Life in a Nutshell

...Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love a Good Plan.

A/N: Bonus points if you have any feedback on my chapter title!

Have you ever had an experience so profound that it completely changes the trajectory of your life? I've actually had a couple, but this one....this one is actually the reason I've become the planning nazi I currently aspire to be.

I detest spontaneity.

Want to go to the store? Let me know the day before, so I can complete my list. Want to come over to visit? Don't just pop by I probably won't answer the door. Planning a trip? I start six months ahead of time. Making a holiday dinner? I buy as much as I can two weeks or two months ahead and freeze it.

I wasn't always this way, I used to enjoy doing things off the cuff. But no more. I was cured in 1999.

In 1996, my husband, then fiancé, and I decided to purchase a car together. His 1977 Hornet Wagon was on it's last legs: the linkage, transmission and a few other things would have cost more to repair than what the car was worth at the time.

My 1986 Mazda 626 was also dying. It was third hand and had hidden some issues I was unaware of when I purchased it. Like all four motor mounts were cracked, and I was close to having the engine drop out of the car.

Minor stuff like that.

So we decided to purchase the beauty that you see up above. It was a 1996 Plymouth Neon, strawberry red, and pretty cute for the time period. We paid less than $10,000 for the thing right off the showroom floor. I had some college money still in savings, and we both had good jobs, and no real debt. So we financed it, with a nice down payment.

For what we needed it for, it was a decent car initially. However when pushed it revealed it's true color.

By the fall of 1999 we had moved out of the hovel, (detailed in the chapter "Thankfully Yours" earlier in this story.) We had rented a cute two bedroom house in the town where we attended college.

When I was growing up, I lived on cattle ranches. My dad was a true cowboy, a hired hand that would move where the work was and take us with him.

Every time I moved I was allowed three cardboard boxes in which to put all my stuff. Literally, my childhood fit in three cardboard boxes. I moved eighteen times between the ages of two and seventeen. (There will be other chapters forthcoming about these adventures). But needless to say, I was done moving. I liked my job, my husband, and where I was.

One of the wonderful things that attracted me to Scott was his unflappable stability. He is a rock. Sometimes stubbornly and unmovably so, but mostly he has always been the safe haven I craved, but never had as a kid.

I never had the stability of a permanent home growing up. We could always move at any time. My folks never owned anything more than the clothes on their backs, a few pieces of furniture and a truck. It was nerve wracking, and I was perpetually excited and terrified at the same time.

My Scott is not an adventurer really. I appreciate that. I had already had my fill of adventure.

But this year we were going away on our first real vacation. We hadn't seen my mom since our wedding. She had moved across the country to help my widowed grandmother with her large midwestern home.

Scott has always been supportive of spending time with our families. Since we were "only" children, he welcomed the idea of having my mom fly out and then join us on our road trip.

My husband is an avid cyclist. He loves road cycling and mountain biking. He's very good at it too, and still rides several times a week when the weather is good. And even at least once a week even in the frigid Midwest winters. He's hardcore, and I'm such a pansy. I still wonder what he sees in me at times.