I love my new password ~ it's one I've never used before and it makes me laugh everytime I type it when I remember (after a few seconds of forgetting) it here. So much so that I would love to tell it to someone, but I realize that would be stupid.

On my ride today I went north, up toward where my dad built the beautiful house for my mom about 8 miles or so from where I live now. And in the years before when I've ridden up there (it's great riding, just far enough out of town to be almost-country riding), I would often detour over to the house to look at it, but this time I only mentioned it like I always do when we pass the road, but I wasn't in the mood to see it.

I'd said something to a friend the other morning. I was talking about something that had happened "the year my mother died," and I stopped my thought... and said, how strange it was to say that out loud. And not that she's dead, no, not that, but to remember that I once had a mother. Isn't that something? My worst fear as a child was losing my mother and now that she's gone, I almost forget that I even had one. And that's not the only thing, I find that I'm forgetting a lot of things. Not in a way that might be caused by a physical problem, but I wonder, and this is just a theory, but could living in the moment be a part of that? I wonder if being present to the idea of a "now" reality somehow eliminates the need to reminisce (why can't I spell that word..) or harken back to earlier times? Not that I think they no longer influence me. Just the opposite, I think my past is the thing that pushes me into my present life; but the specific things that happened, I just don't recall as easily as I once did. I don't seem to need to.

Not that I don't miss my mother sometimes. I do. I said that out loud just the other day. The day I was putting the decorations up for my party. I planted a flag in the ground, one of hers, and I said, I miss you mom. It seemed a shame that she wasn't here.

Or remember specific memories. I do remember sometimes. Actually when I recollect certain things I'd forgotten, I actually experience them more acutely. I think it must be that since I don't spend a lot of time doing that, the memory isn't jeopardized to become sort of "old news."

Don't hate me for turning into a boring cliche, but life goes by very fast doesn't it.

The weekend was fun, I'd like to remember:

• Evening swimming with the kids
• Playing Eurogames with friends. They gave us a copy of Toppo to take home.
• Rofini's Pizza
• Sunday night concerts at the Amphitheater
• Looking at an old photo from the early 1900's and seeing a house in it that I later lived in with Nicholas when he was a baby.
• Riding to Kroger to get berries and eating a turkey sandwich from the deli while sitting on the wall by the bike rack. I threw the onions they put on it into a shrub. No one who passed me said a word, but I smiled and waved at everyone anyhow.
• New trail walking shoes. The toebox is roomy, and added bonus: they don't stink like the Tevas. Yet.

• Starting a new, pretty blog and finding that Blogger is still pretty fucked up. I like it here though, very much.