Dear Sarah

My best friend, Sarah, is in Michigan with her husband’s family for the summer.  I miss her like crazy.  She’s been in Canada at their family cottage for the past two weeks, which means I haven’t been able to talk to her because she’s technically “traveling internationally,” according to AT&T.  But I know she read my blog every day, so this is my attempt to reach out to her.  Because I miss her.  A lot.

Dear Sarah,

You’ve been gone for almost half the summer.  I miss you so much!  And I’m not the only one.  Bean keeps asking if we can go visit “Saywah,” and when I remind him that you are on vacation, he then asks, “How about Scott?” and eventually it’s, “Fine then, what about NALA?”  Bean even misses your dog.  I’ve been storing up things to tell you when you get back, but I’m afraid I’m going to forget them, so I’m going to tell them to you now.

1.  I’m running the Watermelon 5k on the 4th of July with some friends.  Even Grayson is running with us!  I wish you’d be there.  Running without you is no fun at all.  Although, without the talking, I’m able to run farther!  I ran 5 miles this morning, and it felt awesome!  I literally ran out of room to run, though.  I made this big giant loop and then had to zigzag my way home to try to stretch my run farther.  I passed this little old man in his 60’s three times!  He’s a runner, too, and I see him occasionally.  Seriously, that dude is in better shape than most 30 year old’s I know.  I kind of want to meet him.

2.  Speaking of meeting runners, I’ve emailed the Orlando Women’s Running Club about joining them.  They run once a week, either a 6:30am run or a 7:00pm run.  They run in different parts of the city each time, and they run between 4 and 6 miles.  Plus, they have social events, too.  Next week they are going to a movie together.  But you know how I am about social events.  Probably skipping those…  (I miss being anti-social with you!)

3.  I’m on the literacy committee at school, and we met for the first time yesterday.  We were talking about vocabulary words that have different meanings in different subject areas and how we can start teaching vocabulary school-wide.  I said, “Yeah, like the word ‘integer.’  That’s a math word, but we can use that easily in language arts.”  Everyone just kind of looked at me, and finally Cristen said, “How would you use integer?”  And I said, “You know, an integer.  An essential part of something.”  Everyone sat there for a minute and then Sharon goes, “Do you mean INTEGRAL?”  I think we laughed for half an hour.  I felt like an idiot.  Almost like that time I used “ultra-violent” light on a quiz and that honors student told me that it should really be “ultra-violet.”  Yeah… I should probably NOT be teaching language arts…

4.  You should see my house right now!  You wouldn’t even recognize it!  It’s so CLEAN!  And ORGANIZED!  When people come in, I have to stop myself from saying, “Go ahead, open that closet door and check out those labeled bins!”  I can’t wait for you to see it!  Especially Bean’s room!  We’re getting ready to paint Gracie’s this weekend, I think.  I finally decided to paint it green and do the garden theme.  I’m really excited about that.

5.  I finally went to that independent, used bookstore you told me about.  It was awesome!  I sold her some of my books, and then bought four new ones for my classroom library.  I met the owner and we talked for a while.  Turns out she has a son in 7th grade and so we talked about school and all of that.  She’s super nice!  I even brought the kids back the next day for her story time.  I felt like I was in a scene from “You’ve Got Mail.”  I half expected Kathleen Kelly to do the reading.

6.  Speaking of Kathleen Kelly, did you see that Nora Ephron died?  Oh, I was so sad.  I love her writing and the quaint little worlds she creates.  I will miss her books.  I read a bio on her, and saw that she wrote, “Julie and Julia.”  How did I not know that???  You’re supposed to tell me these kinds of things.

7.  And speaking of current events, I have a confession.  Last week, I watch a two-hour Justin Beiber special on TV.  And then, the next night, I WATCHED PART TWO!   This is why you need to come home.  I’m so bored I’m watching Justin Beiber in concert.

8.  Can you give me the name of your doctor again?  I know I’ve asked you a million times, and this time I really will write it down!  This bump on my hand is getting bigger and so I need to see someone before it…  You know, why don’t you call me about this one????

9.  I’ve been drinking those green smoothies again.  I keep sandwich baggies of cut up strawberries, blueberries, bananas, and pineapple in the freezer so they are good and cold, and then after my runs I throw them into the blender with spinach, Greek yogurt, and orange juice.  Do you ever put other veggies in yours?  How do I do carrots?  Can I just put them in raw, or do I need to steam them or something?  Those seem to big and hard.  (…that’s what she said…)  How do you do that?

10.  I’m serving Communion at church this Sunday.  It’s my first time, and I’m really excited about it.  I might go over to your house and borrow a dress to wear.  I don’t know what’s happened to all my dresses, but I can’t find a lot of them.  Remember that time I lost a whole laundry basket full of laundry and then found it a couple weeks later out in my garage?  I’m sort of worried that’s happened again, but I checked the garage and there’s no laundry out there.  I’m crossing my fingers that I didn’t do something ridiculous like put it out on the street with the recycle bins one day by mistake.

11.  I got halfway through, “World Without End” by Ken Follett, and had to stop reading it.  It is SO good, but SO long.  If I kept going, I wouldn’t be able to read anything else this summer and I have a huge stack of books I want to read!  I returned it to the library yesterday, and then I started “Divergent.”  It is really good, for a dystopia book.  I still don’t like that genre, but this book is pretty good.  Next up is “Gone With the Wind.”  I’m so glad you’re making me read a classic this summer!  I can’t wait to read it!  What are you reading?  Did you read your classic yet?  Which one did you pick?

12.  Bean keeps asking if Scott can take him fishing.  You might want to give him a heads up about that.  Bean got that fishing toy for his birthday, so we’ve been practicing by fishing in the bathtub every night, but Gracie cries when we do it.  She doesn’t like that fish swimming around in her bath.  I don’t blame her.   I don’t like fish in my baths either.

That’s it for now.  I miss you.  Come home soon, and bring me some juicy Gulf Breeze gossip!

Love you,

Katie