Things that may (or may not) happen on Marathon Meeting day

1. Your regular go-to gal (for babysitting) will be unavailable and at a once-a-year conference, but your sister saves the day and hangs out with your kidlets. (by the way sis - put your picture back up).

2. An accident will snarl traffic and turn a 40-minute commute into two hours of vehicular torture for half the participants of the meeting.

3. Your Meeting Moral Support will get hit with a major 'back-to-school' sinus infection. (This is the bug that hits parents every year during the first week their kids return to the cess-pool that is the public school lunchroom), but new Meeting Moral Support will magically appear.

4. You will only discover that it is Marathon Meeting day when you arrive.

5. Your mom will not be available by phone when you try to find a sitter to cover the last half of the day.

6. But she will, by the miracle of Caller ID, be able to track you down and bail you out.

7. Work will sort of get done during the first meeting - that is, if you count scheduling another meeting as work. Really, we mean it this time. I mean next time. Next time we will get the work done. (Karen, you know I'm just having fun with this, right?).

8. Let's enjoy a beautiful, tasty lunch now that we've scheduled another meeting.

9. Moving on, the next meeting will be full of non-stop action, tension, and drama and last for four and a half hours. No wait, I'm pretty sure that was a Kevin Costner movie. Anyway, four and a half hours!

10. The important thing is that actual work will get done, even though the last hour will be a tap-dance/merry-go-round. Oops, did I say that out loud?

11. You will get a killer Marathon Meeting headache, but an angel will buy you a Dr. Pepper because you only have nickels, dimes, and pennies. Blast! that vending machine, bless that angel!

12. Someone will bring some applique to sew on. You know, to keep their hands busy so they can concentrate and not because they are bored. For rude! These meetings are never boring, that's why we like to schedule more of them.

13. When you get home and tuck your girls into bed, they will be so excited to show you what they did for school that they will stay up doing math with you until 10:30. Your little girls are geniuses!