If You Give A Hannah A Packing List

Laura Numeroff's "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie" is one of the most excellent children's books out there. "If You Give A Moose A Muffin" and "If You Give A Pig A Pancake" are also good--not quite mouse/cookie caliber, but still solid.

...it will be a happy mouse

Unfortunately, as I discovered this morning, Laura got a little carried away by her success. The quality of the "If You Give A..." oeuvre is now sadly tainted by the underwhelming  "If You Give A Cat A Cupcake," "If You Give A Pig A Party," "If You Take A Mouse To School," and "If You Take A Mouse To The Movies." The last two are particularly disappointing. Really, Laura? Not even a stab at alliteration? And why would you consider taking a mouse to school anyways? Mice like cookies. Not school.

...it will wish it had a cookie

At this point, there's obviously nothing to be lost by throwing another sequel into the mix. We could call it "If You Give A Hannah A Packing List (for Kenya)":

If you give a Hannah a packing list for Kenya, she's going to want her turquoise rolling duffle bag to go with it. When you give her the duffle bag, she's going to discover that it's filled with old Halloween and Purim costumes. This will remind her that she still needs to finish organizing a bunch of old photos on the family computer. So she'll leave the suitcase half-empty and go and work on the photo project. She'll find her high school graduation slideshow and watch it. And watch it again. 

She'll decide that everyone needs to see how cute she was when she was little, so she'll try to post the pictures to Facebook. But the Internet won't work. She'll probably go upstairs to complain to her dad. When she gets upstairs, she'll find her sister and her mom watching "The Voice" and folding laundry. She might join them. After "The Voice" is over, she'll bring her laundry back into her room and start to put it away. 

As she puts stuff in her closet, she'll find her old pair of glasses. So she'll have to try them on. She'll probably go into the bathroom to see how they look. They won't look very good, so she'll quickly put them on the bathroom counter, where she'll see all of the pills required to travel to Africa. She'll start putting them in a bag. As she's considering whether she needs to bring Benadryl in addition to Malarone, Loperamide, Cipro, Ambien, Ibuprofen, Claritin, and leftover Vicodin from an old operation (just in case), she'll think about opening a pharmacy in Africa. She may find her mom to run this idea by her. Her mom will probably take advantage of this opportunity to make Hannah try on some pants she bought at Old Navy. 

Hannah will try to escape. It won't work. Her mom will ask her if she's going to pack the pants, since they "look very Kenya." Hannah won't really know. Her mom will ask her how many pairs of pants she's planning on packing. Hannah won't really know.

So...she'll go back downstairs and print out another copy of her packing list.


Hopefully I'll be packed by the time I'm scheduled to leave San Francisco tomorrow. Maybe it would help if I had a cookie.