I plan

I'm a good one for planning.

Travel Planning
Whenever we need to go somewhere, my husband usually lets me do the planning. It's just easier. If he plans, I bother him about the where, when, hows until he goes bonkers. Besides which I am usually a brilliant navigator and have an unhealthy affection for maps. I love the London Tube. I write city names by their airport codes. Which is why sometimes people want to know what is SFO. Er, it's San Francisco and I know it would be easier to just write SF, but I can't help myself. I've only gotten really really lost and confused in Rome. And that's only because the road maps changed over 2,000 years.

Life Planning
I'm not so inflexible that I make a life plan and stick to it. Too many variables to know which course of action may be best in the long term. But I always have a plan B. Call it an emergency backup plan or whatever, but you'll often hear me say "and if that doesn't work out..."

So you'd think I'd be good at chess. But I'm not. I suck at it mightily. Again, it's too many bloody variables, but none that make sense to me. It's all "if you move that rook there then that frees up the knight there but that leaves you open to the queen here." But I'm sitting there wondering, "does the rook really want to move there? I mean, it's not exactly the garden spot of the board, you know. Too many freakin' pawns."

My husband, who likes chess (and so we will never play each other if I can help it), finds this kind of reasoning of mine hilarious. We think so differently, he and I. I so easily accept and adapt to chaos in the system while he needs time to process and assess. He'll usually chose the first solution to a problem, whereas I want to see all the options and maybe even try a few out before making my final decision. If I try something and fail, I am less likely to be upset about it (though it depends on how much of my resources I used) than he will be if he fails. However, he is more likely to cut his loses and move on if a solution isn't working. I have to make sure it's really really not going to work first.

What does this all mean? Why am I blogging about this?

Because we are going to put a new vanity in the bathroom. What we have now is a sink sticking out of the wall. It has no room for him to balance his contact lens accouterments on and I hate getting dizzy when I have to turn around to the cupboard behind me to get the toothpaste, toothbrush, hair brush, deodorant, tweezers, etc. We also took one sink out already to make room for a storage cabinet, but never got it. We'd like something that floats off the floor, because of the location of the drain and it would be easier to wash the floor without legs getting in the way, but I could be flexible. It needs to have either six drawers or six shelves so that if we rent out the rooms (plan B which is quickly on it's way to becoming plan A), everyone will have their own space. It also needs to have a large sink area... preferably with two sinks, because I am always trying to brush my teeth while he's shaving.

He's found one in the first store he went to that he likes. Me.... ehhhh, I really don't like it. I don't hate it. But I would like about a bazillion other vanities more. Okay, maybe I hate it. So I'm hunting around and finding other options and he's not as pleased with them. The good news is that he does listen to my desires and is certainly not going to stop me from looking for a better solution and if I find one he's not going to quibble, he'll go for it, but I can't quite convince him to go vanity shopping with me. So I may just have to keep hitting up show rooms and DIY stores, Ikea and other insta-home decor locations. I don't mind doing this at all, I *love* to do this stuff. I'd love it if he'd go with me, I like to share the things that I love doing with the people I love.

But I know why he'd rather stay home. I tend to blow through stores really quickly, visiting numerous stores several times in quick succession. If I see something I like I start poking, prodding, leaving, returning, deciding that it isn't "friendly" even though it fulfills our requirements, leaving again, deciding to give it one more chance, returning, discovering one that I completely neglected before, falling in love, buying, suffering from buyers remorse, coming to terms with my decision, falling in love again.

I'm a pinball shopper. One who plans her assault on all bath-retail outlets. First the research, then the mapping of locations for the minimum expenditure of energy and time, then the shopping. For a friendly fixture who wants to come home with me and be in my bathroom.