July 31 will forever be an emotional day for me. The day was pretty uneventful — woke up late, skipped the gym, went to work — but I was kind of in turmoil most of the day.

See, five years ago on July 31, Trinity and I were married, which was one of the best moves I ever made. Five years later, we love each other as much, if not more, as the day we exchanged those vows. Not only that, we’re excitedly expecting our first baby. I kind of wished we could have taken the day off and spent the time together, but we didn’t plan ahead and Trinity, boy scout that he is, didn’t want to call in sick. (I hope they appreciate that!)

But a year ago on July 31, my mom passed away. I loved my mom so much — admired her and was delighted when it seemed I had won her approval — but our relationship was not ideal, to say the least, during the last years of her life. So for this past year, especially knowing that her death fell on my wedding anniversary, its been hard to think of my mom and the good memories, rather than the bad ones.

But, I’m trying.  In fact, I was able to watch the slideshow I created for my mom without bawling. Well, I teared just once.

As I watched the video tonight, some of the good memories came back. People always told me I had a great smile, but I think my mom definitely had the great smile. When we worked a wedding, my mom was all business — until we were done. Then, you’d see her laugh and joke and make fun of us as we hustled to clean up and pack our stuff. At her last surprise party, I’d made up a story to get her to the Covina restaurant and as we walked into the banquet room, with all her friends yelling surprise, she gasped in surprise and thumped me as she laughed. Yeah, that’s where I got my thumping-while-laughing habit.

So much more will come back. All I can do is let time wipe away the bad memories and concentrate on remembering the good ones.

In the meantime, I’m going to be grateful for my wonderful marriage. Trinity has been really great and just a tad overprotective (in my opinion) — now, breakfast is of uber importance and I’m not allowed to “starve the baby” by forgetting to eat when I sit fiddling around with my blogs or on Facebook. One thing that’s been great is that I have carte blanche now when it comes to fresh fruit! So I’ve been happily gorging on watermelon, cantaloupe, cherries, white peaches, blueberries and whatever else that’s been on sale. Pregnancy has its privileges.

So, I leave you with another video — this one of our wedding day. Have I posted this before? I don’t think I have. And just so you know, it took me a few nights to figure out how to get this uploaded to Blip.tv. Long story short, I abandoned the original Quicktime file I had, ripped a DVD and exported it as an mp4. Anyway, enjoy!