Unplan

#167: Plans Come Undone

Sometimes, you just have to drop the grand plans so you can be a good friend.

I went to the city with a friend today. Over banana cake and a tropical smoothie, autumn winds carried her heavy words to a head which understands but doesn't know the depth of her pain. There were sunset-colored tulips we saw which I may give her one day, when she finally goes back to her homeland to reclaim her freedom. There are also two jackets, two sweats, and a glittery bag I need to be cured of. They join the fruits of another lapse in judgement last week, still sitting inside shopping bags. (And please, let me not think of the salon treatments I signed up for with her. It's all in the name of friendship. Bonding. Good hair.)

Yesterday, it was crab meat risotto with another good friend. It was in Leichardt where ladies in fashionable sunglasses transport you to a strangely-constructed Italy. Was that an uninspired recreation of the Spanish steps, the ones of cold gray stone? Were engineering undergrads tasked to recreate these supposed windows of Venice? The only thing close is this green window against a Medici pink wall, high above all the activity, noticeable only to me, I suppose, because I have a picture of the actual Venetian window it was trying to copy. But I loved the place, first because it's not the kind I see outside the bus window going to the University; second, because I had good company. Or maybe it's the other way around.

In the evening, I had planned to go to a 2nd church service just to see if it's better than the morning services I usually attend. I axed that plan because it had been a long time since this friend and I spent time together and cutting it short for something I could easily do the following week didn't seem sound.

But what shall I do with the rest of this week? All the time and none of the concrete plans I usually have. I want to strangle my abnormal friend who has been flip-flopping over flying to Sydney. If he hadn't announced his grand plan to drop in over my break, I would've made plans to go to Gold Coast with some hags instead of draining my extra money little by little on irrational impulses that leave me ready to clothe five other people for winter, while waiting for him to make up his mind. Maybe the converse works: sometimes to be a good friend, you have to push through with the grand plans. Or maybe I'm just freaking out over being caught without a plan on how to optimize the use of my precious break. Control Freak, be gone.

To cap it off, tonight, this other person cancelled his invitation to Port Macquarie after I started asking about details of the plan. Ah. How nice. Good thing I was merely asking for details to consider it as an option. Imagine if I was asking details because I really wanted to join. Boo.

With plans like these, who needs spontaneity?
Randomization, anyone?