A story of meltdown

I have become such a control freak that I no longer handle change well. I can't remember if I talked about it previously on here, but I think growing up my life was so damn out of control that as an adult I hold very tightly to my routines and rituals. Either that or I was born with it and no amount of therapy will help.

Every Friday for the past 4-5 years I have stopped at Starbucks and gotten the same drink and same food in the morning on the way to work. If I didn't work Friday, I would go Thursday. About a year ago they opened a new Starbucks that is on my route to work. Yay! So I started going there and ordering the same drink and food.

Now that we have Aaron every other week and he's going to Bowie, I have to drive out of my way to take him to school and then figure out the coffee route. This morning I tried something new: I went to a new Starbucks. I drove up and there were probably 12+ cars in line for the drive-thru. After finding a parking space and walking back to the store, the whole patio was covered with soccer moms dressed in workout clothes. (They were only kidding themselves; they just didn't want to get dressed this morning.) Going inside, there were at least 20 high school students waiting in line for drinks. The girls in their skinny jeans, Ugg boots and horizontal-stripe long sleeve t-shirts and the boys wearing jeans and Aero/ Aber t's. I didn't even get fully inside the store. I decided I couldn't handle this much change at once. Not only was it a new store, but it was a whole different group of people, very different than the mellow Oak Hill Starbucks with a few people inside reading the paper and chatting and the standard 4-5 cars in the drive through, or the S Lamar store with the perpetual Pop-A-Lock guys hanging out outside and the weird laptop dude that only people-watches.

So I did what any other not-sane person would do: I backtracked halfway home to go to my Oak Hill Starbucks. I added about 20 minutes to my commute, but that's okay, this is worth it. Then lo-and-behold, there were two new people behind the counter. Any other Friday that may not have been huge, but I was still trying to recover from my anxiety of the last 20 minutes and I almost wanted to cry. Almost. I kinda tried to tell the new guy what happened (kinda) and it didn't really make sense, so I ordered my usual fare and went over to wait by the bar. Then I saw the girl who usually takes my order smile and wave, so it was maybe not so bad. My Starbucks had not been completely invaded by newpeople.

I got my fare and left.

I think I need therapy because this is pretty much not-okay.