For the past two weeks, I have been in Texas helping my mom recover from knee surgery. She’s doing great (hooray!), so I have some free time to tell you about My Life.

I haven’t experienced a  Texas autumn since 2006, and I must declare for all the worldwide web to hear that it is utterly perfect! I was seventeen the last time I felt this room-temperature breeze and gazed at these clear blue skies, so obviously I didn’t appreciate it in the slightest. But now? Now I could write an ode or even a sonnet to this glorious weather if only I weren’t too lazy to look up what makes an ode an ode and a sonnet a sonnet. Rhyme? Meter? ABABABABORING. In lieu of that, here is a kind of weird picture I took of myself yesterday in my backyard.

Maybe instead of a poem, I’ll write a navel-gazing B-movie entitled Sleeveless in November.

Aside from loving the weather, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on what it was like to be seventeen and how much I have grown up. Turns out, not that much!

FOR EXAMPLE:

• In 2006, I loved food and thought cooking for people was such fun!
•  In 2011, I feel the same way except now I use the Epicurious app (with its shopping list function that makes me giddy every time) instead of Post Punk Kitchen (I don’t think PPK has an app). Also, back then I used Sazón Goya with abandon. It was my secret ingredient! Now I know that it’s mostly MSG, so… (Sorry if I fed you anything back then. I promise I had no idea.)
• In the fall of 2006 I read Nylon, and now I am reading the same issues of Nylon (October 2006 and November 2006) that I read back then because by some bizarre coincidence I found them in my room. Had not seen them since 2006 and they were just there. On my bookshelf. I mean, what are the chances? Would a cable news outlet be interested in covering this story, I wonder.
• In 2006, I loved Sixties fashions.
• In 2011, I love Sixties fashions. Only more. And the universe has rewarded this love with Pan Am and Mad Men episodes on my mother’s DVR.
• In the fall of 2006, I was diligently working on my college applications.
• In the fall of 2011, I should be diligently working on job applications.

See? Not so different.

Except now I consider my house to be less of a prison (ugh, curfews!)  and more a softly-lit suburban paradise.

And I can’t think of anything more fun than hanging out with my mom.

And I took inventory of my friends when reading my Senior Scrapbook (2006-2007) yesterday. Do you know how many of my closest friends from high school still live here? ZERO!

If you must know, the first two pages of my scrapbook were as follows:

1. A page dedicated to my favorite coffee shop (R.I.P.).

2. A page about this awful full-body allergic reaction I had. Complete with pictures of me in my disfigured state. (I don’t get it either…)

You should thank your lucky stars for the blurriness of the above picture.

The end.