Hmmm. Yes, sometimes sit with a white noise machine, ear plugs or headphones if you find the noise so distracting. If the sound of the TV, the commercials and news are so distracting, then do what one can to avoid that noise. No problem.
Next, find the "white noise machine" within you. Then you will be sitting in a quite room even if there are drum rehearsals next door. This is the Quiet Room which leaps beyond and ignores, without reacting to, the field of sense impressions vibrating on the ear.
Maybe sometimes switch between one and the other, sometimes turning the outside machine on and sometimes not even bothering. Maybe some days, ask your grandmother to turn the sound UP! and for the drummers to play louder.
Sometimes people forget how noisy can be a monastery in the mountains: Feet running down the wooden floorboards, Heart Sutra chanting, drums and bells down the hall, lighting and rain pounding on the roof, the insects and cicadas (our Zendo will be visited by their noisy chorus this month), the asthmatic breathing or farting of the monk next to you, dogs barking, childrens' voices in the distance, Kyosaku stick pounding someone's shoulder, the ear sense becoming so sensitive in the stillness and quite that the sound of incense falling is as loud as that drum. Very noisy place.
Perhaps you can come to a place in which the news and "reality shows" on your grandmother's TV sounds in your heart just like the Heart Sutra chanting, Empty and Silent in all the noise. In fact, then maybe one can taste the Empty and Silent that is this whole chaotic, messy, disturbing world!
In the meantime, yes, ear plugs, sound cancelling headphones (or getting Grandma some headphones or plugs that don't mess her hair!
) and such are fine.
Gassho, J
STLah