Sometimes surprises happen to you and sometimes you make them happen. I'm a frequent surpriser and a risk-taker so I'm ok with the possibility that my fun surprise for someone could be their un-fun nightmare.

Though this rarely happens because I'm a stellar listener, I have a weird elephant memory, and I generally reserve surprises for people I know. As a result I'm a damn good surpriser.

I'm also a huge fan of being surprised because it's hard to do. I'm stellar at noticing details (a blessing and a curse) so I often know what's coming. Then I do my "Oh my god, I had no idea!" fake surprise face.

But...BOOM! When all goes right and someone did something just for ME my jaded-New-York-City heart goes pitter patter.

And when it fails...

Maybe that someone didn't know me very well. Maybe he had different expectations about my reaction or maybe it was just bad timing.

Either way planning a surprise is a risk, and if you're going to be a risk-taker you need to be ok with failure. You need to be mature enough to manage your own feelings about your botched surprise, take full responsibility, and not blame the surprisee - because, ya know, she had no idea it was coming.

Making surprises happen is like living in the danger zone - be ready to fall flat on your face.

*Pic is from the Blogologues show where I nearly peed my pants from laughing.

They seemed like nice people. But I wanted to murder them anyway. The closeness, the kissing, the kissing each other so close to me on a Monday morning. On a packed subway on a Monday morning. I felt the overwhelming need to kill.

She kissed his face as he told a boring story about work. The boring story continued far longer than necessary due to her kissing his mouth, chin, cheek, neck - any available space on his person where she could smoosh her lips against, she did. Which wasn't difficult as they were the same height and were standing one inch apart. I stood three inches from them because I had no choice. The train was packed with people trying to go to work and avoid kissing.

My only weapon was a paperback book. I held it very close to my face so my eyes would not see the kissing couple. But I could not concentrate on the words because my ears could not stop hearing the kissing noises.

Smooch, smooch, smooch.

Kill, kill, kill.

When you aren't one half of a kissing duo you want nothing to do with kissing - seeing or hearing it. Certainly not on a Monday, not on a train, and not standing three inches away. This was how I began my Monday.

Surprisingly, my Monday evening ended with me as part of a kissing duo. Me, work crush, a street in Brooklyn...you know the drill. I can say with confidence that no one wanted to kill us because we weren't on a train nor was anyone standing near us.

It was the first time we'd ever spent time together alone, and it was initiated by him. As usual, the kissing was great and as usual I don't understand why I'm attracted to this man because our lifestyles are so different. But, not as usual, I don't care anymore. I had kissing on a Monday evening.