one crazy summer

This has been a crazy summer. Last time you heard from me we were in the middle of packing up and moving and our house looked like this for the week before graduation:

So accurate. Rhoda just watching TV all day while we packed up and ran errands and cried a little inside for leaving Philly. Thanks be to my mom for coming to hang out for a week and watching Rhoda while I got a dent in the packing and to Robbie's parents who drove with Robbie cross-country with all our worldly possessions. Next time I really hope we just spring for professional movers and save us all the physical/emotional toll of moving.

Then, there was graduation!!

It was such a great day. The group picture is Robbie with his Lauder classmates at the end of their informal graduation ceremony after the big Wharton ceremony. Robbie traveled/lived with them and since there are only like 60 people in the Lauder class (compared to the 900 in the Wharton class) it was just really easy to get to know all of them better and they were some of our closest friends in Philly. I cried at the end of the day because I felt like we didn't get enough time with all of our friends before we had to leave (THE NEXT DAY). But, packing beckons I guess. 

Us on the front steps of our house on Pine Street just before I turned in our keys. Sob, sob. Fortunately I just had to drive down to Virginia to spend the week with Eliza before flying out to California so that didn't really feel like I was *really* permanently moving...

I was in town just in time to go to Ida's "Grandfriends Day" at her school, which meant I got to eat snacks and sit in a tiny chair next to her desk and just see what an afternoon at Ida's school is like. It was super cute. Also Ida asking me if I wanted to go made me melt a little.

Rhoda and I flew with Eliza and Polly to LA for my niece's mission farewell, which was great. I love hanging out in Malibu on a beautiful summer weekend and I love hanging out with my siblings. I think we've really hit our stride in adulthood. We also got to visit my two grandmas—Grandma Helen (above) is turning 101 next week! I also spent the week in Monrovia while Robbie was in Boston for work training, and after he got back we drove up to Redwood City together and started unpacking.

Somewhere in there I went to my sister Phoebe's house in Oregon to babysit her three younger kids for the week while she was on trek. These pictures pretty accurately sum up the week (passing the time with Snapchat + driving a minivan).

When Phoebe got back we flew down to LA together to go to my Grandma Mary's funeral. She passed away less than a week after I left Monrovia. She had been very ill with bone cancer that she was diagnosed with in January and her body finally succumbed to the cancer months later. I was really happy that she was fairly coherent during both of our visits while I was home, but I was also really relieved that she was going to be free from suffering after all that time. I still can't believe how well she was handling such a tremendous amount of physical pain. The funeral was amazing and honored her memory so well. I miss her a lot and think of her every day.

Settling in to life here has been really great. The first month with all the travel and the emotional state I was in after my grandma died was a little crazy but we've hit a pretty good groove. I've been SUPER busy! Everyone's busy but I'm not used to being this busy with a kid at home. I started working from home super part time for a small business in Philly, and I also decided to start taking piano students and I've got two (!) starting in a couple of weeks. And then Rhoda starts preschool next month (!!). I hadn't been planning on putting her in preschool till next year because she's not 3 till November but Robbie and I talked about it for a long time and we both decided it was going to be best for all of us. Also, preschool here = $$ = I needed to add to our family's income so it all worked out pretty well.

Some other pictures of life here...

Rhoda dressed how my grandmas dress (no, seriously)

A little Sunday stroll/dinner at Mori Point

Major perk of living in the RWC—my cousin Karl and his wife Laura (and their awesome dog Louie) live like 10 minutes away and we see them all the time. It's the best.

Another major perk—living by lots of dear old friends and getting to hang out with them whenever we want! For some reason everyone just wants to live here. I invite all of you to follow their example so we can be neighbors.

My parents came for a visit (that's my dad hidden under that yellow blanket—why is he so tiny) and it coincided with Robbie's birthday. Also, my dad helped me with like a dozen house projects. Thanks, Dad.

And I leave you with this picture of Rhoda who somehow made it to the floor one night in her sleep. I'm feeling the same way after this update. Phew! See you guys in six months!

moment

My mom has been uploading lots of really great old photos on Facebook every day (and some not-so-great photos of me circa 1997-1999) and I've been really enjoying looking at them and seeing comments from people who have memories about the events in the picture. The one above was actually posted by my sister Bonny, and it's of my mom and her brother Richard. My mom is pregnant with Bonny in this photo, which means she's 25 (?) in the picture, so about two years younger than I am now. I hadn't seen this photo before until this week but I love it so much, for lots of reasons. I knew when I was looking at it that it was taken in Utah (a place/era in my life that I miss very much from time to time), where my parents were planning to settle down. I love that it's a candid photo, sort of simultaneously dated and timeless, and captures a perfect summer moment. It also captures this moment in time that at one point seemed really distant and foreign to me, and now, well, that's my life. (Not pregnant with a popsicle, though my mom does make that look really appealing.)

I remember being a kid and looking at old pictures of my mom from this era and thinking "there is no way that this is my mom," especially because my mom had me 15 years after this photo was taken. Gradually I began to relate to a lot of the scenarios depicted—college, graduations, weddings, etc.—and now it's just a little thrilling to see these pictures of my parents (especially pre-babies) and think about them being on the cusp of a really exciting time in their life. I have this really horrible habit of not being able to live in the moment, but these photos have really been helping me try to focus on those moments rather than trying to speed up time as rapidly as possible.

ten years

Today marks ten years and 2500+ posts of blogging here. Can you believe it? I still kind of can't. The other night I spent lots of time reading old blog posts and looking through old pictures from the past ten years, and the only deep thing I concluded is that lots of unimportant things have changed, but some really important things have stayed the same. The picture above, for example, is of me and my childhood BFF Tim, almost exactly ten years ago at his 17th birthday party. Unimportant things that have changed: I don't flip my hair out with a small barrel curling iron, have braces, or have way-too-thin eyebrows anymore, and Tim (hopefully) doesn't wear red ties and black dress shirts anymore. Important thing that hasn't changed: Tim and I, through the miracle of the internet and social networking, are still friends and keep in touch—something I would not have thought would be the case when I left for college almost ten years ago. Thank you, blogging!

All of my early blog posts are littered with LOLs and complaints about boys, but they are kind of hilarious and I miss hilarious 16 year-old me. I posted 3-4 times a day sometimes! And I always had something ridiculous yet insightful to say—usually commentary about daytime TV, Ben Affleck, or John Mayer. And then we get to college, where my blogging tapered off due to time spent doing homework/thinking about doing homework but not actually doing it, or thinking about boys I had a crush on. Then midway through there I met Robbie—my blogging definitely took a nosedive there, which makes me a little bit sad, because I really would love to hear what I had to say about Robbie at the time. And now? I spend more time reading other people's blogs than writing on my own, and when I do post anything, it's pictures of stuff. Wah wah.

The most important thing to me about blogging now is that I'm able to keep in touch with people, and that I'm able to meet new people from all over the place. It's a little bit insane how big the blogging world is, yet it is kind of teeny-tiny because of the connections people feel comfortable making. This is how I like to live my life in the real world, so I'm glad that blogging has turned into a community and a "thing" that people do.

Here are some of my favorite posts from the archives from each year of blogging. Some funny, some serious—all awkward and about boys. Bear with me while I pull these skeletons out of the closet.

• On sixteen year-old me (what the heck was up with my taste in music?)
• On breaking up with your first boyfriend (bonus from 2003 for fellow MHS-ers: when my German teacher called me to ask me to explain the plot of "Alias" to her)
• On celebrities, and movies that are "sensitive and true" (I just laugh that I appear to have such a tenuous relationship with my mom in some of these posts. Being a teenager is tough.)
• On weird roommates
• On being vague when a boy breaks your heart
• On being vague when you fall in like with a boy (I wrote this post right before Robbie and I had our first kiss/went on our second date [in that order]) (side note: 2007 was actually a GREAT year for blogging and life in general—deserves its own retrospective.)
• On being still (good reminder)
• On Paris
• On writing notes to my younger self
• On accomplishments, love, and loss 

Thanks for keeping up with me over the years. I'm looking forward to the next ten.

Once upon a time, it used to be bike weather

The other day, Naomi sent me some funny pictures that she had taken (and that I had forgotten about) from a few months ago, when we rode our bikes to Hains Point for Mark's birthday party. By the end of the night we didn't feel like making the long trek back home so we piled in Naomi and Josh's SportWagen (vah-gehn) with both of our clunky bikes. And wouldn't you know, you can fit four people and two bikes in a vah-gehn and still manage to not get pulled over. (But I wouldn't recommend it.)

Side note: I really wish that it was warm enough to ride my bike to Hains Point right now.

Happy birthday WIBN, or, why I don't publish my blog archives

I started this blog nine years ago today. Nine years! I was only... okay, how old was I? Sixteen. I had to count on my fingers for that one. To give you a little context, this is me in January 2002:

Things haven't changed much.

Anyway, I always remember the date because it's also Andrea Edmonds' birthday. (Happy birthday, Drea!) I'm not exactly sure what the motivation was to start a blog, but Blogger was a relatively new application and my friend Nicole had just started a blog, so I thought, "Why not?" My sister Eliza was away at BYU and I missed her, and blogging was a fun way of communicating with her and Nicole in the days before free long distance calls on cell phones. And then my family and friends started joining and comment boxes became standard (seriously, Blogger didn't use to have a comment option... what is the point of not having a comment box?) and it's just a lot more fun now. (Although for the first time in nine years I ran out of free photo storage on Friday. I guess it's been a while.)

This blog has mostly been an outlet for my frustrations, a place to laugh at myself, to cry about boys (I actually had to go to my archives a while ago and remove some last names of boys I used to like when the internet became more searchable), to keep in touch with my family, to make new friends, and just to indulge some of my narcissistic tendencies. It hasn't really changed much since I was sixteen, except for my obsession with "Which John Mayer song are you?" quizzes and my overuse of the phrases "lol" and "flippin' cool." Embarrassing. There are some really great gems in there though, like an account of when my dad built a handcart and decided our family should go camping in January, or any time I live-blogged an episode of "Days of our Lives."

Here's part of what I wrote in my first post, to give you a taste of teen Hannah:

"Guys, GET READY. The movie of the century comes out next Friday. Yes folks, "A Walk to Remember". I'm so excited. And I mean come on... it's PG. I'm so thrilled."

It can never be said of me that I didn't care about the issues. You know what I'm saying?

Just thinking about Noah

I'm looking for old family pictures on my family's blog to manipulate for a class assignment but I'm getting distracted by pictures of events that I remember. Whether or not you know my little brother, I think that we can all enjoy a picture of cute little camper Noah.

I just don't know anyone who would want to watch anime with me

Someone just knocked on our door, and I was in my pajamas, so I threw on some jeans and ran to the door and no one was there by the time I opened it. FREAKY. No answering doors while husband is gone. Instead, I will hide in my bed with a bowl of ice cream and watch Unico in the Island of Magic. On YouTube.

What, that wasn't your favorite movie as a kid?

(Update: Okay, this movie is much weirder than I remember. Haha.)

Reminiscing

Robbie and I like to play a game called "What fun things were we doing a year ago?" Sometimes it's less fun than it is depressing. A year ago this weekend we were mourning the death of Michael Jackson and embarking on one of our favorite adventures in Europe. Or ever. We took the train up to northern France, rented a car and drove all over the coast, and enjoyed spending time together and with friends. I miss la belle France.

Memento

I just got these pictures emailed to me yesterday:


This past week has been full of interesting flashbacks for me. My mom found out that my 5th grade teacher died last week, and I posted the picture of my 5th grade class on Facebook and it got tons of comments from classmates that I haven't talked to in years. Tim wrote a post about the weirdness that was being in Ms. Conte's class. Then I got a couple of emails from Davey, a kid that I grew up with and haven't seen in years either. (He does hang out with my little brother and with Tim, so I feel like I've kept up with him to some extent.) Davey is the one who sent this card to me.

First of all, what a weird card. The monkey? Don't really understand why we chose a monkey for the front. My wording? "Mindless event"? Haha. Signing my full name?? So awkward and formal! And the captions that I wrote on the little books in the borders, if you can't read it, say "How to Handle A Crisis" and "Handling Death." Wow. I was ten.

I vaguely remember making this card. Davey's brother was shot and killed. It was gang violence. It was so weird to see this card! I just can't describe how I felt when I opened this email and read Davey's note and closing with "Thanks again." Can you imagine being a 5th grade teacher and explaining to your class that your student's brother was murdered in a gang incident? Because I can't. And it never occurred to me how much it affected Davey back then or now. He wrote this great post about it on his blog and it gave me a lot of insight into someone that I simultaneously knew really well and did not know at all, if that makes sense.

Monrovia is a pretty small community. Most kids I went to high school with I'd known since kindergarten or preschool. (Like Davey.) But I've only been to the homes of a few of those kids. I only knew a few people really well, I guess. I have run into the parents of classmates since I've moved away from home (or they've added me on Facebook), and I'm always so surprised that they remember me and weird things that I did as a kid/teenager. I think that around middle school I started going through a phase where I just hung out with Eliza and Noah and watched episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with them on the weekends, so I didn't make many close friends during those formative years. And I didn't care to, because a lot of the friends I did make in that time ended up hurting my feelings and moving on to greener pastures. Friends like Tim and Melanie remained pretty constant throughout that time and I still keep in touch with them. Everything else is just pretty superficial.

Now this post is beginning to get depressing, haha. I really value friendship and keeping in touch. I just wonder when I started valuing it? I don't think I did as much before I graduated from high school. Maybe it was because of all the feelings of betrayal when I was a pre-teen and teenager. Not to sound dramatic or anything, but life is hard when you are a nerdy kid with braces and reached your current height in like 7th grade. And girls are mean, and life is confusing.

I remember my older brother Harry telling me when I was in high school (and probably during a crisis) that I was lucky that unlike the classmates that gave me the most grief, I hadn't reached my "peak" yet. And I didn't really get what he meant. I think I do now.

Mighty Purdy

Our lovely NoVa friends Dannii and Jess and their serious baby Gunnar are leaving today for Thailand. Robbie has known Dannii since freshman year, and she is a woman after my own heart and loves keeping in touch with people. We got to see them for the last time this Saturday over milkshakes and a nice chat (and with our friends Christopher and Amelia too). I hate knowing that they aren't just a 45 minute drive away any more, but thank goodness Thailand is on our "must-visit" list.

We'll miss you guys!

Big news

Turns out we're moving to the District.


I've been really neglecting announcing this because a) it might only really be a big deal to us, and b) it still doesn't really seem real. Robbie and I have been talking about it for a while, but we found a place in the Capitol Hill/Eastern Market area that we just fell in love with. And the time was right and we felt good about it. So, we're moving in July 1st. So soon! Am I crazy? Am I already too busy with school to think about moving and getting rid of most of our furniture? Maybe. But we're doing it.

It'll be good for us. As much as we love our place, we have way too much space for two people. It's the biggest place we've ever lived in and we don't know what to do with all the space. Spare Oom is still very much bare, and we don't need a reason to fill up a basement and shed with junk. We're trying to go zen. (Okay, not totally. But we're definitely cutting back.) And we really want to enjoy city living while the living is easy (i.e., without children). And, well, I'm pretty much in the city till 8 or 9 pm as it is, so it'll make the commute MUCH easier.

We will really miss our ward, and we'll especially miss living within walking distance of the Mangums. But the bright side is that we're only like 20 minutes away from our current place, and we can still see our friends! We won't let the Potomac get in the way of our friendship... I hope??

(and if you know anyone looking for a place to live starting July 1st... send them our way!)

It's almost lunch time so I better stop thinking about hot dogs

If you're in Provo right now, do me a favor and get a J-Dawg in my honor for lunch and top it off with a Fresh Lime from Ripple's. I could really use some of that right now.

(photo via)

Notes to my younger self

Last week I walked to Georgetown to get a cupcake. (Second cupcake post in one week. Oops?) I was wearing a new pair of flats and they were KILLING my feet after about 30 minutes of walking around. Flats! They were being broken in but I didn't expect such pain from a pair of flats. Anyway, I thought back to a post that I wrote about 3.5 years ago in which I distinctly remember writing, "I want to be a city girl. I want to walk down the streets of New York in high heels." There are other really awesome parts of that post too, like when I mention my secret and not-so-secret crushes (I don't actually remember who they were...) and my habit of not showering. Sick, Hannah.

Anyway, the point of that story is that I often think about my desire in college to be urban and wear high heels and have a soundtrack for my life as I walk sassily (sassily?) down city streets. My desire to live a saturated picture-perfect life full of awesome and cupcakes (okay I have that, it's just not picture-perfect). And the reality is that I just bought my first pair of high heels only a couple of years ago and I live in the suburbs and high heels aren't really comfortable and my job is not glamorous.

And then I was looking through other posts and just laughing at my silly self. So naive. So impatient with being in college. I started making a mental list of things that I wish my younger self had known. Granted, I had many older role models to tell me that I should/shouldn't do these things, but who wants to listen to the voice of experience? NO ONE. So, here are some notes to my younger self. It's not really unsolicited advice because my younger self only exists amidst memories of waffle night and half hour dance parties. Maybe one day my kids will learn from my mistakes. Or some other college kids will listen to the wise words of wise Hannah.

• Don't be so eager to grow up. There are only so many years you can spend laying around poolside and getting sweaty at Half Hour Dance Party and singing karaoke and wearing your retainer/sleeping with a teddy bear and calling your parents to borrow money. Treasure those years.
• Also treasure the years that you live by Rory Bruggeman. Don't ask--just trust me:

• And treasure your girlfriends. There's no way to make that sound not cheesy but one day you won't be able to make it to weddings and other major life events and you'll feel sad.
• Don't kiss boys that you are pretty sure don't really like you back. Especially not if they wear pants that are tighter than yours. (You'll really regret this one later.)
• Don't be afraid to move out and move on. (I mentioned this in my "Secrets" post.) It will always be scary and you'll still sweat when you have anxiety but you'll get over it and make new friends and everyone will like you.
• Start making a habit of working out RIGHT NOW, because when you get busier it will get harder, and you will start gaining weight without warning and spider veins will start appearing before you know it. And you won't be able to stop it. I'm just saying. Fast metabolism will NOT always be on your side.
• Cutting off 9 inches of hair makes you really dateable.

I'm sure that I can think of a million other things, which maybe I'll post as I think of them.

What would you tell your younger self?

It's Friday, I'm ready to swing

This weekend has the potential to be really great, or just semi-great and mostly stressful. I'm really hoping for the former and I think I can do it. For the first time in a while I actually feel like I have a head start on my Monday class and I'm at peace with the world. Life is good. Even if it is almost 30 degrees cooler today than it was yesterday. Seriously! It's so April right now.

Lots of things on my mind this week. Missing friends and family and being nostalgic. Megan is marrying her one true love tomorrow. Tim is having a rough week. Isla is growing up before mine eyes. My one wish in my life is to have all the people I love living on my street. I'd even settle for the same time zone.

All the missing aside, I've made a lot of great gains in friends since we've moved out here. We've been lucky.

It'll be a great weekend.


And now I leave you with Ida, learning how to scroll through pictures by herself on Robbie's phone (success!), wearing her brother Theo's shirt. She really wanted me to put it on her, so I did. But only after I tried it on myself. It actually wasn't that bad; it was just a challenge to get it off. Moral of the story: you probably shouldn't be trying on three year-old boy's clothing when you're in your twenties.

Obsessed

Robbie let me buy Fruit Roll-Ups the last time we were at Costco. Sometimes I get these weird nostalgic food cravings (during that same trip we bought a huge box of Goldfish crackers, other times I get pudding cups) and I really need to satisfy them for a little time travel back to the 90s and Mayflower Elementary School. And what luck! The "new" Fruit Roll-Ups are "healthier," with no HFCS or artificial coloring, and they are gluten free! (You know, for my two or three non-gluten consuming readers.) I don't feel as guilty when I indulge in my tasty treat.

The funny thing is that Robbie has been participating in this flashback by acting like my mom, who used to get upset when we'd sneak a pudding cup here and there. "Those are for your LUNCHES!" he says to me as I guiltily peel apart my fruity treat. "Sorry, MOM," I sneer as I shove the roll-up into my mouth and run off.

Cosmo

I was sorting through some pictures that I scanned when I was at my parents' house a few months ago. Here is our cat Cosmo, who I liked to wrap up and pretend that he was a baby. I can't believe how cooperative he was (most of the time). He's now been gone more years than we actually had him but I still tear up a little thinking about him. Also, I have a framed picture of him as a kitten on my dresser. Don't judge me.

If a body catch a body coming through the rye, part II

Unless you've been emulating The Man himself, you probably heard that ol' Jerome David died today at the tender age of 91. Even though I had a Phoebe and an Esmé in my life for a while, I had my Salinger epiphany in Dr. Cutchins' American novel class. I just re-read a post that I wrote almost four years ago after discussing it in class and I've been thinking about it today. You can read it here.

I guess I wonder where I'm at now, and if I was ever imagining being at this point when I wrote that post. Right now I feel a lot like I think I sounded back then (if that makes sense), yet I feel like I've grown in countless ways. It's weird. Like my "surprising" admission that I just wanted to be a good wife and a good mom someday. I'm halfway there, so that's a relief.

Anyway, the link to that post is long enough that I'll just close with one of my favorite excerpts from The Catcher in the Rye:

He was just singing for the hell of it, you could tell. The cars zoomed by, brakes screeched all over the place, his parents paid no attention to him, and he kept on walking next to the curb and singing "If a body catch a body coming through the rye." It made me feel better.

It made me feel not so depressed any more.

Amazing things will happen

Today I'm lacking a little bit in original content. Sorry in advance. (For example: I stole the above picture from Jackie's Twitter. Thanks Jackie.)

My coworker Patrick asks me every day if I watched (fill in the blank) last night, even though he knows that every time I say "I don't have a TV, so no." On Monday, he asked, "So did you watch Conan on Friday?" And I had actually watched the last bit of the show online (featuring Will Farrell singing "Freebird," which was definitely worth watching), including Conan's closing monologue. It was so positive. I like Conan because he is tall and has marvelous hair (like me), and I like him even more now because of what he said:

Please do not be cynical. I hate cynicism. For the record, it's my least favorite quality. It doesn't lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you are kind, amazing things will happen. I'm telling you, amazing things will happen.

Karl made a good point and said that if he'd heard that over the pulpit, he probably would have ignored it. I don't know if I would have ignored it as much as I would have mentally filed it away in my "things I hear all the time at church" folder. It's just really refreshing to hear it from a famous guy that made lots of money to say those things. But I'm not going to be a cynic, so I choose to believe he was 100% sincere. I need those words to get me through work on most days when I make faces behind people's backs when I'm doing something I don't want to do.

This is always happening to me

Lately I've been wanting so many things I can't have. We keep talking about moving (not seriously, and not out of the area, so don't panic), I keep saying "I miss Paris," and Robbie keeps saying "how can that be since you wanted to get the heck out by the end." (And he's right.) A few weeks ago I was even missing Utah/Provo/BYU/my glory days. I got over that one pretty quickly. It's just one of those things that I do. Grass is greener on the other side, you can't always get what you want, blah blah.

Today it's super warm (like 60 degrees!) and rainy and since that was pretty much the weather all last summer, I can't help but think of Paris. I walked out of the metro this morning, and it wasn't raining, and then 30 seconds later the skies opened up and cried Monday tears all over the place. My hair is frizzy, the air is balmy, and it feels like springtime in Paris.

I'm not really sad. I'm just happy that I have the memories.

Gems

A little bit of insight into my teen years:

"9/17/03
Hannah--
I'm not too pleased that you chose to disregard our counsel about a cell phone. If you can afford a phone, you can pay me the $175 you owe me. Love, Mom."

I'm going through all of my cards and letters that I've received since I started college and throwing them out. It's really sad, but since I probably haven't looked at letters like that since I first got them, it's probably for the best. My mom wrote me a card or letter every day for the first month of college and this note was one of them. That particular one was funny to read again because I actually felt my heart drop a little bit, like my mom was scolding me right now. I don't remember the last time my parents scolded me. I'm glad those days are over. I'm also glad that the days of being upset with your college-age daughter for wanting a cell phone are over, too.

The background on that little nugget of disapproval from my mom is that I asked my parents to add me to their cell phone plan, and they said no, so I bought a Go Phone (which doesn't require a credit card or anything). Mom should have saved her ink, because the joke was on me: Go Phones cost like $30 a month for 100 or fewer minutes, and then a dollar per extra minute or something stupid like that. I'm pretty sure that my summer job money was wasted on that phone in my first semester of college. I blame my brother-in-law Matt for not stopping me, since he was the one who took me to the AT&T store in the first place. (Okay, I BEGGED him to take me and I think that he was looking for my approval since he and my sister weren't married yet. Haha, I kid.) No matter. I graduated college a fine young woman, and that phone made me REALLY popular in the dorms. Seriously. We freshman cell phone owners were few and far between.

Here's another good one--an "I Am" poem that I wrote when I was a freshman in high school, which my mom found in a pile of my stuff at home and then sent to me:

I Am by Hannah Terrill
I am super.
I wonder why my wrist hurts so much?
I hear Rachel laughing.
I see people not worrying.
I want an A in Biology.
I am beautiful.

I pretend that I have no problems.
I feel lucky.
I touch other people's hair.
I worry when no one's around.
I cry about stupid things.
I am unique.

I don't understand people.
I say too much.
I dream of being perfect.
I try to walk away, and I stumble.
I hope to please everyone.
I am Hannah.

I think this was the product of a Young Women's activity. I can't believe how much this poem DOES NOT describe me (nor did it describe me as a 14 year-old, except for maybe the crying part), and I really can't believe that I quoted a Macy Gray song.