The Waiting Game

What is anticipation to you? Because it seems to me that sometimes anticipation is a good thing, and sometimes it is the worst thing in the world... perhaps better labelled here as 'dreading'.
I wonder if you enjoy the anticipation before a birthday for example, the build up, the present list... the knowledge that on such and such a day you are having a party and you begin to plan out what you will wear, how you will do your hair, what food there will be etc etc. Do you enjoy that kind of anticipation?

What about when it seems that anticipation is just making an already bad thing much worse. I remember the second time I had to have impressions done of my teeth after my brace was taken off. The first time was aweful, I gagged, the dentist told me to shut up and it was perhaps the worst sensation in my mouth ever. Even worse than custard. But the second time?!?! It was pure hell. I knew exactly what to expect and as the appointment date got nearer and nearer I just about lost it completelty. And you know that people try to convince you that you remember things much worse than they actually are... I discovered they only say that to try and stop you panicking. It was just as bad if not worse because of all the anticipation. What do you think of that kind of anticipation?

And then I wondered whether somethings in life are only good experiences because of the anticipation. There is a slightly different angle here from my first thought because a birthday would be fun even if it were a total surprise. But what about those things that you count down so excitedly, each day crossing off the date on the calender getting closer and closer to that date you've circled in red biro... Would Christmas be as much fun without Advent? What about a holiday without all the pre-holiday preparation?

My final thought was whether sometimes when you're waiting for something you can't have yet and it feels like 'bad' anticipation because you're not just excited about an event but you're willing the days to go by thus wasting the 'here and now', whether when you finally get to where you wanted to be the waiting will have been worth it. I don't know if that makes any sense but here's a slightly trivial example. (Some of you may have guessed this isn't the thing that triggered off these thoughts of 'the waiting game')

A few years ago my parents bought me a beautiful woolly coat in November to be given to me at Christmas. It was, and is absolutely gorgeous. So unusal and warm with that lovely smell you get with proper wool. I wanted it soo badly there and then, the weather was pretty grim and I didn't have a coat anyway so I pestered my parents constantly to give it to me. Of course they refused; it was a Christmas present to be opened at Christmas. Full stop. Anyway, when Christmas finally arrived and I finally got this coat I'd been dying to have for over a month, I was dead chuffed. I reckon I could say I'd wasted time going on at my parents to give it to me when I know they wouldn't but did that change the happiness I got on Christmas morning when I opened it?
I honestly don't know. But what I do know is that sometimes I love waiting for things to happen, and sometimes it just totally sucks.