The day is so perfect I feel like I stole everyone's title ... even though it is 9/11 and I got my period early (strangely with no side effects).

"I'm tired. I'm just gonna watch t.v. and take a rest and close my eyes and eat something," said an awakened seat-belted Lloyd after a trip to grandma's and through my old stomping grounds.

My aunt was late to babysit last night so I couldn't see grandma until today, which was nice because she loves to see the kids whether they wear the batteries out of her flashlights or not. Saying a battery is dead stirs up sadness and crap when someone you love has just died. She said it. I changed the subject. I heard her sniffling when I was looking at the picture board of Aunt Holly's earliest photographs--taken 49 years ago. I hate leaving an old person alone to their quiet house. But I left it with soup in the fridge and the weather cooperating with soup eating.

Since work is the farthest I usually flirt with the old neighborhood (where grandma lives) I felt like driving past my childhood house and school. The word nostalgia comes form the Greek, nostos 'return home,' and algos 'pain.' To a CD of my Ben Fold's favorites, a band I hadn't stumbled upon until the tail end of my years spent here but nurturing emotion just the same, I journeyed through part of my past, on the brink of 31, with two quiet, sleepy kids in tow, and without a car following me the entire time.

...Light and blue took turns peeking through excited gray white atmosphere, wind whipped branches making me notice how the trees have proudly filled in the sky along the streets, the houses looked little and like they missed me, the school looked like it waited for my approval to add a back entrance to the parking lot (sorry, I didn't know! It looks good though). I knew Mrs. Krupman still lived in the blue split with the jumble of a flower garden and a dollar store in the front yard ... and the Wolverton's still live on the corner, still drive trucks, and still lack composition in the small putt putt course of a backyard.

I walked these streets daily both with a baby Rachel and as a growing kid: walking to and from school, to friend's houses, to softball practice, to meet boys, to lose weight, to cry, to get stoned. I sat on the front steps of my childhood home often, on bright, dark, and perfect days, seeing different things from the same view....

I never know what parts of my life will become my cherished memories, the ones that follow me. I wish I knew. This Brownie thing'll help me remember--it will also turn bad sadness into good sadness.

Here's some Ben Folds.