The Best Laid Plans

But Mousie, thou are no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy! Robert Burns

Even though I am not officially starting my "happiness project" until January, I am trying to put some of the things in practice now, especially when it comes to dealing with stress.
Anyone who knows me knows that the majority of my stress comes from last minute changes to my carefully laid plans. Being a planner is in grained in me. I love to look up at my calendar and see the plans for the month carefully laid out in each family members different color marker. It brings a smile to my face.
This past week was a very busy week. Everything was scheduled to the max, and I knew that it was going to be hectic.
However, I didn't plan for (a) Andrew to take a fall at work and dislocate his shoulder.....again (b) for my van to suddenly stop working Saturday night.
Keeping my reading in mind, I handled Andrew's accident calmly, rearranging some plans, and picking up the extra chores with a good attitude. I didn't respond so positively about the van.....in fact....the van was the straw that broke the camels back and I sat down on the floor and cried.
The good thing is is that the crying only lasted a short while, and I picked myself up off the floor, both literally and figuratively and kept going. By the end of the evening I was actually giggling about the "funniness" of "best laid plans". Instead of jumping to the conclusion that there was something horrible going on with our van, and we were going to have to sell our first born child to pay for it, how I was going to re-organize my week and why do things happen like this just before Christmas, I just waited. It turns out it was only the battery, and Andrew and my mother in law put a new one in in our driveway.
I learned something this weekend. While I am a planner, and will always be, sometimes when things deviate from my plans, it isn't always good to plan again, instantly developing plans a,b, c and so on. Sometimes developing those plans would cause more stress...sometimes it is better to take a step back, wait awhile and see what happens.