Mar. 27, 2009 - Confessions of a CPP

My name is Heather and I am a Compulsive Planning Person, otherwise known as a Compulsive Planner.  This has become painfully clear to me as I have sat in recent days, pouring over travel books and websites in anticipation of my 25^th anniversary trip, a trip which is yet four years away.  Yes, I said four.  Granted, I have wanted to travel all my life and this is the first real trip I will ever take, other than a tag-along trip to Florida when my engineer was on deployment there in 1992.  So to say I am excited about this trip is tantamount to saying that Mt. Everest is a little taller than average, that the pope is slightly religious, that winter in the Arctic is a bit chilly…you get the idea.  But four years?  I asked myself, why am I planning this already?  Actually, my husband asked me that.  It never occurred to me to be a question that might need to be asked until my fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants husband spoke it aloud and I had no answer.  I am simply compelled to plan.

Just when this affliction began its insidious infection of my person is difficult to pinpoint.  Perhaps it started when I was a child, when, on New Year’s Day, I watched my parents haul out the road maps to plan our summer holidays.  New Year’s Day IS the appropriate time to plan summer holidays, after all.  Whether influenced by or simply inherited from my mother, I can not say, but I am grateful that she shares this infliction with me, thereby giving me someone to talk to when I plan ridiculously early.  She even shares my excitement about the trip and what’s more, she understands that planning is no less enjoyable or important when all plans must change at the last minute.

But perhaps Compulsive Planning is not all bad.  As a generally disorganized person, unlike my ultra-organized mother, planning helps keep me on track.  And for the most part my compulsion makes planning a very pleasant task.  I have always enjoyed planning holidays, which has resulted in us actually taking some.  And for the past 9 or 10 years I have relished the dog days of summer, when, under the heat of the sun, I have spread text books and planning pages out on the lawn chaise planning the children’s up-coming school year.  Enjoying the planning process has made these necessary tasks much easier.

So I ask you, when I have a compulsion to plan and enjoy it almost as much as the fulfillment of the plans themselves, why is it that the one task that must be planned week after week is so distasteful to me?  That task, one known to mothers and wives everywhere and one my mother ironically shares my distaste for, is meal planning.

Every Thursday I must plan the following week’s meals and from that put a grocery list together so that my family can continue to eat good meals each night.  Or at least good meals some nights, but they do eat every night.  It is a task that takes anywhere from an hour to an entire morning or longer.  It is a task that I loathe and begin to dread even on Monday – a full 4 days before it must be completed.  I beg my family for meal suggestions to make the task a little easier.  The children always have willing answers at the ready:  Grilled cheese, hot dogs, and spaghetti are their usual choices.  Hardly much to enrich my meal plan.  My husband is even less helpful, his standard suggestion being, “Something yummy.”  Sigh.  So the task is left to me.  But I do it willingly because I know that it makes each afternoon easier when I can simply look at my list and know what to prepare for that night’s meal.  Daily decisions are time wasters when they can be made all at once on a weekly basis.

So I guess I should be grateful for my compulsion to plan.  Even the one planning job I dislike is easier because I am a natural planner.  Many of them are simply delightful!  All of them make life easier or more enjoyable for having planned.

So, dear Husband Who Does Not Understand, don’t shake your head at your wife’s crazy 3-year-in-advance planning for our anniversary trip.  (Yes, I said 3 years in advance because wouldn’t everyone, even a non-planner, start planning a trip of this sort at least one year in advance?)  Be grateful that she has this compul…uh…skill that helps our home life run smoothly.  And be glad that this trip which you will only have to take once will be enjoyed by your wife for a full 4 years!  (And probably many more afterwards as I scrapbook the photos and show them over and over again to all our unfortunate friends…)

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Mar. 30, 2009 - Untitled Comment

Posted by Anonymous

This kind of reminds me of that commercial, where the husband comes home with a vacations for seniors book. "Oh, we will."

Michele

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