Oh beautiful for spacious Arch!

"Meet me in St. Louis," is a dangerous song. It starts out delicately enough, liltingly and lightly flowing out of your mouth, the chorus repeating over and over. After running through it first all the words are remembered and, if you are lucky enough to have companionship, the camaraderie of knowing the same song encourages an increase in decibel strength. It also encourages swaying. Next thing you know, it's five minutes later and the song is forever embedded within your mind. It cannot be forced out.

I managed to finagle "London Bridge," by Fergie as a precursor to "MMSL," in my mental playlist but, "How come every time you come around/My London, London bridge wanna go down like/London, London, London, wanna go down like/ London, London, London, we goin’ down like…" cannot maintain the #1 spot no matter how many times I can get Cricket to sing along with me. Heck, we even throw in the eyebrow raises, a bit of shoulder shrugging, and some hip bopping. Alas, it's all in vain, Fergie's Fergaliciousness cannot cut the ties that bind.

As a last ditch effort Cricket and I replaced every noun (and most adjectives, adverbs, and conjunctions) in "America the Beautiful," for "arch." As in we now sing it as "O' Beautiful for spacious arch, for archy archy arch. (etc)" Lest you all think this is a great idea that works well both in theory and in reality, our roomie for the week is about to murder us in our sleep. I doubt Sunflower would derive any greater pleasure than shutting the two of us up. I'm sure she's plotting as we speak. There are gargantuan pillows in our room that would serve as smothering devices, no doubt the thought has crossed her mind.

I've even tried giggling every time we sing "Hootchie-Kootchie" or "tootsie-wootsie" but it's to no avail. Cricket just keeps belting in out with nary a blush nor a skipped lyric. Silence comes with sleep, but with the morning the whistling begins subconsciously. For me, rising in the morning with the great Arch greeting me starts the wheels a'turning. It's the stream of water that flows through the watershoot down onto the wheel, filling up the pockets, and slowly setting into motion the subconscious wheels of musical life. As I brush my teeth the tunes begin to make their way through the fog of early morning mind. By the time I've buttoned the last button on my shirt, I have whistled at least 4 lines of the chorus without realizing it and Sunflower is screaming "Stop!" from the shower.

Cricket is such a bad influence.