just were not raised not to feed like pigs at a trough, I tend to view my own upbringing as closer to a sort of fair level of table manners and that of others as drastically worse. So I find what others think is normal to be distasteful and aggravating.

If I'm in a restaurant, I will move my table if someone sits down after me and starts in on the grunting, gasping, and lick smacking while eating. I can't enjoy my meal listening to that. If I have to get a doggy bag, I'll do it. I can almost never tune it out.

Same if I'm talking to someone who always shows the food bouncing around in his mouth in various stages of digestion. I can't look at that person, and even get pissed off. Usually I tell them, "I can't look at you when you do that."

Back on the subject of regular noise, I always sleep with a fan on at night, for white noise. Most of my life it's been a floor fan, but I found a really smooth, non-squeaky desktop fan box fan I use now. I use it even if it's a cold night.