Today was a big day for me. I went to a conference and had a poster presentation to do, my very first. My friend and I worked on it for a while fine tuning it until it looked good, submitting the abstract, the whole mishagos, and today was the day to present. It also happened to be my day off. Like so many others I like to sleep in on my days off. Not long; I am not a 10 AM person, just an extra half hour and I am thrilled and refreshed.
Well, I looked at the conference schedule and thought, Cool, it doesn’t start until 8AM and since I usually get up at 5 AM, I could sleep in until 5:30, do the treadmill, and still get there in plenty of time. Well, you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men…it goes for nurses, too. Not only did the dog and cat not cooperate but my phone wouldn’t work right, either (what the hell did I do before cell phones?). Halfway to the conference my friend called. “Are you OK? You’re late. (I had copies of the abstract. Good thing I didn’t have the poster).” When she called I was about 20 minutes away and the conference had already begun.
Well, once I finally got there I tried to chill out (too much coffee and traffic) and came up with these rules.
1) If you don’t get up at your usual time OR EARLIER you will be late.
2) If you are running late expect your dog not to “do” what he or she should do (shy bladder). Also, expect your car not to start or you phone not work right (sigh). Those things might work perfectly well any other time but they won’t today.
3) Expect a friend to call you when you are en route and ask if you are OK. Although the call is well meaning (and my friend is well meaning, the salt of the earth) this will increase your stress level.
4) Every school bus will be on the road. Not just any road either, but the road you are traveling. The school zone lights will all be flashing, too. I really think the school zone lights are somehow set to my clock to slow me down.
5) Every car in front of you is not doing the speed limit but 5-10 miles an hour UNDER the speed limit. It is as if they all just got speeding tickets and are making sure they don’t get another one.
6) You will hit every red light on the way. You will. It’s in the stars.
7) No matter how fast you want to go, how many cars are on the road, or if the street light is green, you can’t go faster than the car in front of you. You just can’t.
After realizing rule 7 was just about the most important rule on the list I took a deep breath. Not much else I could do but smile.
I still got to the conference and missed a couple of opening remarks, a small part of the 1st speaker’s schpeel, and breakfast but that’s OK. I really didn’t need a bagel.
Good News! The vintage Liberty of London scarf has a home! I am going to miss it. It is beautiful. I guess that means I need to hunt for more.
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