Here is my new motto.  I am not going to be sorry. 

I don't mean I won't be remorseful, and appropriately apologetic if I wrong someone, I mean I am not going to hold back.  I am going to try and live this life as hard as I can.  Then, hopefully, no matter what happens I won't have anything left to regret.

My Dad is now doing very well.  But now Phil's Dad isn't doing very well.  And summer is almost over, and the girls are 6 and 8 (ok, in a few days anyway), and time just flies, I guess I want to say. I am acutely aware of time, and mortality these days.  Douglas Adams (the author of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy) once said:

"I love deadlines.  I love the whoosing sound they make as they go whizzing by."

And while it is hard to look at life and loving as deadlines, I think the little things that make life great, and show people you love them, should be treated as deadlines.  I tend to get so wrapped up in what I consider deadlines related to work, or tidying the house, that I knock the life deadlines off the bottom my list. And sometimes I feel they whiz by and we move on, forgetting some deadline altogether, but there it was.  And wasn't it important? 

Yesterday I had lunch with my Dad.  We had milkshakes with our lunches. Why not? And when I picked up the girls, they were STARVING, and were really nice when they asked if we could stop to get a snack, at Dairy Queen.  So what if we ruined dinner? I hope when they are grown they will remember Dairy Queen as a hot summer thing.  It was too hot for a bike ride when we got home, but we went anyway.  When Grace was too tired to walk, I carried her without complaining.  I let Grace make dinner (buttered noodles and tomato cucumber salad).  And when we were done, she wanted to get out the Easy Bake and make cookies.  So we did.  They don't sound like big things, but they are things I wouldn't usually do on a weeknight when I was up at 4 with the pouncing T.K. (Terrible Kitten). It was a good day for life deadlines.

I have quite a few things on my list of deadlines, and I am hoping to start crossing them off the list.  Maybe I can  slow the whoosing sound so it sounds like the paper whisper of aspen leaves waving the deadlines on their way, and not like a jet screaming by at Mach 10.