I know I know I know I've been seriously slacking on the whole blog department.
Summer is officially over for me, as I am now reinstated as a Graduate Assistant for the SIU Rec Center and we have training, prepping and all around madness is about to start again. Get ready for those blogs because I'm sure they will be full of new and fun and super chaotic adventures.
But I'm spending my last hour of freedom at a coffee shop sipping my coffee with a splash of cream and 2 sugars reflecting and slowly waking before the madness that is my job/school/life starts up again.
So…let me tell the story of my summer in the Dale that has been my home for the last 12 months.
The title sorta says it all. I worked as a life guard, both at an indoor pool and at a lake for a camp of elementary students. It was a Jewish camp that lasted for a month and EVERYDAY the kiddos came out to swim. I got to know a lot of them by name and learned some hebrew (mostly bad words though) and on some days they even fed us life guards lunch. I got a pretty sweet tan line and made some great friends with the other guards. A typical day would be set up and clean the beach area, clean off the dock of any duck poop, have the kiddos check in, make sure they were dowsed in sunscreen and then we'd take our positions for about 2 hours around the beach and lake shore and watch the crazy kids jump off the dock, play sharks and minnows and just be hooligans. Eavesdropping on their conversations about how Jessica likes Benny but Benny already told Joshua that he wants to be on Sarah's team after snack time was probably my favorite thing ever. Kids really do say the darndest things.
One of the boys, Benny, loved to show me how he could "dive" off the dock. He wasn't a very good diver in the slightest but he did get better over time. He also was a charmer. Girls would always splash him and tease him, typical of 4th grade flirting antics. One day as he was showing me his umpteenth millionth dive, a girl splashed us and said "HEY! Benny!! I gotta tell you a secret!"
"Ok"
"No…*looks at me* you need to come over here"
"Um why?"
"Just Cuz!"
"*Groan* Fine"
Jumps in and swims 4 ft away.
Yells/whispers"Jessica likes you!! Go talk to her"
"Cool. No thanks. I'll see her at crafts"
"No Benny! Go now!"
"Sorry, I don't deliver." and swims back to the dock.
I almost fell into the lake. I was dying of laughter. He doesn't deliver?! Genius. He climbs out and just smiled, shook his head and said "Females…" and rolled his eyes and gave me a cannon ball to show off.
The kid is pretty suave for a 4th grader and that line…oh man. Highlight of my summer right there. He must have an older brother who has just as much swag and charm and knows how to play the game if you know what I'm saying. Whew…just typing it out I'm starting to giggle all over again.
The kids were pretty cool all around though and what a life to spend an entire month out in the woods in cabins and swim everyday at a beautiful lake and not have a worry in the world minus mosquito bites and whether or not Benny likes Jessica back.
To be 10 years old again…but being a life guard was probably the coolest summer job to have. I'm seriously bummed that I'm not going to continue. Maybe next summer.
The other aspect of my summer was that I got a roommate.
Yes, the girl who swore up and down that living alone was the only way to go and that roommates had always led to problems and who needs companions anyway, got a roommate. To be fair, he was my friend who was helping me workout. He was in kind of a tight spot, out of one apartment, not allowed in another til the end of summer and kinda homeless. The place he was just using while a buddy was back home didn't work out, so one day at the gym he kinda casually said that he hadn't a place to go. "Calvin! Are you kidding me?! You don't have a place to live?!? Why didn't you ask? You can stay with me!"
And well yeah, careful what you say because he moved in about a day later.
It wasn't that bad either. He was pretty easy to live with, took out the trash while I did the dishes, the shared spaces were clean for the most part and he played handy-man and fixed some things around the apartment. I now consider him a very dear friend because it's hard not to bond with someone when it's summer in the Dale and most days you're just chilling talking about everything and nothing at the same time. We would meet up with friends and go to Trivia night, play sand volleyball, and go to the Sunset Concerts that were put on in the park every Thursday night. Kinda nice to watch horribly awful movies with (don't waste your time with 'Noah'. Awful.) or the baseball game while drinking some hard mike's lemonade. (he loves them but don't tell any of his friends because they're girly drinks.) My summer would have been a whole lot more boring without him. I probably will miss that but I know I won't miss him fogging up the bathroom mirror from his ridiculous long showers (he's a dude for pete's sake) and how he used my shampoo (he said he liked how it made his head tingly…good lord) or how he used every dish in the entire apartment for one meal (why do you need 8 plates to cook chicken? How is that possible???) or his absurd amount of protein shakes he drank on the daily or having nothing in the fridge but beer, eggs, and cottage cheese (he ate an absurd amount of cottage cheese. Like 5lb tubs of it. I wish I was joking).
Another highlight was my mom and sister coming to visit. It was a short stay but it was super fun. Now my entire family has seen where I live and work and my mom either must love me a lot or she secretly likes this place because she's visited 3 times now.
We spent our time going to the sunset concert, catching up, cooking, going out to my new favorite restaurant, Global Gourmet, and we went to the St. Louis Zoo and the Arch. But before all that when they came in I picked them up and brought them back to my apartment to just hang out for a bit. They met Calvin and I had kinda warned him that my mom would probably ask a bajillion questions but that my sister would say "Hi" and then not another word. She's shy and only really talkative around her those she's close with. But oh no…she walked in, said Hi to Calvin and then she did not shut up the entire time. She kept talking and telling stories about her friends and her summer working with kids and their 4-H animals for fair, etc, etc. Us Allen girls do love to talk and when you get us together…let me just say that I apologize in advanced if you ever should see it. We're loud. We laugh. We're really really loud. And we laugh really loudly too. And we're kind of a lot to take in and handle. I'm pretty sure Calvin didn't say 2 sentences the entire time and that we scared him away for sure. We're 10000x worse than any Ya-Ya girls. It's quite the scene.
Verbatim how my dad reacts to the women all back together. And Calvin's response to me and SeaStar's conversation as well.
But I had a blast hanging with my SeaStar and mom and it was good to see them once more since I won't head back to Cali til Christmas most likely. They met my friends and they got to see Carbondale in the summer time. A little more relaxed and a little bit slower living but still a good time.
I also went to Chicago one last time to visit a friend and we had her "congrats on getting a big girl job/end of summer/graduation" party and they took me to the Polish Festival and I learned that Polish people love to drink A LOT and that I was ill prepped for such a weekend full of booze but I loved spending time with her and her family and hope to visit them again really soon. I mean, when they had set up shots of Crown Royal just waiting for me once I arrived, it's kinda hard not to like them. They're sassy and sarcastic-y just like me and their go to fix is alcohol too. So it's like I found my long lost relatives!
It'd be Crown Royal but this basically how the family reacts... "How many bottles do we have? Just 10? We're going to need more than that."
And that's pretty much it. That was my summer. Now on to committees for conferences, IM sports and Sport Club training, the new 1st year GA moving and getting acclimated (I'm a second year….what???) and class, books, pretentious teachers and having my last first day of school ever. It's going to be a great year though, ups and downs to be had but I don't think I've ever been so excited to get my life going. And if it was anything like my summer, it'll be full of surprises, but it'll be pretty dang good.
Times up! Time to buckle down and start my last year. Adventure awaits!
Goodbye Summer
To be continued!
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