please hear me singing it, in my best Sinatra voice..."Regrets,...I've had a few".

However, he continues in the song "My Way"......... "but too few to mention". Unlike dear Frank, I am about to mention a couple of them. Oh, don't worry, I'm not going all the way back to 1989. Nah, I'm staying with those that just so happened to occur on Thursday of this week.

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~~~My youngest child was scheduled to attend a field trip, not with her grade, but with the after-school program. They would be leaving at 2:30 and not arriving home until after 9:00 p.m. Both of the boys had baseball games. I cannot be in two places at one time.....I have tried, it doesn't work, and if they don't figure out how to clone me soon, it never will.

This is the first field trip of any of my kids that I have not been on, or have not sent my Mom on, in order for them to "have somebody". You know "just in case". Because you never know when someone is going to need money for a souvenir, or a slushy, or a jacket for inclement weather, or ...you get the idea. And by the way, just who the heck is going to take pictures of this event??? I worried myself silly over these facts. She is my baby, you know.

And let it be known to all that she survived. She arrived home very sleepy, very tired, and informed me she had bruises on her bottom from falling down so much at Super Skate. (And all I can think is how picture worthy those moments would have been, and I missed them.) I realize her skating ability did not increase by leaps and bounds, so therefore, I will have the opportunity to get that shot at a later date. I'm sure of it.

• I regret worrying about her being "okay" without me. She was just fine.

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~~~I arrived at school yesterday to bring the baby child an extra pair of socks for the skating rink. I neglected to check myself in a mirror before leaving home. I threw on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt because the sun decided to stay out longer than 2 minutes yesterday afternoon and it seemed like a novel idea for spring. My light khaki shorts apparently did not have enough dye in their fabric to hide the turquoise paisley print on my under garment. (and right now, I bet you're glad this isn't a picture post.)

I would like to state for the record a couple of things: 1) I do not usually choose to look in the mirror at my backside....because well, it's disturbing. I know what it looks like, and who would want to remind theirself. So, I didn't check the mirror from behind on my way out the door so quickly. I'll count that one as my fault. 2) I had conversations with so many folks at the school, of which included, each of the children's teachers, who all saw me turn and leave. And also spoke to or chatted briefly with various other faculty, staff, and parents waiting to go on the aforementioned field trip, and even helped answer the phone in the front office for a few minutes, so the office staff, saw me too.

I would have assumed before this post, that most, if not all of them, were my "friends". That is not the case today. All of them had to see the turquoise paisley print glaring them down from my fanny. No one said a word.

• I regret not buying solid flesh colored under garments (also known as granny panties) to wear everyday so that this never happens. Scracth that.....it is a lie. I just regret not turning around soon enough......as in, BEFORE I left for the school instead of noticing it upon returning home.

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~~~The boys are dressed in uniform, bat bags loaded and ready to roll. I hop in the driver's seat, and turn the ignition. Click, click, click, click. The battery is dead. That is obvious. But, I have no idea why. I just returned from school. The car has only been off for maybe 30 mintues, and it was fine before that.....how is the battery dead? I try again. Because clearly if I turn the key harder, the battery will know that I mean business, and will get in line and act right, and crank this sucker up because we have ballgames to attend.

The battery is not intimidated by me at all. It responds with another round of .....click click click. I call Temple. Because of his distance in proximity to the SUV in question, I know he can't really help me. But I call anyway, because this is what I do in a crisis. He says there's no point in trying to go in the other, older SUV, because it too, has a dead battery. Lovely.

I bet you are wondering why we have 3 vehicles when we only have 2 drivers (of legal age). It's a genetic disorder I inherited from my father. And you will understand when I tell you how we fixed this day's dead battery dilema. I call down to mom and dad's house. "Hey mom, the battery is dead in the car, and the other one has the same problem. Can you come pick us all up in Dad's truck because we have chairs and bat bags and all that stuff?". Sure. And so mom comes up to get us.

Dad is not feeling well so he can't go to the games, nor does he get on the phone to give me a lecture about not eating in the vehicle, not tracking dirt all in the floor, etc, etc,. See, I didn't stress too long about the problem, because Dad has the equivalent of a small car lot on his property. He has 5 vehicles and only 2 drivers. Sure there's the off chance that one or more of those may have a dead battery at times as well, but out of the 5, we'll find something that can get us from point A to point B.

• I regret this all happened on the day that Dad wasn't feeling well enough to pretend to argue with me, in person or over the phone, concerning me "running the roads" in his truck and thus "wasting all the fuel" in his vehicles. :) I love those moments.

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~~~ For breakfast yesterday, the kids wanted toaster strudel, strawberry. I heated them up, and decorated them with the lovely packet of icing. On the boys, in icing, I wrote 3 for 3. As best I could with gooey icing that melts on hot toaster strudel. They looked at it and I asked could they figure it out, because to me, it was obvious. They shout all sorts of things, like it was some guessing game, never hitting on the right answer.

Of course, to their credit, the word "for" was sloppily oozing into the 3's on either side. And you had to turn the strudel to a different angle to read it anyway because I had made the 3's to big to begin with. Finally, I had to explain to them that it was my way of boosting their confidence for the big games tonight......hoping they would go 3 for 3.

Oooohhh......good one, Mom. Both of their teams lost their games tonight. Rivers had a walk, and a hit, but was thrown out at first, and never had an opportunity to have a third at bat. Walt had two strike-outs and a walk. No one went 3 for 3. The toaster strudel trick didn't work.

• I regret trying to sway the baseball gods with sugar icing. However, because I am a rebel.....on this morning's toaster strudels I wrote " F R I ", in large letters, all capitalized, taking up the entire length and width of the strudel. I laid them on the table and asked them if they knew what that was.......they smile and say -- FRIDAY!! Ha......I win. Thursday may not have been my day......but Friday, well, I'm ready for you.....I even have on black shorts today!

I am like Frank afterall......sometimes it may be a bad day, but I did it my way....anyway.