The Best Laid Plans......

I am a planner. Not an event planner, but a life planner. As in my life. Lives of others.

It's not that I'm a control freak, or that I go berserk if my plans don't work out. I just have to have them.

One of the things I loved most about Hubby when we got together (there were many.....still are) was that he is also a planner. In a previous wifetime, I would get sooooooooooooooooo irritated because the jerk I was married to wouldn't plan a thing. His philosophy was that we may get hit by a bus tomorrow, and all those plans would be down the tubes.

He did his Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve. At 4:00 PM.

I'm getting off the subject, talking about someone who REFUSED to plan. He's not worth the letters on the page.

My calendar is my lifeline. I've tried to go completely electronic, but it won't work. I have to see the calendar pages in front of me, with the whole month laid out. I still set reminders for myself on my Blackberry, and I email reminders to myself if I need to. But the paper calendar is the one I cling to.

I was going nuts last week because they still hadn't released the schedule for UGA gymnastics next year, and I was afraid there might be a conflict between one of the meets and a "symposium" (hell, it's a workshop, people, just call it what it is) for my virtual job. IT'S IN JANUARY, FOR PETE'S SAKE!!!!

Okay, maybe I wasn't really going nuts, but I felt ....... incomplete. I just like to schedule.

Hubby and I have already planned next year's vacation, a golf trip to the mountains that wives are actually invited to go on, and a weekend trip to the beach that must be taken in the winter. Long story.

When the gymnastics schedule was finally released, I wrote all the meets in my calendar (in red, of course) and started looking to see which AWAY meets I might actually be able to swing. Good Lord! (Hey Sisters - road trip!)

Football games have been penned in ever since I got the calendar. [I guess after I retire I'm going to have to wean myself off the academic year version.] It bothers me, though, that the times of some games aren't determined until later. It all depends on how our season goes and how the seasons of our opponents go. [If last Saturday is any indication, we WON'T be prime time material.]

I am furiously crocheting, working on an afghan for Hubby. [Well, not at this particular moment, of course, because it's next to impossible to type and crochet at the same time.]

Why am I working so hard, holding a bundle of wool yarn in my lap when it's still 90 degrees outside? Is it because Hubby is eager for his afghan? Is it a gift for some occasion? Like the sweater I made for my mother-in-law one year, crocheting until midnight on Christmas Eve, only to NEVER SEE THE STINKIN' SWEATER AGAIN?

No, it's none of those.

It's because I have already planned the next THREE afghans I want to make.

Not to mention finishing my cathedral window quilt.

I have planned my fall break, down to what time I will leave home to drive down for BikeFest, a three-day cycling event, and I have also planned my spring break, down to what time I will leave to drive to Florida. I have already determined that I will probably spend only one Friday night in June in my own bed, and I'm trying to figure out what to do with the dog on some of those occasions.

This is not to say that I'm rigid or inflexible or incapable of being spontaneous. My plans can be changed, sometimes on a whim. It just calls for a new set of plans.