Things I'd Do Differently if I Knew Then What I Know Now:

1. Eat more at my wedding...I got married at a fab hotel and the apps were supposedly GREAT. I was too busy schmoozing in a receiving line. And really, most of the people at my wedding I didn't even know or aren't friends with anymore. The memory of the caviar bar and pasta station would have meant more.

2. Not waste all that money on birth control...All those years...Almost the same cost as the IVF. (Obviously that was worth it, but still....)

3. Never start smoking...It sure was fun, and I happen to know FOR A FACT that I was one of the small percentage of people in the world who DID look cool smoking...but quitting sucked and I still worry I'll be one of those lung-cancer-kills-young-white woman stats.

4. Be nicer to some people in junior high...they keep turning up in my adult life.

5. Work harder in algebra in high school. I eeked by with a C and major tutors. I know I could have tried harder.

6. Get to know, REALLY KNOW, my grandparents better. I would have asked so many more questions about family history and what things really were like "back in the day". I started to do this with my dad's parents a few years before they died. But I should have written more down, or interviewed them on tape. What an amazing thing that would be to have, huh? Makes me sad...

7. Take piano lessons as a kid. Of course I would have fought it tooth and nail back then, but how great would it be to be the one who can sit down at a party and hammer out Journey songs???

8. Take Spanish instead of French in junior high and high school. Spanish is more useful in the world I live in....and plus, I'd know if the guys at Chipotle are saying anything obscene about me when I walk down the line.

9. Never get that perm in the early 80's...every picture I have from then is horrific.

10. Never bought that ranch house in Glenview with Tom. I wanted it, we rushed into it and the place fell down around us in 3 years. It was a life lesson, but it cost us a lot. The moral of THAT story is hire several inspectors that each specialize in one thing.

11. Insist on Ryder getting ear tubes sooner. The kid didn't sleep for the first 16 months of his life in the money pit mentioned above in #10. Thus, *I* did not sleep for the first 16 months of his life....I read a lot, in the dark, sitting on the floor next to his crib. Two days after tubes he was "sleeping like a baby".

Hindsight is 20/20....And I guess I'm lucky that I don't have any huge regrets. Like it would be a whole different list if #12 was: "Never steer the ship into that iceberg while Rose and Jack were making out in the car in the storage room...".So...what is YOUR, "I Would Have..."??