A Change of Plans.....

            I would consider myself to be a planner.  I like to know what’s going on and when it’s going on.  I hate it when plans change, but sometimes a change of plans is unavoidable.........

Here’s what was supposed to happen at our house this past weekend:

Friday- date night

Saturday – work on our floors 

Sunday – church (like usual)

Here’s what ended up happening:

             Matt sends me a text at 9:00 Friday morning, telling me that he threw his back out.  I ask if he needs to go to a doctor.  He replies with a no.  I remind him that we are scheduled to continue work on the floors on Saturday......and that there is a doctor’s office at his work for the employees (a free med-check, if you will).....and  that he should try to get an appointment scheduled before he comes home.  He tells me that he will "be fine".  At 6:00, Matt comes home from work hunched over and barely walking, but he's still telling me he is "fine"!  I tell him that I have muscle relaxers in the medicine cabinet from when I was having neck spasms and encourage him to take one.  He doesn’t think he needs muscle relaxers, because he is just  "fine" and just needs to lie down to feel better. 

           By this point, our date is obviously canceled, and I pretty much forced my husband to get in the car and go to med-check.  I know that I don’t sound like a very sympathetic person at this point in the post - that’s because I’m not.  Seriously, I really don’t feel sympathy the way some do.  I wish I did, but I don’t.  For some people, I think sympathy is a real gift.  For example, I believe that my mom has that gift, the gift to truly feel the pain that someone else is feeling and hurt with them.  I'm more of a fixer.  I'd rather exhaust myself trying to fix a problem than feel sympathy over a problem.  Regardless of my lack of sympathy, I tend to feel less of it when someone is physically hurting and refuses to see a physician (ie: a healer of physical pain).

             So anyway back to my Friday night…...we end up going to med-check….in concert traffic!  Yes, that's right, because we live just a few miles from where the concerts perform on the north side of Indy.  While everyone was driving to see Miranda Lambert, I was driving to med-check.  Did I also mention that I'm not a very patient person?  Wow, I'm revealing a lot of my character flaws in this post.   Half way there, Matt tells me that he has a medical card from his work (not to be confused with our insurance card), and  we can put up to $1500 of medical expenses on it.  I ask where the card is.  He tells me he left it at home!  I ask why it’s not in his wallet.  Get this…..he never uses it, so why keep it in his wallet!  Refusing to turn around in concert traffic, we go ahead and pay the co-pay for med-check and a couple hours later, the doctor tells us that Matt is having back spasms and prescribed….wait for it….the same medicine that I had at the house for my neck spasms!  MEN….why do they have to be so difficult when it comes to being sick or in some kind of pain! 

            In all seriousness I love my husband, but he drives me nuts when it comes to being sick!  I don’t doubt for one minute that he is in pain when he is ill, but whining to me about that physical pain won’t do anything!  I went to school to be a teacher, not a doctor!   Here’s a tip for all men out there, because this seems to be a man thing - if you want to feel better GO TO THE DOCTOR!!!!

            O.k. then, so that was my Friday.  Looking back on it now, I find the situation funny, but in the moment, it wasn't very funny....just frustrating.....yep, very, very frustrating.  Now that I got that off of my chest, I’ll move on to the rest of my weekend.

            Saturday, if you recall, we were supposed to continue work on the floors.  We had two good weekends of work around the first of May.  The past four weekends Matt’s brother (who lives two hours away, has all of the tools for the project and is soooo wonderful for helping us on this massive project) had to work, and our floors  were understandably put on hold for a month.  Well, after the med-check incident, Matt naturally called his brother and told him that he didn’t think he would be much help this weekend, not to mention Matt’s brother’s wife is due to have a baby any time.   In the end, the timing of things just didn’t work out for anyone this weekend, so the floors in our loft still look like this……

…… a ripped up mess!  I’m not sure when they will be finished.  I like things finished, so this drives me a little crazy.  At the same time, I’m kind of glad that Matt’s brother stayed home this weekend.  I was really worried about his wife and the baby, and I’m glad that he stayed home considering his wife's condition.   If Matt’s back didn’t go out, his brother would have probably come up (another man thing, I’m sure of it), and I would have been worried about his wife the whole weekend.

So instead of working on our floors Saturday, I went to work and took the girls swimming…….

…..while Matt lay in bed drugged up on muscle relaxers and pain killers…..

            Since the doctor told Matt that it would be bad for his back to stay in bed all day, we ended up having a weekend date after all.  It wasn’t what we had planned, but we ended up going out to dinner Saturday evening and doing some shopping for our upcoming California trip at an outdoor mall just a few miles from our house.  We had a really good time together Saturday night.  So much so, that I almost forgot how much my darling husband drove me crazy the night before;) 

And the moral of the story is…..

You can't control the uncontrollable.  Sometimes plans change…..just deal with it and make the best of what you can:)