Songs in My Head

This morning I found a rare opportunity to clean my house all alone.  My daughter is on a class trip and is on her way back now.  My middle son is at his dad's house.  My husband and baby are at the grocery store.  Those among you without kids will not believe it when I say how much of a gift it is to be able to clean alone with no one distracting you or trashing the room you just cleaned. 

I got so much done in about twenty minutes that I broke out the Magic Eraser (a brilliant invention) and scrubbed the finger prints and scuff marks off my walls.  While scrubbing, my mind wandered to an acquaintance who just went on a first date.  I wondered if she would get flowers.  I used to always have a huge flower arrangement on the kitchen table before I got remarried, mostly from my now husband.  He sent me so many flowers, I eventually asked him to stop.  He did, and now I miss them.

The second the word "flowers" passed through my conscious mind, my subconscious mind started singing very loudly, "You don't bring me flowers."  You know, Barbara Streisand and Neil Diamond.  Except in my mind, Sonny and Cher sing it to a back tune something like "I got you babe."  They smile while they sing it.

As soon as I tried to consciously push this song out of my mind, another song popped in.  A song from the Wizard of Oz filled my mind.  I don't know the name, and maybe it's part of "Follow the yellow brick road."  It's in the part of the movie where the coroner just checked the witch, "She's not only merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead!  Lalala lala lalala lala la...."

That part of the movie is hilarious to me.  A children's movie where they happily sing about involuntary manslaughter.  I watched this last week with my middle son and my two year old.  My middle son was afraid of witches when he was little, so this was the first time he saw it.  He also thought the lyrics just after the murder were absolutely hilarious. 

My daughter used to love this movie.  She was an optimist as a toddler and thought it was so cute the flying monkeys were helping Dorothy get to where she needed to go.  My baby liked it too - no worries at all.  He is a little musician and was mesmerized by "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."  Now he is fascinated by tornadoes and all the stories I have about tornadoes.  He says, "Read me your 'ornado book."  It's not a book, just a story in my mind.  I do preface the stories with the fact that tornadoes happen a lot in Kansas but are very rare here so he doesn't have an unnatural fear of them. 

I thought there was a chance that writing about this story would push the song out of my mind.  No luck.  It's definitely time to put some Tom Petty on the stereo and sing it out loud until the munchkins are gone.