Lucky Dorito

You’ve heard the expression, “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him about your plans.” I believe it.

For the past fifteen years my husband has organized and presented at a continuing education meeting for coaches. (It’s officially called a Sports Medicine Symposium) He recruits all the speakers and does a lot of the background stuff – flyers, emails, etc. with the assistance of his office staff. (There’s your plug Courtney) Several times over the past weeks he has said, “I really need to get my power point presentations together.” When I questioned him on this, the closer it neared the date of the symposium, he would said, “Oh, it won’t take long. I’ve got all the information from past years, just need to update it.”

I believed it.

You know we were in Texas last week, right? We got home last Sunday night, both started work again on Monday and just were plugging away all week. There was laundry to catch up on, knee-high grass to mow, and a plethora of other chores for us to do each night. Several times during the week he mentioned needing to work on his presentations but…. didn’t.

Thursday night when I got home late after a hair appointment, he said, “I’ll need your help tomorrow night on my power points, ok?”

I said, “Sure, you said it wouldn’t take too long. Between the both of us, we can knock it out in no time.”

I was wrong.

Wayyy wrong.

It turned into a nightmare night. Everything he wanted to update took ten times as long as it should have. I was searching out google images on my laptop for him of concussion injuries and muscle cramps and total body immersion for heat illnesses and emailing them to him. He would save them to his computer to insert where needed. I was helping him figure out how to make his power point slides to transition correctly. (Neither of us use power point enough to remember all the ins and outs.) I was basically just here, being useful when he needed me. And that was just for the first of his two presentations.

At 3 am, when I was getting my second wind, he ran over to his office to pick up something he needed so that we could work on his second presentation. I thought about kicking his butt for waiting til the last minute to do these but…. I didn’t really have enough energy.

He finally finished up (while I was dozing in and out) and we headed upstairs just as the sky was beginning to lighten up. I ironed clothes while he showered and then I hopped in myself.

I wasn’t too worried at that point – my job during the symposium was to be getting the food tables set up and basically being available for whatever they needed. I figured as long as I wasn’t sitting still, I would be all right. But of course, no sooner than we got there, my sweet husband looked at me with his tired eyes and said,  “Honey, would you mind filming each of the speakers?”

How could I refuse, knowing he was as tired as I was and still had to get up in front of these people for TWO presentations?

I whispered, “Just please, don’t turn the lights out!”

As it turns out, it didn’t matter that the lights were on. I struggled to stay awake anyway. Every now and then, I’d look over and catch my husband watching me nod off and he’d just smile at me. I was embarrassed, I’m sure the speakers noticed me nodding off since I was sitting in the 4th row and everyone else was way behind me. But I tell ya, I just couldn’t stay awake. Not even after about 8 cups of coffee and a dozen trips to the potty. (At least running to the restroom gave me the chance to move around a bit!)

We went to eat afterwards with the two gals from his office who were there to handle all the incoming coaches, making sure they’d been registered and signed in. I was trying to tell them a story and absolutely lost my train of thought halfway through it. Sheesh. This is a sign I’m getting old, huh?

Needless to say, we were totally unproductive most of the weekend afterwards. I slept only a few hours Saturday, knowing the girls were probably bored out of their minds, which meant I was only half awake the rest of the day. My husband slept from 2pm Saturday afternoon until 8am Sunday morning except for a minor raid of the kitchen around midnight.

Sunday was supposed to be our Father’s Day celebration since we were traveling back from Texas last Sunday. After about 18 hours in bed, Mr. Lucky’s back was killing him so he settled for breakfast on the couch while we watched a movie. We decided to skip the all-over-town scavenger hunt that I’d planned for him since… well…. I didn’t have time to get the *gift* that was supposed to be the found at the end of the hunt. Guess I sorta blew it there. Oh well. It’s ok. That’ll teach him to keep this old woman up working all night.

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