So, I’m a little slow at times.

Some relatives stayed with us last week for New Year’s, and one of them brought a pair of Bluetooth headphones with her. She’d pair them with her phone when she wanted to walk or work out and would cheerfully march along listening to her music.

Now, I love my music and podcasts, but for some reason it never occurred to me to get a pair of Bluetooth headphones. I have a pair of Bluetooth earpods but they’re not very comfortable and one keeps cutting out so I don’t use them very often. When I’m sitting here at my desk working I usually rely on a pair of corded headphones, and if I want to listen to something while I’m walking I just crank the volume on my phone.

But watching S toodle along with her pretty cream headphones got me thinking—it might be nice to have a set of cordless headphones that I can put on and just, you know, leave on. Wear them when I’m working, wear them when I’m walking around the house, wear them when I’m cooking or cleaning. The plus side is that I’d never have to worry about interrupting Ramón with my music or a podcast while he was on a call.

So I hunted around and found an inexpensive pair of Helix headphones at HEB. Took them home, charged them up, then paired them to my phone and went for a walk. My first impression—they were ever so slightly tight and made my ears hurt after an hour. But plastic can be stretched, and after leaving them wrapped around one of my mannequin heads for a day I tried them on again. This time they fit well enough, so I paired them to my desktop, turned on some Zoe Keating, and got to work.

People, I haven’t taken them off all day. I’ve gone downstairs multiple times to get a drink or lunch, I’ve gone on three walks around the house, I even went out to get the mail (they disconnected just as I reached the mailbox, then reconnected once I was within the house’s Wi-Fi range again), and I’ve had constant soothing cello music in the background all the time. I know the 10 hour runtime might seem a bit limiting, but we have USB-C chargers all over the house and I can charge the headphones at my desk while I’m cooking dinner or watching TV. Now I understand why so many people are wearing these things.