I'm Declaring August The Best Month Ever

One of my all time favorite jobs to date, was being an overnight camp counselor deep in the woods of NH. Here I had no cell service, I barely had internet and I didn't see anyone except for my co workers and campers from June-August.

I had 12, 12 year old girls whom I shared a cabin with along with my fellow co counselor and athletic specialist. I'm sure you can imagine all the energy, drama, Jonas Brother's posters and stories I had all around me after a summer like that. One of my favorite stories from that summer is what I'm about to blog about. (Many more stories to come later.)

I call it: My Best Day Ever Theory.

I will leave my campers unnamed, obviously, and only refer to them as Nice girl and Mean girl. Nice girl was awesome (clearly). She was an easy camper to have because she was not a pain in the butt, loved sports, loved activities and just had a good outlook on life. On the other hand, Mean girl, not so much. All the other campers followed Mean girl (she was their leader) and she made our lives as counselors not so fun. Nice girl was kind of intimidated/scared by Mean girl (I think I was too, to some degree) and wanted to please her so she would be able get in her circle of friends. If I can remember correctly, one day Nice girls' parents sent her (heaven forbid) the SAME Sigg waterbottle that Mean girl had!!! O. M. G. Of course Mean girl accused Nice girl of copying her (the black spot label of death to a pre teen) and Nice girl was beside herself in tears.

Of course, as a counselor, I had seen Nice girl struggling to fit in with the Mean girls' clique, all the while thinking "...Mean girl really sucks and when she gets older everyone is going to think she's horrible" but you can't really say that as their counselor :) Trying to console an inconsolable girl, I wanted nothing more than to tell her how awesome she was compared to Mean girl and that she was going to have much better friends, relationships etc... but I knew I needed to phrase things a different way. After Nice girl kept telling me countless times she wanted to go home against my telling her how much we wanted her to stay, I knew it was time for a different method.

As sternly asi I could, looked at her and said, 'OK, then let's go back to the cabin and pack your stuff.' We go about 10 steps and she looked at me and (not surprisingly) said, 'actually...um, I kind of want to stay.' Still to this day I have no idea where I came up with this idea but I looked back at her and said, 'alright, then tomorrow you have to have the best day ever.' She looked confused and asked what that was. I told her, 'tomorrow she was not going to care what anyone else thought. She was going to have so much fun doing whatever activity she was doing and she was only going to do things that made her happy and made her feel awesome. Nothing was going to stand in her way tomorrow because it was going to be the best day ever.' And have the best day ever, she did. She actually yelled at me half way through the day, "CAT! I'm having the best day ever!" Win.

What's even better was that when further along in the summer another camper was having a bad day, Nice girl ran by and said "Cat, tell her to have the best day ever!" Even more of a win.

So, I woke up this morning (at 2:20 because I haven't slept through the night in 3 weeks) and felt terrible. I've had so much anxiety lately, my stomach feels like it is in more knots than a 3 year olds' attempt at a making a friendship bracelet. I missed going to Walden this morning because I felt so crappy. Every time I get more things added to my plate at work my first thought is, "Run awayyyyyy"overall ahhhh

No more.

August is going to be the best month ever. BOOM. Yup, I'm doing it. I'm declaring the second half of the summer to be the better half. Just like the girl in MTV's most thought provoking series, Is she really going out with him?, August is going to make the first half of the summer look like a one-eyed, limping donkey. Yup.

If you're ever not quite feeling it some day this month, may I suggest wearing your favorite color. Or, no coincidence that it is my favorite color, the happiest color of all time: yellow. In fact, tonight, I am wearing my favorite color combinations (yellow and blue) as I'm blogging this post in a bad for typing efficiently position and I'm completely content :)

(even though my hair is not done after showering, my bright yellow skirt is still rockin!)

Now let's go have the best month ever!!

I'll leave you with this iPhone tri humor: