I'm planner, a worrier. I have contingencies for my contingencies. A rapid change of plans? Forget about it. I've worked for a major US airline since before 9/11, but even when security wasn't like it is now, I never just hopped on a plane on the spur of the moment. I never got bumped off of one flight and decided to go somewhere else instead. That's not how I roll.
So one morning while I was home—still in my pajamas and drinking coffee—the cell phone rings. It's my dad. He talked to the painter and he'd be over in 90 minutes to take a look around.
Panic!
First thing I did was jump in the shower. After I got out, I ran around trying to make the house look presentable. I'm taking rooms apart as I try to get rid of junk and it was mass chaos everywhere you looked.
But I've also got chaos exploding in my brain. My planned out day is now shot to hell and I'm mentally scrambling to reorganize some sort of schedule. This is absolutely the kind of thing that I hate—spontaneous events. Blech!
I don't even like good surprises. As a kid, I always hunted down my Christmas presents no matter where my parents hid them. I had to know what I was getting. It wasn't so much impatience as my need to never be taken by surprise. For real. I was usually okay with anything I got for the holiday, so it didn't matter to me what I found, I just needed to see it.
Is there any woman alive who thinks it's a good thing to get a phone call saying that someone is coming over in 90 minutes when it looks like the house has been ransacked? I didn't think so. :-) This was definitely in the bad surprise category.
