Real Summer Vacation

I WENT HOME FOR A WEEK AND IT WAS SO GREAT.

My one week of actual work-free summer vacation proved to be quite wonderful. I spent some time with family and friends and even got to relax outside in the sun. The highlight of the week, however, was of course the State Fair. I am a big fan of the fair. You knew that.

On Thursday, I went to the fair with Dan and we met his older brother Joe there. We ate everything, including fries, fried pickles, cream puff, bull bites, 1919 root beer float, and cookies. Then we had to rush home so that he could leave for Duluth in time for his Thursday night show. It was a sad goodbye because Winona and Duluth are kinda stupidly far away from each other.

FRY DAN

The following day I went to the fair again, and more joy was brought into my life. Mom and I went and met Kay there. We also saw Jill and all her crazy friends. We ate a foot long hot dog, pronto pups, pickle dogs, more fries, more cookies, and endless milk at the milk barn.

Friday night I met my friend Adrian for coffee and catching up before I left for school. He's a super cool guy and I'm so excited for him because he's going back to school this semester. It's been ten years since he first gave it a try and didn't do so well. But he is newly motivated and ready to go now. What an inspiration!

Saturday morning I caught coffee with another friend, Cozy. Cozy is so cool, I want to be her when I grow up. Meeting with her was an awesome way to end the summer.

The drive to Winona yesterday was sleepy. Moving was sweaty. And the night was full of trains rumbling our room. Can you gauge my level of excitement regarding being back here for school? It's low.

Bye Duluth

Last hoorahs in Duluth included:

• Lunch on the patio of Canal Park Brewing Company. Excellent food, mediocre service, surprise $2 charge for sitting on the patio
• Visiting Glensheen mansion, but not going inside because our friends weren't working and we didn't want to actually buy a ticket. 
• Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors. Super silly, super fun, and starring a super cute fella.
• Renegade Improv with Dan in the audience, not on stage.
• Beach Day Sunday. Awesome. Beautiful outside. Water that hurts your toes it's so cold.
• Lake walk and Canal Park
• Famous Dave's lunch

I had a seriously spectacular summer. Duluth was nice to me.

Canal Park Brewing Company lunch

A poster for dan's show at Canal Park BC

Glensheen

Legs at the beach

Nubs at the beach

Beach people

Last Day

I had an awesome last day today at work. We ate ice cream, cleaned up our favorite park, finished a goosebumps book, and ordered pizza for lunch! I had a half day so I left during rest time and all my kids gathered around to hug me and tell me they were going to steal my keys so I couldn't leave. There was a lot of mock sobbing which was both heartwarming and irritating as all heck. The day wouldn't be complete without a heartwarming/irritating experience, though. I also mopped the bathroom because someone peed on the floor... Yep, it was the perfect day.

As I was leaving, the preschool teacher gave me a sheet of paper that listed what each kid said he/she liked about Miss Abby. The list included the folowing:
-Doing projects and learning about new things!
-Playing and learning new games!
-When she reads books to us it was really fun!
-I liked that she let us read books as rest time and quiet activities.
and more

The other teachers also wrote their favorite things. They say they admire how I interact with the kids and that I will be an awesome teacher. MORE WARM FUZZIES. I have nice friends.

ICE CREAM

Cleaning our park

Semi-successful photo

Tonight I think I will relax and maybe pack up a little while Dan does his show, The Comedy of Errors. Tomorrow night I will go to the show and then catch him at improv afterward. DOUBLE SHOW NIGHT. I can't believe my summer is coming to an end already. I feel like it simultaneously crawled and flew by, even though that doesn't make sense. Sunday I will go home for some R and R before moving back to Winona. Classes start on the 26th! Gahhh.

Parks and Cookies

My coworkers are the coolest.

Today was my last full day at Endion. When I arrived in the morning, the center director gave me a card with a little gift and gift card, and then showed me this massive cookie cake she got to celebrate a summer with me and another lady who is heading back to school shortly. We went to the aquarium with all the kiddos and basically just had a grand old time.

I'm sad to say goodbye to such an awesome job and work atmosphere.

(I'm not actually that fat. It's a bad shirt. Also, don't look at the cookie in the next photo...)

Karen is realy awesome. And also super weird. I like it.

"Sorry to see you go!"

Tomorrow we are having an ice cream party catered by Bridgeman's to celebrate my last day. I am so excited! I am also taking my older kids to our favorite park because some hooligans wrote really bad words in permanent marker all over it recently - and that sucks a lot. We noticed it on Wednesday. There are horrible insults about someone named Sammy. Sammy was quite hated by our permanent marker artist. One of my girls asked, "Who's Sammy?" and another one replied, "Like Sammy's Pizza, Sammy?" And we came to the conclusion that Domino's did all the writing. DANGIT Domino's, YOU are why we can't have nice things.

Pros and Cons

I'm going to take a moment out of your day to write about something you probably don't care much about at all.

I left all my makeup in Winona when we visited for the family reunion. I wasn't too worried and I thought I'd ask my aunt Holly to send it all to me here in Duluth. Since then, I have decided being without makeup isn't the worst thing in the world, and that I will just meet back up with it when I return to it at the end of this month for school. While I pass the time until our reunion, I have begun a pros and cons list regarding Life Without Make Up

LIFE WITHOUT MAKE UP
A pros and cons list

Believe it, people. These are photos of the same human being, taken less than a week apart. 

No meth was involved.

PROS:

• I get ready half an hour more quickly. Not that applying makeup took/takes me half an hour, but somehow eliminating that part of my morning speeds up the rest of my tasks.
• I make much less noise in the morning, I have to imagine this is better for the sleeping Dan that is often present.
• When my eye itches, I can rub it.
• When I don't put it on, I don't have to take it off before bed
• I heard there are teeny bugs and bacteria that are attracted to mascara and live in mascara'd eyelashes. I don't have those this week.
• My skin is taking a vacation from foundation and that's probably beneficial. It hasn't had 2 weeks off like this in years, I think.
• We are outside a LOT at work. I wear sunglasses outside, and since the biggest difference in my appearance is due to the lack of eye makeup, when I'm outside I feel normal.
• My students say, "You look better this way, Miss Abby. I don't even remember what you looked like before." And also, "You should never wear make up again." I'm not joking. They actually said that. It was awesome.

CONS:

• My students also say, "You look different. It's weird." and "I barely even recognize you today, Miss Abby!" and "Will you ever get your make up back?" I'm not joking about that, either. They actually said that.
• Despite the break from foundation, my skin still erupted in blemishes, which I couldn't even attempt to hide even a little.
• I have super red cheeks that -when not camouflaged in a little makeup- cause people to ask me if I'm feeling well because I look flushed and possibly feverish.
• I feel like I look weird in nice clothes without a made up face, so I've kinda been dressing down. Over all, I feel pretty dumpy.
• I read somewhere that 67% of women received better treatment when wearing makeup. What's up with that.

I think it's a nice list. If I were using the jelly-beans-on-a-balancey-scale method to determine the preferable side, it's obvious the pros of A Life Without Makeup outweigh the cons, especially when I feel like "When my eye itches, I can rub it" is worth like 7 jelly beans. Unfortunately, I think that my feeling a little dumpy is worth approximately 50 jelly beans when I want to look nice but don't feel it. Considering that fact, in the end I rule on the side of a life WITH make up, and I do look forward to picking it up again when I'm back in Winona.

I do think I am having a valuable experience, though. I know this is silly, but hear me out. I definitely started wearing makeup too early in life and have felt it a necessity in my life since. (Don't scoff at how shallow that sounds. Blame society, or something.) The past two weeks I've seen that it's possible to feel just as good about myself without it. The kids still respect me. My coworkers still value me. My boyfriend still thinks I'm pretty. Awesome.

Now that we've talked about this, you can go back to whatever you were doing earlier.




 

Northern Adventures

Last weekend I met a few friends outside Deer River, MN for a weekend of camping! It was a blast. Dan and I met our friend Antonio at the Northern Acres campsite on Bowstring Lake on Friday evening. We set up camp, checked the place out, and had a little bonfire. I seriously love fires. Saturday morning I got up at 7:30 to go sit on the dock. Antonio fished and chatted with Dan while I read my book. Already the vacation was extra perfect. By noon on Saturday, my good friend Cozy and her boyfriend Tim arrived. The five of us had a super awesome weekend and we are pretty darn sure we'll be doing this every summer from now on.

Antonio caught the first and last fishies this weekend. (I caught none.)

Cozy is short for Cosette. She is also short.

The whole awesome gang

boys

My first time fishing!

Ice cream in Deer River

Antonio made us dinner on Saturday night. He made burgers, chicken, potatoes, peppers, zucchini and squash on the grill and I almost died because everything was so delicious.

DAN CAUGHT A FISH

...and Cozy freed it. Because she's brave.

What a blast : )