Not Flexible

This week has been a tough one and it's only Tuesday! No, really, I'd say the past couple of weeks have been a little hard.

Things keep popping up that make me realize I am not as low maintenance, spontaneous, flexible in my plans as I thought. I don't know why it took me so long to realize this. Surely, any family member of mine that reads this will bust out laughing that I ever thought I was.

Notable examples:

Don't rearrange the furniture in the living room with out first letting me know you plan on doing it soon and then the day you do it call me and give me a heads up that my environment is now different. I have a really bad reaction to walking in unknowingly and everything being different - i can't explain why but it hits some deep button of mine and I freak out. Not a verbal yelling freak out - more of my mind can't absorbed that things are different and it's ok that they are. It might stem from my teen years and being really protective of my room. I knew if someone had been in there and moved something which is quite a feat considering my room was messy.

Don't suddenly change the details of a plan on me when I've already figured everything out - I can get grumpy. Holidays have been a big change for me since moving. I know what you're thinking it's been 4 years but understand, the routine of the holidays are deeply set with in. From my birth I don't think the pattern of which family's house to go to for what holiday has changed - except for a few extreme cases.

For example, Thanksgiving has always been at my Dad's parents house. The years i'm in Oregon for Thanksgiving - who knows what the plan is. The very first year my Thanksgiving dinner was Jack in the Box. I was not happy. The following year I hosted with the help of my step-dad (he and my mom had moved up). Last year I was in Texas for T-day. This year i'm in OR and not until last night was a location and plan chosen. To make things worse there was a miscommunication and my m.i.l. thought that I was hosting again this year. No, nononono - maybe if we had chosen to do that plan a few weeks ago when we could have budgeted to feed the whole family but not on this weeks budget we can't. So, it's back to the very fist original plan of going to their house and i bring the stuffing. I get anxious if these things are not decided in a timely manner. Which mean i probably should have suggested hosting it weeks ago. Then again we'd probably be in the same boat because what stalled the choice was an invited for everyone to go over to a siblings of my f.i.l - this plan fell through.

Let me take a moment and say I love my in-laws! You always hear horror stories about them but I enjoy spending time with mine. From the very first holiday (easter) I was here they have always invited me over. So any ranting i do it's just out of my own issues of anxiety.


So, in conclusion I don't handle change well.