Has anyone other than my husband and me had this experience? We'll be watching the Oscars or looking at that "Year in Review" edition of some magazine or newspaper, and we'll see someone famous who died that year, and we'll be shocked. Wait?! What?! I thought that person was already dead.

There's this wave of relief and regret that comes at almost the same time. For just a moment, there's a wave of joy that comes with knowing that this particular beloved star, who had been given up for lost, had actually been alive, as if she were snatched from the jaws of death and back among us. But then reality comes crashing in: that person is actually dead, and we missed those intervening years when we could have been enjoying her continued presence on this earth. Then we berate ourselves for having forgotten she was not dead and indulge in wistful rediscovery of their gifts as we dust off the DVDs or the iPod and treat ourselves to a favorite movie or song once more.

Likewise, there are things in my life I tend to forget I am missing, until they are thrust under my nose. Things like:

• Just how kick ass Stevie Wonder is. I'm not talking about his sappy 80's stuff (although I totally went for that at the time). I'm talking about things like "Superstition" and "I Wish" and "Higher Ground." Every now and then Stevie pops up as one of my iPod's random selections and consistently blows me away. I have no idea why I forget during the time in between that Stevie Wonder is amazing. And he is still alive, right?

• How long it takes to do anything on a computer. Printing a single page or making a little change to the format of my blog or e-mailing a file to someone should take a few seconds, right? But somehow it always takes hours of unplugging and replugging cables and rebooting things and combing through the Internet for help , especially if it's really important that I finish it now. And I'm decent with computers (or used to be when I had time for such things). "Oh, that's right," I always think, "I was supposed to leave time for all this futzing around next time."
• How good I feel after I get enough sleep. I am almost perpetually sleep deprived and have been since I got pregnant with my son. Whenever I do manage to go to bed early and on (the one day a week my husband does not have to be out in the morning) sleep in, I am amazed at how much less cranky I am and how much easier life seems.

You know, I can't think of any more right now because, by definition, I forget them. But with that last point still firmly in my mind, I'm off to bed!