We had our housewarming party this past weekend and it went very well.
My parents drove from Grand Junction to attend. As a housewarming present, they brought all my junior high and high school yearbooks, letters, journals, all my college notebooks, plus a few items from childhood, including Holly and Heather Hobby dolls and my Cabbage Patch Kid, who was tragically named Merle Hara.
The most interesting box contains treasures I saved from my early high school years. Mixed in with magazine clippings of 1985’s most energetically pastel fashions was a list I made the summer before my freshman year of high school.
I must have checked the goals I reached. I’d like to congratulate myself for the complexion improvement and the BLAST I had at camp. It is fortunate I realized how to spell candystriping, or my summer may have been much different than intended.
Part of me snickers at Young Gretchen fretting over memorizing the map of my future high school. Hubby thinks my dude-meeting goal is hilarious. I gave up making lists of my goals a long time ago, unfortunately. There is great value in the act of expressing the direction you hope to steer your life. I admire the optimism of goal-setters and would love to feel the rush of making a checkmark next to a goal, accomplished.
My sister and I had Heather and Holly Hobby dolls too. It was fitting, considering our names are Heather and Holly.
Here is a daily grind goal making tip I can share with you. Make a moderate list at the beginning of the day of the things you want to get done. As you complete other tasks that weren’t on your list, quickly jot them down at the end of the list, (making sure to use the same color ink) and then immediately cross them off. *grin*
Aww, I bet the all the old sick “dudes” at the hospital would have loved having you “candystrip”. Hey, then you could have crossed two things off your list!
That made me laugh!
I laughed so hard at this. It was especially sweet that you posted this in your pre-9th grader handwriting.
I loved this!! Wish I kept lists like this!
Don’t you just love it when you come across things like this to help you remember the way you thought when younger?
I can’t believe I had forgotten about Holly and Heather! My sister and I had those dolls too! Thanks for the memories!
Apparently Heather Hobby was not a resident of Texas because I’ve never heard of her!
I loved reading your list. “Trim down thighs and butt” is still on my to-do list. Not sure that one will ever get a check mark next to it.
So fun! I would love to find something like that but I think all was thrown away years ago! I had a Cabbage Patch doll too and I loved Holly Hobbie! Memories, memories…
Wow, you were quite the efficient teen. I made lists too, and I used to draw pictures of how I wanted to be, and write little blurbs about myself, like celebrity introductions, making myself sound exactly as I wished I were. Was? Were. Anyway, isn’t it interesting, the egocentricity of youth, which is so cute to us now that we are older and not at all self-absorbed?
Laura: Oh, yeah, we adults are *never* self-absorbed.
😉
Candystripping. Oh my.
Thanks for the laugh.
I am so impressed that your letters don’t slant up or down hill. I still have a hard time with that on unlined paper.
I must admit that the idea of 8th grade candystrippers is not one I had previously pondered. You likely would have earned even MORE money for school clothes 😛
And I would like to know exactly whom thought it was a good idea to 1. Name a CPK “Merle Hara” and 2. Buy a CPK named “Merle Hara” Yikes! That’s why they let you see the name before you purchase the doll 😛
Thanks for sharing a bit of your youth with us. I have all kinds of this sort of junk in various places around my house and my parents’ house. Never thought to put any of it on the internet 😀
Oh my goodness!! I totally missed the “trim down thighs and butt” on my first reading!! LOL!! How’s that working out for you?? 😉
Gack! no idea how the “M” got on the end of that “who” I must uphold the dignity of other home educators 😛 can I blame it on using my DH’s computer and therefore a foreign keyboard?? Thanks!