Time in: 8:45 a.m.
Time out: 7:45 p.m.

I was track 5 today which sent me straight to Shade Control when I got there this morning. It only took me about 7 minutes to check all the heads and shoes. I know exactly what I'm supposed to be looking for now on all the shoes and heads, so I feel really confident about it. I realized that all day today, that I felt really confident with everything. I've finally mastered the MiSiCi parade, and tomorrow's my last day on it. Of course. I headed back to the PC and put away all the NSA by myself since everyone else was still working on stilts. I helped load up, and we were off.

When I was helping Woody put his head on for the first and second parades, I had some trouble. I think that his clips were strapped in tighter than usual because it was a really tight squeeze trying to get it to clip. And I felt really horrible when my fingers were basically failing me because the way the performer has to hold their head while I clip it sometimes digs into their neck by their windpipe. So I try to do it as fast as I possibly can so they're not having their windpipe crushed. But Aaron could tell the clips were tighter than usual once I got it finished so I knew he wasn't upset or anything that I took a little longer than usual. But I still felt horrible.

After the second parade I got Bob and Frozone's dirty costumes in mesh bags and took them back to the PC to be washed. It's not my track's job, but Edna was on the track that was supposed to and she's irritatingly flaky about taking care of her track's responsibilities. So I'm back in my old habits, taking on everyone else's jobs and making sure everything gets done correctly. I guess I'm just doomed to have that as part of my work ethic.

The last parade was downed so we broke the costumes down inside Shade Control and unloaded the truck in the rain. I went ahead on the truck and loaded everything up because Edna was nowhere to be found when we were ready to load. Which isn't unusual. So one of my coworkers volunteered to spray the heads and shoes for me inside Shade Control while I finished loading which was very nice of them. We did laundry and hung around the PC for our extra time since we had 30 extra minutes with the parade being downed.

Tomorrow's my last day on parade. And it really started to hit me today. My regular coordinator Ana wasn't coordinating today, but she was still around for part of the day. She won't be there tomorrow so I had to say goodbye to her today. It was really sad, being my first goodbye of many and I tried not to think too hard about it. I'm really going to miss (almost) everyone I've gotten to work with here. They've become my friends and have gotten me through the long and boring days there are. Ana was my leader but she was my friend as well, we got along so well. So saying goodbye this morning was hard. I said something about it to some of my performer friends, and they let me in on something that I'd heard about but hadn't been real to me before now. That going home is going to be really hard. One of the performers, Alex, said she basically had a mental breakdown when she got there and all she wanted to do was come back. Kevin told me the same thing. How much I was going to miss everything here and how everyone he knew that loved their job here was always itching to come right back. It made me incredibly nervous. I was always prepared for things to be different at home when I got there. My friends, my family. They've all lived a semester in the same life with me gone, learning to do things without me and such. So I knew going home would be a struggle to get back in the groove of things there and get comfortable again. I also know how much I've changed being here and how I've grown up and seen the world. I was ready to handle all of those changes. But I had never thought about the fact that I might just not want to be home, that all I'd want would be to be back here in Florida. I honestly don't think that I love my job enough for that, but coming back in a different role here? I don't know. It's a different atmosphere here, a different life. It's magic and make believe like you can't get anywhere else. I'm nervous for my last day on parade tomorrow, because of how much I love MiSiCi and how much I'll miss that. But I'm going to just ignore all the nervousness for now, because I can't deal with that until it comes when I'm home. I'm ready to just be happy for all that I've learned here and how much of a home I've really created. I'm ready to have to tell everybody goodbye, even though it's going to be really sad. They've all given me a little bit of their magic and I'm hoping dearly that I can hang on to it.

That's all the magic for today!