I rolled out of bed this morning determined to hit that three mile mark. I haven’t been running as much as I would like lately, but this morning I just knew that I could do it. It may not seem like a lot, but for someone who could barely run a mile at the beginning of the summer, it felt really good. Well, the run was awful. I’ve been sick, so I sounded like Darth Vader wheezing around my neighborhood. Then I got a stitch in my side around mile two, but I pushed through and finished in 38:26. Not a very good pace by any means, but I’m proud that I did it.

Andrew left today for school. He has to be back a week early for nursing school so I went to lunch with him, his mom, and some friends. He had some room in his car left so he stopped by my house afterwards to take my TV and a few other small things of mine. (Yeah, I have a lot of stuff to bring back.) It’s about a four hour drive to Kansas City, so it always makes me nervous when he drives it by himself. I hugged him goodbye and told him to drive safe. And of course that I loved him. He hugged me back and I started to tear up.

I have been such an emotional roller coaster lately.

It’s only a week – not even since I’m leaving Thursday, but I’ll miss him. This summer we’ve gone much longer than that without seeing each other and it’s been fine, but it’s like once you know that person’s gone it’s suddenly much harder. I’m probably just being ridiculous and just needed a good cry since I haven’t had one in a while. My meltdown on the phone with the electric company doesn’t count, haha.

On Wednesday, I went to the Cardinals’ baseball game with two of my good girlfriends from church and a family friend. He bought us tickets in the bleacher seats in outfield and they were such great seats! We could see every pitch exactly where it landed in the catcher’s glove and we were right behind center-field man Jon Jay.

On the second pitch, the batter hit the ball straight at the elbow of our pitcher, Shelby Miller. He was taken out after that and the game just went downhill from there. Our defensive was pretty crap and the Dodgers kept scoring. Around the seventh inning, we decided to make the game a little more fun and started to call out Jon Jay’s name (not during the game of course, but between innings) to try and get him to wave at us. The seventh inning he pretty much ignored us; the eighth inning he turned and looked at us but didn’t do anything more. We were like, well hey, at least he looked at us!

Then at the beginning of the ninth he was throwing the ball back and forth to Matt Holliday and we kept shouting his name and cheering for him. Right before the inning started, he turned and began to run towards us. I was just thinking, “Oh! He’s going to wave to us!” But he kept running closer and it was like everything after that went into hyperspeed. The next thing I know he’s throwing the ball towards us and our friend leaned over me and caught it. (I mean honestly, do not trust me to catch a MLB baseball…)

It was totally awesome.

He gave the ball to us girls and we passed it around, touching it and kind of awed with what just happened. Jon Jay personally threw a baseball to us! We shouted that we loved him (haha, what fangirls we are) and were absolutely giddy for the rest of the game. We ended up losing horrendously – I think it was 13 to 4, but it was a ton of fun and we got a baseball! That never happens!

Since there were three of us and only one baseball, we decided that we would “share” it. One of the girls took it home and said she’d pass it on over Christmas break. It’s honestly not that big of a deal to me whether I keep the baseball or not. Just the fact that Jon Jay threw the ball to me (okay, I think it was to me, but my memory could be a bit biasly skewed ) is enough to make me happy!

It was a bit bittersweet since that was my last baseball game for the summer. I’m going to miss St. Louis and cheering for the Cards – we truly are a baseball city. But it’s off to Kansas City where they root for the Royals (boooo!) but I’ll proudly wear my hat when we make it to playoffs.

You can take the girl out of St. Louis but you can’t take St. Louis out of the girl.

Normally when me and Andrew go on dates, we tend to do the same thing. It’s been hard for us this summer to get together because I work mornings/afternoons and he works nights. But when he does have a night off, we usually do our normal date and go to a restaurant to eat. It’s quick and easy, which is probably why we do it so often, but it’s pretty much become habitual. So I’ve been trying to think of more creative date ideas.

In case you didn’t know, St. Louis is the home of America’s largest monument: the Gateway Arch. Even though I live just about twenty minutes from it, I haven’t actually been to the Arch since I was seven or eight. (It’s kind of funny how tourists to your city see its monuments and jewels more than you do.) So I thought it would be fun for us to picnic at the Arch grounds and then go up to the top.

It was so much fun. I love to picnic and it’s not something I do nearly enough. I packed a blanket, some fruit, sandwiches, and water bottles. I took the afternoon off of work (psh, it’s not like I’m a broke college student or anything………) and we headed downtown. It was such a nice day, which made it even better. Normally July weather is sweltering hot, but there was a cool breeze and we didn’t even break a sweat!

I wore a white dress with red flowers on it. We found a spot in the shade where we could easily see the arch (or at least it’s “foot” as I like to call it. Andrew likes to be technically correct and call it the “base,” but I think “foot” sounds much better). I hadn’t been able to see him really since I went to Puerto Rico, so I was able to share that with him while we munched on our sandwiches and fruit.

I had jokingly said to him, “Now you just need to feed me grapes and fan me with a palm leaf.” And then, like the competitive dorks that we are, had a competition to see who could throw the most grapes into the other person’s mouth. I totally one, six to four. Though, every time a large group of people would pass by I would pause because I was embarrassed, haha. Andrew, on the other hand, had no shame. I think the passerbys encouraged him and he pelted me with more grapes.

When we were finished and the bugs were starting to annoy us, we headed inside. We went to the ticket counter to purchase tickets to the top but it was going to be a two and a half hour wait. O.O I’ve no idea why it was so busy on a Thursday afternoon, but we didn’t feel like waiting around. We bought tickets to a movie about how the Arch was made and just did that instead. At first the movie opened up with this old man speaking in a monotonous tone and we both kind of groaned, afraid that it was going to put us straight to sleep. It was really interesting, though, and we learned lots of fun nifty facts to throw at people now, haha. (Like no one on the entire project died; if anything was 1/64 of an inch off, the whole project would have failed; when putting in the last piece, they had to pry the top two feet apart to fit it in.)

There’s an old, famous candy and ice cream shoppe downtown called Crown Candy that I’ve only heard good things about. I’ve heard friends talk about how good it is and it’s a St. Louis staple. Since I’m not downtown often enough, I had never been there and wanted to try it. Plus it’s me and Andrew, and we love candy.

It was a cute little shop with a candy/chocolate counter and all kinds of flavors of ice cream. Andrew bought some chocolate for his mom and Oreo ice cream while I got a banana split. I was still kind of full from lunch, so I was not prepared for the monsterous thing that they gave me. They put it in a large shake cup and I probably ate about a third of it before I felt like I was going to puke. But it was very delicious and if we’re ever in the area again, we’ll probably stop by.