Why Can't I Leave Well Enough Alone?

Are you like me? Do you have to change everything? Why can’t I leave things the way they are?

I can’t buy a dress off the rack without wishing it had a different belt or collar. I have even purchased two outfits together because I liked part of one and a different part of the other. If I see a piece of jewelry I like, it always has the wrong color stone. When I buy a purse, I usually can’t help wishing that the handle was more like another purse – the one that I didn’t buy because the color was not quite right. When I’m looking for a new haircut, I always desire the front of one and the back of another. I wish our new van had been available with a different color interior. Choosing new carpeting for our house was made more difficult because I liked the colors from one company and the texture from a different one. This is the story of my life.

Eating out is one of my biggest challenges. I can’t seem to ever order from a menu without sounding exactly like Meg Ryan in the movie “When Harry Met Sally.” Yesterday my husband and I had lunch in a nice restaurant. A smiling waitress took my order, but she wasn’t smiling for long. I noticed that her expression was slowly changing into a fixed, teeth-gritting kind of look. I don’t think it was my imagination that she was looking at me as if I were speaking a strange language. Just because I ordered a sandwich with a different filling, different bread and different sauce than the one on the menu? I think it might have been after I asked to have the salad made with romaine lettuce instead of iceberg, feta cheese in place of the bleu cheese, the dressing on the side and no bacon or croutons, that she started looking like she was about to laugh (or maybe cry).

I turned to my husband (who is never surprised by anything I do) and asked him if he thinks I am a perfectionist. All he could do was smile.

Hmmm… Am I a perfectionist or simply a creative genius?

Bobbie http://bestfairybooks.com