a real young women's gem

yesterday, i went home to do some laundry, have a dermatologist appointment, and hang out with the fam. while i was there, i pulled down the remaining four boxes of stuff that i had left at my house from their spot at the top of the garage and started to sort through them. these boxes were filled with all sorts of memorabilia: high school yearbooks and photo albums, my letters for my non-existent letterman's jacket, my baby dolls from eons ago, my (very, very numerous) soccer trophies and medals, AP US history notes (apparently i couldn't bear to throw them away when i packed the boxes five years ago), young women's binders and laminated quotes, random postcards and decks of cards and keychains from costa rica and canada and niagara falls, and all sorts of forgotten gems that i greatly enjoyed seeing and remembering.

and then i threw most of it away. we condensed the four boxes into two, took pictures of the to-be-trashed, and called it a good day's work. the two boxes will hopefully squeeze into our car for the road trip back to north carolina and the yearbooks and photo albums will go onto our bookshelves and everything will be where it belongs.

as i was going through my beehives binder, though, i found something that i had thought had been lost. it was dated 10/13/02 (almost an entire decade ago!), written in my own fourteen-year-old handwriting (original spelling and capitalization has been preserved), and was titled

Qualities I Want My Future Eternal Companion to Have:

• loves the Lord, Jesus, and the gospel
• believes in the gospel; testimony
• believes in me; has faith in me
• intelligent
• interesting to talk to
• fun to be around and hang out with
• return missionary
• trustworthy and honest
• loves me
• will love our kids
• understanding
• respects me
• not overspending/frugal with money
• good sense of humor/funny
• good temper
• physically fit
• patient
• won't rule over me, will let me be his partner
• lets me make my own decisions
• humble
• not criticizing or complaining
• hardworking and ambitious
• loves art and music/cultural
• knows me well enough to order my dinner for me
• is my BEST FRIEND
• I LOVE HIM
• he protects me
• courteous and polite

first of all, don't think too highly of my fourteen-year-old self: i'm pretty sure the accompanying YW's lesson was about how the first thing on your list should be that your future husband has a testimony and that you shouldn't have things like "tall" and "handsome" on your list (because i'm pretty sure this was a revised, after-lesson version and "tall" and "handsome" were prominent features on the original one with a testimony as more of an afterthought instead of item number 1).

and, not that i had TOO high of expectations as a brand new miamaid or anything . . . but i don't know if tommy could really order my dinner for me reliably. he said he could probably do it 50% of the time. 

otherwise, i think it's pretty much spot-on.