Music and Memories

It took me 27 years, but I have stumbled on a childhood secret.

When I was little, and my young mother and father were divorced, my mom and I traveled cross country in her car a lot.

We all have those cloudy memories of childhood moments, snippets that only last 2 seconds when we try to recall them. But certain things bring them, and the emotions of those moments, into sharper focus. For me these moments of clearer memory recollection have always unexpectedly occurred while shopping in a grocery store, flipping through radio stations while driving, or when pumping gas -- a song comes on, one of the cassette songs my mother would play over and over on those long drives cross deserts and plains, and I am three years old again, sitting in the passenger seat of her car, knowing on some mild level that my dad is gone, and that my mom is sad even though she smiles at me a lot, and I'd get wrapped up in those songs, get utterly lost in the emotions of those melodies. I LOVED those songs. They were full of yearning, and I loved feeling my heart-strings tugged in that exact way at that time. Those songs spoke for my mother and I as we drove in silence for hundreds of miles.

I can't remember ever hearing music before those songs. They were the songs of my childhood, played over and over while driving through the terrains of life.

I have never known the bands, singers, or titles of those songs, but when they pop into my world to say hello from some other sound system, I feel I have never known anything better. Even as a 27 year old, when one of them plays and I sing along, I wonder how I can know the words to a song that is so elusive to me -- I couldn't find it on iTunes if I tried.

Until today.

I was browsing through our iTunes Library to see what we had since of the hundreds of songs downloaded there, I can probably count 20 that I have downloaded -- the rest are Dan's doing. Under "Title" I saw the words "Making Love Out Of Nothing At All" and was alerted that it sounded like the lyrics to one of those nostalgic songs. I clicked on it and sure enough, it was one of several in our Library from a band called Air Supply. I clicked through them all and realized something I never knew--my mom was a big Air Supply fan twenty-something years ago. So was I.

Hobos-R-Us

By now most of you know that hobos are not just people; they are flesh-decomposing venomous Utah house spiders. Dan and I are very familiar with them. In fact, we've had to set up a type of treaty with them since they take up residency with us. It's kinda like vampires and werewolves (You really can explain all life's mysteries with one powerful book: Twilight): no one can prohibit creatures of the night from living close by, but we can at least set up a "Don't harm people" treaty. Since the hobos refuse to move out, we have rules that they must obey.

House Rule #18: "please do not kill us, cause us to wake up with a gaping hole where an eyeball used to be, make our legs look the the guy you got in the pic above, steal all the bedsheets or procreate in the bed you seemed determined to share with us."

That rule follows number 17, which is "If you come out where we can see you, you die," which follows rule 16: "If you come out where we can see you and we've had a bad day, we'll catch you in Tupperware, watch you slowly starve to death, and occasionally shake the container like a banjo." That follows rule #15: "If we see other, non-hobo spiders in the house we will not kill them in case they are feisty enough to kill you. Enter at your own risk."

Needless to say, our house is a spider-central. Just today 2 huge daddy long legs came in through the front door (didn't even knock) screaming "Sanctuary!!!" and all we could do was look at them, shrug our shoulders, and say, "Yep. And an all-you-can-eat hobo buffet." Cause if WE break House Rule number 15, then the hobos have the right to declare all out war and tomorrow I'd be missing an eye.

No joke the photographer of that picture happened to call it "Eyeless Hobo." How ironic!

We've lived like this for a year now. In the winter the hobos virtually disappear, but during the summer months it's hobo mating season and they are wandering around everywhere trying to find their soul mates (as if the little bastards had souls). We do what we can to combat them--set up V traps everywhere, leave certain lights on at night because they prefer to move in the dark, etc. But living with hobos has seriously traumatized me. Everywhere I go I see hobos:






Plus any other dark spot on our carpet that moves (usually ends up being a pillbug, which attracts these suckers):

Lucky us.

As I'm writing this I just glanced to my right and a hobo has broken rule #17. Time to lay down the law...

There :).

Anyway, we've managed. But luckily we are moving soon!!! First House Rule in our new house? "No hobos allowed!"