If it truly loves you, it will come back to you

The good thing about having a month to move out of your apartment (I owe a big thanks to my new landlords for being so extraordinarily cooler than the douchefucks I currently rent from) is that you can pack slowly. Schools are filled with empty boxes in various places so whenever my yearbook runners have no job I send them searching the school for empty boxes I can have. So I have plenty of boxes and every day I pack one or two with stuff I can do without for a couple of weeks. Books, CDs, clothes.

Every time I've gone through my CDs it has filled me with great sadness. The empty cases where my now stolen favorites used to be mock me with their perfectly maintainedness. My CD collection is clean and orderly and all the correct CDs are in their correct cases unless I've pulled them out to put in the car.

My apartment is a giant clutterzone, but don't screw with my CD collection.

Thanks to the crack whores who broke into my car, U2 Rattle and Hum, Ben Folds Five Naked Baby Photos, Louise Attaque self-titled, Rusted Root When I Woke, Jump Little Children Magazine, Panic! at the Disco A Fever You Can't Sweat Out, Agents of Good Roots Where'd You Get That Vibe? and a few others - they're all sad and lonely shells of what they once were. Three of those - Ben Folds Five, Agents of Good Roots and Louise Attaque - are albums I'd have to special order to replace.

If you've never heard of Louise Attaque, they're a French band that doesn't suck at all, and that's pretty damn impressive because French rock as a rule is not so good. But these guys are. And they're funny if you speak French. And they use a violin.

The Ben Folds Five album is one I found in France while I was searching for Edith Piaf. They're from North Carolina and I adore their music, so I listened to that album constantly the whole time I was overseas. It helped keep me from being homesick. I was probably most sad to lose that of all the albums that disappeared.

And while I'm thinking about it, are car vandals really interested in Jump Little Children? Really?

I've already paid for these albums, so I'm legitimately downloading a few of them one song at a time to recreate them, but it's not the same. I took damn good care of my CDs and they play better in the car when they're not homemade.

Today when I was packing I noticed a stack of CDs around the stereo that I had recently taken out of the car. I'd bought a new case so I'd rearranged my collection, deciding to start over with only a few good driving CDs and add more as the mood struck me. I had yet to put the removed albums in their proper cases. And there they were: Rattle and Hum, Naked Baby Photos, Louise Attaque and a few others I thought I'd lost. It was like a glorious reunion of musical genius. Oh, frabjous day!

Sometimes when you think you've lost something you love you find out it was always with you. Never leave me again, Ben Folds Five album. I will always take care of you.