Hello, 2014, Let's Be Friends!

Taken in Chicago in March of 2013... Aside from a shot of me sleeping and another of me playing flute with a really sloppy pony-tail wearing my hat backwards, this was the earliest 2013 pic I could find of myself :P

Taken December 30th in Nebraska... While burning materials pertaining to my Women in Islam class :D

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Reflection is probably the biggest thing about New Years that makes it my favorite holiday.  It's a chance to stop, look back over the year, celebrate the good moments and move away from the bad ones, take stock of what I've learned and how I've grown.

A year ago from this moment, I was sitting in a drafty, cock-eyed living room a few blocks over with my family, reflecting on 2012.  Now, I'm hanging out in my bedroom--my level bedroom, with right angles and reliable heat--reflecting on 2013.

I'm not going to lie, it's been a long one.  I took a pretty awesome poetry class the first half of 2013.  I went to Chicago for the first time, and hopefully not the last.  As it turns out, I have a tiny hint of wanderlust after all.

Just a tiny one.

I moved over the summer, and it's amazing what a difference those few blocks made!  There's something to be said about living without bats and cockroaches!  I've been blessed with a new friend in my roommate, and even our cats get along!  (As I type this, my roommate's cat is hanging out in my doorway and Gracie is planning an ambush from the bathroom.)

2013 also held what has become known as The Semester from the Underworld.  After a brilliant plan to take a class over the summer went horribly wrong and I blatantly refused to drop a class against my better judgement, I spent a semester working full time, taking 9 credit hours, and not sleeping.  I will never do that again, but it did teach me a lot.  Probably one of the most important things it taught me was that Philippians 4:13 does not really mean "I can do whatever I want to because I'm a Christian and that makes me super-human with no limits."  Actually, that passage of scripture is Paul talking about being content with his circumstances, wherever God placed him.  Philippians 4:13 doesn't mean I can work full-time and take a full-class load and still be operating at peak efficiency and be a wonderful human being all at the same time because God's on my side.  (Actually, it turns out that running on coffee until it makes you throw up kind of makes you a worthless human being in some ways.)  Philippians 4:13 means I can be content living here in Iowa City doing what God's called me to do, no matter how long this degree takes.

Copy and paste that last sentence and hang on to it for me, I'm probably going to need it more than once in 2014.

In 2013, the second Hobbit movie came out.  I will bear the scar of its betrayal for the rest of my life, but it was awesome seeing it in theaters with friends!  Speaking of which, yes, I have friends!  Granted, one of them is moving away in a couple of weeks since this is a college town and that's what people around here do, and maintaining my social life still requires significantly more effort than it did in High School, but I have friends who stayed beside me and prayed for me and cared for me in 2013, friends who were Jesus with skin on to me in my darkest and most stubborn moments, friends who were still there when the wreckage that was left of me slid across that finish line after the Semester from the Underworld.  I love my friends!

I became an aunt in 2013!  If you count my Rent-A-Nephew back home, I became an aunt twice in 2013!  Aren't they cute?!

Another year has gone by and my novel is still incomplete, but I did write three short stories in 2013.  I took two writing classes at the University of Iowa.  They were entry level classes, so nothing really fancy shmancy, and the only things I "learned" were the ideas that I contemplated and formed for myself about how I personally handle writing, but I did have some valuable experiences in class (one of the three workshops all semester was valuable at least).  Progress is progress, and I'm one year closer to being a published author!  (Not that I know when that is or anything, I just know I'm closer is all!)

Also very important to my writing career: On November 5, 2013, I MET TED DEKKER!!!

Not only did I get a hug and an autographed copy of Outlaw, but I also touched his chest!  AND he told me I was beautiful!  *squeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!*

Ahem.  Anyway...

I have three friends who are now engaged, and beyond my inauguration into aunt-hood I have two more friends who are pregnant, and this of course isn't counting all of those acquaintances and old friends and friends of friends and such whose life events somehow show up on my Facebook news feed all the time.  2013 has come and gone, leaving nothing of the sort for me, not even any interests.

Well, except for this guy:

But he cheated on me with an elf that Tolkien didn't even write and therefore doesn't exist, so I'm just back to wishing this guy wasn't already taken:

So I'll keep working on figuring out some positive points of being single.  I can't really think of very many right now, but I'm pretty sure they're out there.  Besides, the one that I do usually remember is a powerful one: this is what God wants for me right now.  So I'll keep truckin'.  I'll keep learning how to draw closer and closer to my First Love, my true Knight in Shining Armour, my Prince of Peace who's so much more than charming.  I'll keep letting Him teach me who I am, and keep learning how to be content where He's placed me, and how to enjoy being the me that He created.  All that sounds a whole lot fluffier than it feels, but that's the lesson that 2013 has taught me, and it's what I will carry with me into 2014.

A year ago, I wrote that 2013 was looking a lot like 2012: more work, more school, more time in Iowa City.  And sitting where I am now, 2014 looks painfully similar to 2013: more work, more school, more time in Iowa City.  While I was picking out classes for this upcoming semester, I calculated out how long this was going to take me at the current rate.  Depending upon whether or not I find a way to pull off studying abroad for six weeks at some point, I will be here, doing this, for 3-4 more years.  But there was a song I once loved by Avalon that went something to the effect of: "I don't wanna go somewhere / If I know that You're not there ... 'Cuz my heart needs to be where You are."

I could make a whole bunch of resolutions to try to make it feel like I'm gonna be a better person and come a long way in 2014.  I could say I'm going to study the Bible more, I'm going to read more, I'm going to write more, I could even set quantifiable goals because who doesn't like concrete thresholds with which to rub your own failure in your face with?  But I don't think I'm going to.  Instead, 2014: God's put us together, and I know He has plans for both of us that are better than any of my own ideas.  What do you say we just be friends?

Just Keep Swimming

I must begin this blog post with this image, because a) it's fitting, and b) Dory is awesome!

Now, back to the blog post!

I recently (okay, it's been a little over a month ago) went on a camping trip with my family and church family back home.  We were swimming in the lake and there was this buoy waaaaaay out in the lake.  I have no idea how far it was, but it was pretty far!  Not to mention I'm totally not a very good swimmer anyway.  I mean, I can tread water 'til the cows come home, but stuff like special strokes and swimming fast and that kind of thing?  Beyond me!

My little brother spent some time on a swim team, and he decided that he was going to see if he could swim all the way out to the buoy and back.  When he started this endeavor, he passed my mom and I.  She kind of did this little half-hearted following thing, torn between letting him explore his abilities and not wanting him to go that far and drown because he was too tired to swim back, and I stayed with her because, hey, I wanted to hang out with my mommy!  Well, at some undisclosed point in time, we ended up following him.  All the way to the buoy.

On the way back, both of them had to stop once or twice and just float for a minute, but I just kept going--not because I was trying to beat them or anything, but because I was afraid of not making progress.  Being that far away from where your feet can touch the ground, especially as an inexperienced swimmer, is kinda risky, so I wanted to keep moving and get back as soon as I could.

But when I made it back, I was almost sad it was over!  I had proven to myself that I could do something I doubted my abilities in, and that intense swim was actually strangely mentally relaxing.  Besides, getting out of the water was stinkin' cold!  So when my sister-in-law and a church friend decided they wanted to try, I decided to go with them too!  So ultimately, I made this crazy swim that I wasn't positive I was capable of twice!

When I got back and after I'd gotten out and relaxed a little, I was seriously considering doing it a third time, but my Dad and the other friend talked me out of it.  When it was time to climb on the motorcycle later, I was glad they did!  But even though I was pretty sore and really tired, I honestly think I could have made it a third time if I had to, because there was a point in that swim where you understand that if you give up, if you decide you're just too tired and stop swimming, you drown and you die.  Sure, you can float for a while if you need to, but roll with me for a second:

That swim is a lot like how this semester is going over.

This week is a pretty good week (as demonstrated by the fact that I can stop long enough to write this blog post), but there are two or three nights most weeks where sleep doesn't really happen in excess of three hours.  I'm always doing homework (ALWAYS!), every moment of my life is ear-marked for something.  When I was in high school, a friend and I used to laugh at how crazy our lives were during finals week because we had our lives planned out down to what we were going to study every hour of every day, but it's not so funny now that that's seriously how my life works all the time at the moment!  I got off work 45 minutes early the other day by surprise, and I almost didn't know what to do with myself!  I could have found somewhere to get some extra studying done, but instead I decided to go ahead and stop my my apartment (in the middle of the day?!?!?!) and actually be a girl and do stuff like doing my hair and *gasp* putting on make-up!  Craziness!

But it's do or die, and without having done this semester, I would never know whether or not I can do this.

And there's that crazy part of my mind that's saying, "Let's do it again next semester!"

I'll probably be able to talk myself out of this one.  This is the first time since moving that I've actually looked forward to a break in the school year!  But at the same time, this degree is taking me a very long time, and dropping back down to one class in the bigger picture almost reminds me of stopping to float in the lake.

I guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it though.  Right now, I have homework to do!

Just keep swimming!

The Semester from the Underworld

I have a confession to make: I am petrified of this semester!

I "took" a course over the summer.  The theory was that it would give me something to do to make the dark abyss of summer break a little easier to deal with, since I really struggle during breaks.  In doing so, the thought was that I could knock out the one Gen Ed requirement that my Metro degree lacked.  A win-win situation, right?

The only option I had to meet both of these goals was an online class (strike 1) entitled "Women in Islam in the Middle East" (strike 2), consisting of a slew of reading that, whenever I eventually motivated myself to do it, made me ridiculously angry at the injustice towards Islamic women and I'm not even a feminist! (Strike 3.  I'm out.)  The course was so packed and intensive that it came with the option of taking a grade of incomplete and using another semester to finish it.  After my laptop finally died from an injury sustained in my October car crash and I was without computer access for a week and lost all hope of ever catching up to make the summer deadline, I went ahead and gave up and took the alternative route.

This was after I made the decision to go ahead and see if I could handle 2 classes at the same time while working full time.

Meaning I suddenly find myself juggling three classes while working full time.

With this week having been the first week of class, I have already started off on the wrong foot.  There was some hard-core crazy drama that went down this week that is now resolved, but was incredibly stressful, and me being "assertive" really feels more like being a jerk.  Then there was meeting half a jazillion new people which happens at the beginning of any new school year.  I had to talk in front of both of my new classes.  I'm still dealing with the bank to replace my debit card from when my wallet was stolen two weeks ago.  I got a call from Biolife saying that my protein test came back low and I have to go in to be retested and can't donate for at least two weeks.  There are some changes going down at my campus ministry that are great and wonderful and awesome changes, but are also kind of scary for this introvert whose comfort zone has already been obliterated in every other aspect of her life this week.

And then I have come to the conclusion that undergraduate creative writing students apparently don't actually write, they talk about writing.  Seriously, I've been waiting to take writing classes so I can write and get feedback on my writing and let my writing speak for me and all that jazz.  I've been waiting to experience workshops for literally years!  Now that I'm finally here though, both of my professors are being super gentle about it.  "I know it can be really scary, but I promise this will be a safe and respectful place to share your work.  You won't be graded on the quality of your writing, so long as you put forth good effort."  So I'm in college for creative writing, and my writing won't be taken any more seriously than it did in high school.  Sweet.  Then it turns out, I'm only going to be workshopped a total of three times this semester...

But will be up to my ears in class discussions.

This is not what I had in mind.

It's Labor Day weekend now, and I am currently taking 24 hours to stay home and recover from the beating my poor, introverted self has taken the last two weeks.  This also includes organizing my life and trying to remember how to juggle more than one class at a time... I haven't done that in two years!  When these 24 hours are up and my life is organized, I will go to the grocery store... And then probably return for some more recovery time.  Basically, I am going to have a lot of respect for my poor, battered comfort zone for a couple of days.

Because on Tuesday, I'll go back to work, I'll have class again on Wednesday, and my comfort zone will once again mean absolutely nothing.  Which, you know, I suppose doesn't have to be a bad thing.  You don't learn and grow as a person in your comfort zone.  God doesn't show up in as huge and amazing ways within the confines of your comfort zone.  You can break free of false limits and find your real ones when you leave your comfort zone.  It's just that my comfort zone is... You know, comfy!

I know I have lots of prayer warriors who read this blog, and I really don't thank you guys enough for how much you pray for me!  I don't directly ask for prayer very often, in part because I know you guys always have me covered anyway :)  But this semester, please pray for some rockin' time management skills, that I can juggle everything this semester.  Pray for courage as I face all of these challenges that lie outside of the parameters of my typical personality.  My original goal for this semester was to get better at connecting with people and making friendships that can bring other people closer to God, and while at the moment that's the last thing I really want to focus on, I know that it's still something God can teach me to do even in the midst of a chaotic semester.  And please pray that God shows up in huge and amazing ways this semester, that all of this craziness glorifies Him and brings me closer to Him.  The Lord is my refuge and my strength, an ever present help in trouble.  Even if I walk through the valley of the shadow of Death, I will fear no evil.  I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.

Welcome to the Semester from the Underworld.

Introducing Kaycee's Library!

In light of finally organizing all of my books after my recent move, I have finally decided to share my reading interests with the world wide web!  Let me take this opportunity to show you some images of this inspiration:

Poetry :)

Tolkien :D

I don't have a thing for Ted Dekker and Frank Peretti at all! :D

BOOKS!!! XD  *crazy, maniacal laughter!*

Good writers are also readers, it's as simple as that.  Not to mention that books are just about the safest and most beneficial addiction ever, right?  Hence: My library.  Some day, it will actually be a library instead of books crammed wherever they'll fit on bowing shelves.  Hopefully, like the great aunt's library from the movie Inkheart, complete with the cozy window seat.  That's my dream anyway.

And besides, everyone is always asking me what I like to read, and while the line "I could no sooner choose a favorite star in the heavens" from the movie Ever After is an appropriate response, it would be cool to have a central place with all of my favorite reading delights :)

Thus, my electronic library has been born!

The fiction section is listed in alphabetical order by the author's last name.  I'm a fan of the old saying, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all," so you'll only find good books on this list!  I do have books in my physical library that I have simply to expose myself to different kinds of writers, and there are some of these authors that, chances are, you'll never see in my online library that actually are in my physical library *coughcough Danielle Steele cough Stephanie Myers coughcough* ahem.

I do however need to take a moment to shock the world: Not all works of fiction are G rated.  If that isn't the shocking part, this is: I read some such books!  Thus, I shall utilize the Little Brother Test.  My little brother is 16 with a passion to remain pure in the midst of a public high school, much like me when I was 16, and sometimes that requires carefully choosing not to plant some things in the imagination.  Therefore, if I wouldn't want my little brother reading it, I'll add a little heads up to it in the library.

Of course, this is a huge undertaking, so please understand that this library is still under construction.  I'll try to periodically post reminders to check it out!  I'm also hoping to add a poetry section and a movie section later on!  Then when it's all caught up, I can post reviews of various books, poets, and movies with links to my library.  So you know there will be more fun and exciting things to find there!

Thanks for tagging along on this little adventure of mine!  I hope you enjoy!

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Did I put enough links in this blog post?  Did you catch my subtle hints?  You should go check out my library!  Click here!!!

"It's so... Level!"

So it's been a couple of weeks now, but I wanted to report to the Internet community that I am no longer living in what we have so fondly come to know less as "The Coralville Cottage" and more as "The Dump!"  Not gonna lie, I really did love the place for most of the two years I lived there.  Let's take a trip down memory lane, shall we?

My bedroom on my first night in Iowa

The other side of my room that first night

Pre-moving in kitchen

Still not totally sure what was holding the place together!

Don't you love the concept of straight lines?!

One of my bat friends!  This was the first one... not the one that tried to assassinate me!  It should also be noted that, while packing up to leave the apartment, I found a dead bat in the mud room.  So happy to be living in a bat-free environment!!!

And an adorable picture of Gracie, for good measure!

This was the last straw!  I was cooking chicken, and I went to go check on it to suddenly find the handle only half attached to the oven.  This image was the moment where the Coralville Cottage lost its charm!

This guy is my "little" brother, and he was my hero!  I went home a week before the move, and he came back to Coralville with me to help me pack up before moving day!  I don't know what I would've done without him!

The plan was to pack both my library and my bags in one fell swoop... however I underestimated the volume of my library.  It worked for half of it!

Here's the other half!

One last picture of the outside of the place... Again, notice the awesome lines!

It echoed like crazy in there when it was empty!

The move was only a few blocks, but I'm living in an actual apartment complex now rather than the triplex type situation, and that part has its ups and downs.  The parking lot is nice as opposed to the gravel alley-way between two buildings (or rather, the parking lot will be nice as soon as the contractors quit tearing up the concrete and changing where we can park!).  They also spray for bugs once a month!  After two years of living with cockroaches, I'm pretty stoked about that part!  The noise is a down-side, Gracie and I keep hearing our neighbors which is a new phenomenon for us, and we also live between the railroad tracks and the police and fire stations.  There are also contractors on the roof outside our window yelling at each other in Spanish.

We also live on the third floor.  I'm not going to lie, living without stairs for two years probably spoiled me a bit!  However, I also live next door to a *drum roll, please* Laundry Facility!  Seriously, we are right next door to the laundry room!  Granted, it costs quarters, but no more scrambling to hand-wash work shirts on the weekends!

In addition to the laundry room, we also have a dishwasher!  Not to mention flat floors and right angles!  The new bathtub is smaller than my old one, but it's actually sealed into the wall, everything is level, and I can take a bubble bath without an audience of ants!

Gracie and I have also been enjoying the companionship of our new roommates!  My new roomie is super sweet, and I love just hanging out and chatting with her!  We have already eaten together a couple of times and enjoyed a chick-flick with another girl friend of ours, and I'm looking forward to at least two years with her!  The more we get to know each other, the more convinced I am that this was a match made in Heaven!

Gracie's adjustment has been slightly less seamless.  She also has to get used to a new roomie--a gray and white one with stunning green eyes named Kitty.  Both Gracie and Kitty have been only-cats for a while, so they're still working out what to think of each other.  My roomie and I joke that they are probably besties while we're gone during the day, even though there is a little hissing involved when we're home.  But Kitty has been rubbing off on Gracie a bit, Gracie now plays with toys (which she refused to do before, in favor of pony-tail holders and plastic bags tied in knots), and she's slowly starting to warm up to the idea of kitty treats (the ones that my roomie refers to as "glorified cat food").  She loves exploring, especially late at night of course.  I woke up this morning to find my roomie's Wii controller in the middle of my bedroom floor.  There have also been some surprises with Gracie's transition, ranging from the very first hiss I've ever heard out of her to her new discovery of drinking out of the toilet.  She's a crazy kitty, but that's why I love her!  And I think over all, both of us are much happier in our new home!

I'm still in the process of unpacking, so we've still got some boxes going on all over the place.  I would show you pictures, but most of them are up-and-down, and alas, I don't know how to make Blogger rotate them :(  But rest assured, it's a pretty awesome place!  God has provided yet again, and I'm ready to tackle this new chapter of my adventures here in Iowa City!

Taking a Stand

I've been feeling bombarded on Facebook the past couple of days by the fairly obvious controversy at hand, and was thus going to write a long blog post outlining why I believe what I believe about homosexuality just because the atmosphere seemed to demand me to take a stand, but honestly I'm not that interested in arguing.  If you're interested in a polite, respectful dialogue about my beliefs, I'd be happy to chat.  But the moral of the story is that I am a Christian, and I believe that homosexuality is wrong.

I don't care about what the politicians decide at this point.  I've cast my vote, so it's out of my hands now.  I don't care about "winning" or anything like that.  Besides, with the end times so near at hand, I am fully prepared for things to get worse before they get better, particularly on the political front.  If you want to know where I stand, I don't want homosexual marriages legalized because of my belief that it is wrong.  I know that heterosexual marriages in America today don't do much for the "value of marriage" that we conservatives like to talk about a lot, but adding more wrong to something that is broken doesn't fix anything, it just makes it worse.  But if homosexual marriages are made legal, I also know that nobody is going to die.  Besides, people who don't have salvation through Christ are not--and should not be--held to the same moral standards as Christians, which is fine.  I'm no better or worse than anyone.  I wish that more people could have a relationship with the Creator of the universe who is the God of my salvation and who I've seen do such great and awesome things, but it's everyone's personal choice.

The part that breaks my heart is seeing so many people who claim to be followers of Christ condoning sin and insisting that people like me are being judgmental, hating bigots.  I know that many Christians have, and some still do, approach homosexuality in such a fashion, and that also breaks my heart, but the vast majority of the Christians you and I come in contact with every day do not.  I do not judge people because "they sin differently than I do," I simply know that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, myself included.  Just because we all sin doesn't mean we can just go for it and keep it up.  "May it never be!" as far as Paul was concerned.

A popular argument in favor of homosexuality is that they didn't choose it.  To that, I say that I didn't choose my sin, either.  I was born with a mental, emotional, and psychological bend towards an eating disorder.  I didn't choose to be anorexic,  but I was a textbook case for almost a year.  The choice came when I understood that what I was doing was wrong and chose to want God more than I wanted control over food.  I know that's tough to grasp if you've never had an eating disorder before, but anorexia for me was a friend that I could trust in a time when I didn't have very many, and choosing to want God more was--and still is during tough times--a daily battle for me.  It was a part of my identity.  A lesbian friend of mine once argued that "God doesn't make junk," but I would add to her statement.  Our human, sinful nature makes junk.  God redeems junk.  I've been on a road that has taught me that.  Recognizing that you were born with that kind of sin component hard-wired isn't easy, and choosing to deny that part of yourself is even more difficult, but the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it.  For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it (Matthew 7:13-14).

By definition, the road I've chosen is a difficult and, at times, also a lonely one.  The stand that I am taking right now in this blog post is a difficult one, because I know that I have many friends who will not only disagree with me, but will also attack me for it.  I know I'm putting myself out there and just asking for more of those comments about how I'm judging, how I'm hating, how I'm being a hypocrite.  I've heard them all, and I know that I am most likely about to hear them all again once I post this, but I can take it.  I'm on the narrow path.

Besides, I say all of this to my dearly beloved brothers and sisters in Christ.

Christians, I challenge you: Love the sinner, love the sinner with all your heart because your Lord and Savior does.  He lived a perfect life and died a brutal, criminal's death to pay for anorexia, homosexuality, idolatry, dishonesty, every sin that you or I or anyone else has ever committed, and then defeated sin, death, and darkness, as we are so timely celebrating this week!

But it's okay to disagree with the sin.  Take a stand for Truth, because without it you have nowhere to stand at all.

Adventures in Chicago: a Summary in Pictures

Disclaimer: This blog post contains no material of deep, lasting consequence.

You see, a friend of mine and I took this past weekend to go on an adventure, and I want to tell you all about it!  We decided to road trip to Chicago!  Before we begin, I do recommend taking a mega bus or something to go to Chicago.  I was incredibly blessed that my friend was willing to drive--being a passenger was quite traumatizing enough, thank you!  Had I been the one driving, I probably would've needed several therapy sessions upon my return home, where I am suddenly less likely to complain about the Iowegians!

We stayed in the Acme Hotel, which is apparently relatively new to the area, but it was a pretty cool hotel!  They brought us breakfast for free (a perk of making reservations online), their coffee was delicious, and the hotel itself had a LOT of personality!  Let me show you what I mean:

This was in the corner of the mirror in the bathroom!  And they glowed!

 There was also a ginormous hand above the bed, a chalk board on the door (upon which we wrote Philippians 4:13 :) ), and the shower head was on the ceiling so the water fell straight down!  This detail didn't turn out to be entirely practical for hair washing purposes, but when I changed my mind on the shower, the bath tub was pretty comfy too!

Our first afternoon/evening in Chicago consisted of deep dish pizza (I will never look at Godfathers the same again!) and the Magnificent Mile, being a mile-long stretch of road full of shopping!  Granted, most everything was out of this starving college student's budget, but it was fun anyway!

I also must say, I've never been in buildings that tall!  Our hotel room was on the 15th floor!  I've never even been in a building that had 15 floors!  One of the malls that we went into on the Magnificent Mile had seven levels (and a crazy fast elevator!).  This picture is from the top floor, and I really don't think the picture does it justice!

Water Tower Place, from the 7th floor

Of course, most of us have seen pictures of city skylines from places like Chicago or New York City, but being there is entirely different!  It's like when I first saw the ocean, it was crazy because it was so huge, and I knew that it was so deep, and I knew that the point where all I could see of the ocean ran into all I could see of the sky was only the beginning, that there was Europe and the rest of the world and so many different people and cultures beyond that horizon.  My mind was so blown that I took dozens of pictures--and then when I came home, they were just pictures of light blue on top of dark blue, and they totally didn't capture the magic of standing at the edge of land and water, staring at the edge of water and sky, and being so close to the rest of the whole entire world.

The Chicago skyline is kind of the same thing.  There are these massive buildings everywhere that loom up above you.  If you're standing too close, you can't even see the top.  For us, sometimes we couldn't see the top anyway because it was kind of rainy and cloudy, so the buildings just vanished into the clouds.  And as we drove by, the closer buildings passed faster than the further buildings and it made it look like the city was doing one of those royal ball dances with lines of people rotating and switching.  I think the skyline is what kept me from feeling claustrophobic the whole time we were there.  The skyline drew my attention up--that's where all of Chicago's space is!  Most of what we did was within walking distance, and we didn't have to drive much to get to a new radius of walking distance, so where as I used to think that Chicago was big, now I know that it isn't so much "big" as it is "tall"!

Oh yeah, and they don't waste space on trivial things like parking lots.  Instead, they charge your left arm to use their parking garages: one of which in particular that I wondered several times if I shouldn't be demanding someone to be paying me to be there!

The entrance to the Millennium Park parking garage is between two opposing lanes of traffic.  It then takes you down underground, so it feels like you're being eaten alive.  Then, you know how usually there are things like lanes, arrows, directions, things like that to guide you into a normal parking garage?  Nope, this one (after it ate you) left you in this concrete chamber the size of about half a football field with gates to get your ticket and find parking off to your left.  No lanes, options, nothing, just a big concrete space!  The first time we parked here, we parked on level 3.  We had to go on foot DOWN to level (I kid you not) 2.5 (Seriously, even the button in the elevator had it labeled as 2.5!), and then take the elevator UP to level 7.  Aside from the 2.5, makes sense, right?  Well the second time (the fact that we parked here twice is evidence of the scarcity of parking in Chicago), we parked on level 1, went up one flight of stairs, and found daylight.  Somehow.  Not to mention that this vast parking garage was full of disorganized caverns of cars connected by creepy concrete hallways, random doors, and stairs and escalators that we never did figure out where they led to.

But hey, we got PLENTY of laughs out of that parking garage!  And we also learned to never trust maps under ground, only the ones above ground tell the truth!

One of the creepy hallways in the Millennium Park Parking Garage

We also went to the Navy Pier.  The up-side to the weather during our stay was that there weren't very many people at the Pier, so we didn't have to deal with crowds too much.  The down-side was that it was freezing, and thus we didn't spend much time actually on the pier.  We ran out, snapped some cool pics, and then ran back inside.

Me: I can see the top of the building!
My friend: It's too short!

Inside however was a completely free museum of stained glass!  Unfortunately, all of my pictures from this adventure are up-and-down, and I have not yet figured out how to make Blogger rotate them :(  Alas, I am not as social-media-savvy as I pretend to be.  Just rest assured, the works in there were gorgeous!  I doubt the pictures really did them justice anyway.

We also went to the Shedd Aquarium, which involved waiting in line for an hour, about forty five minutes of which was outside in the cold (though they did put up a tent type hallway on the stairs to block the wind, and that helped a lot!), but it was worth it!

They had more than just fishies in the Shedd Aquarium, and this guy was cute!

I meant to get a picture of the frog, the creepy dude on the other side of the display was totally an accident!

Judging from Facebook with my many Iowa City friends and acquaintances who have been to Chicago, going to "the bean" and taking pictures is kind of a must.  So we did!

This is up underneath the middle of the bean.  It was trippy!!!

And last, but a terribly far cry from least, was the Art Institute, which I shall return to some day so that I can spend an ENTIRE day in there!  Kind of like the magic of standing on the ocean or actually looking up at and driving around the tall buildings of Chicago, I was walking around the Art Institute seeing the actual pictures and sculptures of things that I studied while working on my associates degree, and standing there looking at the piece that the artist's hands actually touched was totally different!  I also definitely fell in love with Monet this weekend!

My dad thinks I'm nuts, but I STILL love Jackson Pollock!!!

So there you have a very brief rundown of a few highlights of my trip to Chicago!  I have now been in a 15 story building, eaten Chicago deep-dish pizza, and been eaten by a parking garage.  I have been the most hard-core window shopping of my entire life, and I have seen Monet's "Water Lilies" in person.  I have also experienced being in a big city rather than the suburbs of Nebraska and Iowa.  I've learned that I like the elbow-room of the Midwest, and I don't think I could ever live in Chicago (beyond the simple fact that I'm a sheltered Blondie who could probably easily take a wrong turn and end up getting kidnapped by the mafia or something!), but I will be going again some day!

Balancing Act

I'm pretty sure weekends are the key to my life right now.

With working full time, a great deal of one's time, energy, and focus are automatically dedicated to work.  However with going to college, one must dedicate a substantial amount of time, energy, and focus to studying and attending class as well.  It is for this reason that a promotion opportunity at work has recently passed me by, and though it is a bit of a bummer, I know it's probably a positive thing.  After pulling at least one all-nighter for school each week for the past three weeks, I'm not so sure as I could handle more work responsibility on my plate.

At the same time however, I can't go to school full time because I have to work full time.  Due to the reality of adults having to pay bills, buy groceries, etc., I can't really cut back on work hours and jump into school as deeply as I'd like.  So my weeks are full of a constant tension between work and school, and not being able to invest as fully as I'd like in either endeavor, which is highly irritating.

Meanwhile, I have zero writing time during the week.  I have this budding novel that whispers to me almost every single day with its big, puppy-dog eyes, "Please come edit me?  I promise I'll behave!"  Which any writer knows isn't exactly a trustworthy statement, but the poor thing just sits around all the time!  The War of Nostras (tentative title, I know it isn't terribly exciting) has lots of potential, and much of its progress is sitting in my head instead of on its pages, but staying up all night studying for quizzes and writing papers and running back and forth between school and work and using my no-class days to actually sleep, my novel writing just doesn't happen.

So in essence, my life is being pulled in three different directions, and that's without this strange phenomenon of the human species called "sleeping" that's apparently necessary for optimal functioning level as well as simple survival.

Thus, we have "The Weekend," a glorious two days where work does not exist, I get to turn off my alarms, and aside from church on Sunday morning and any plans with friends (Social life?  WHAT?!  That's right, ladies and gentlemen, kids of all ages, I have one of those!  Not as substantial as before this semester, but I do have one!), I have time that doesn't need to be fueled by caffeine to be spent.  I have spent most of today editing my manuscript and running diagnostics on its pacing issues, and it's gotten me past a particularly difficult chunk of it.  I am now a quarter of the way through this editing pass!  (Though I fear that with the volume of completely rewritten scenes that it will require additional editing passes before being sent off to a few Beta readers!)  Tomorrow, I intend to spend some quality time with some poetry homework, in an attempt to complete my homework for the week and actually sleep like normal people do!

Next weekend, I shall be going on an adventure to Chicago with one of my best friends from back home, for which I am extremely excited!  This will be my first time to Chicago as well as my first time to just go on a road trip for mere kicks and giggles, and I think breaking the monotony of what my life has become (and threatens to be for a very long time) will be amazing!  And after this magical, exciting trip, it shall be Spring Break.  Most of the time, I struggle with breaks, as they mean less social time and more time alone in the apartment slowly losing my mind, but I think this time around it's going to be okay.  I also intend on editing every day through Spring Break, and who knows?  Maybe I'll be through an editing pass when it's all said and done!

So this is me: balancing my life in three different directions.  Sure, it's driving me a little crazy... er than usual... but I can do all things through Christ! ... And Coffee!

I Was a Fan of Taylor Swift

I was once an avid Taylor Swift fan.  Primarily because of this song:

http://youtu.be/8xg3vE8Ie_E

But the name Taylor Swift now brings on much different ideas.  She has crated a reputation for being a revolving door as far as boys go, and her musical career makes her a pretty brutal ex-girlfriend.  I remember seeing a clip of her from the Ellen DeGeneres show where Ellen was putting up picture after picture after picture after picture of boys she had dated (to which Taylor was avidly trying to convince Ellen that one of them didn't count... Not that it wouldn't have made THAT big of a difference).  Taylor finally shouted something to the effect of: "Stop it!  This makes me feel like a horrible person!"

I honestly feel sorry for her. My heart breaks for her.  I can relate to several of her "break-up" songs from my experience with one boy.  I can't imagine going through that with as many boys as she has.  Seriously, you know what kind of relationship she started off wanting from her early albums, and for that many relationships to fall short?  For her heart to be broken that many times?  To be that big of an expert on how to break up?  People laugh at her, but I truly do hurt for her.

But yet, this is the image she has created for herself.  And now, she sings songs like this:

http://youtu.be/878KE8iDrh8

I was introduced to Taylor Swift because she was a country artist.  I know, I know, she's not really "country" necessarily, I'm one of those more-pop-than-country "country" fans; to the dismay of my father and older brother, I can only take so much Johnny Cash.  But seriously, Taylor?  What are you doing?  That dress looks like something Lady Gaga would wear!  And the outfit underneath?  Clearly, the money has gotten to you.

But I'm not so sure that it's just the money.

There's a freedom that the innocent have that the experienced don't.  The innocent are free to dream.  The innocent can cling to ideas of how it's supposed to work.  The innocent have a vision of how it was originally designed.

But girls passionately desire the companionship, the love, the feelings of being cherished by a boy that they are torn between trying to play it safe and recklessly going after what they want.  And if they are too reckless, the more bad relationships that they endure break down more and more of that innocence and the dreams, ideas, and visions that come with it.  There's suddenly fear and pain that reign them in from that innocent freedom until it's boy after boy, break up after break up, and when one ends all you have to look forward to is the next boy.  Happily Ever After is suddenly beyond attainable reality.  Sometimes it's gradual, sometimes it's not so much, but if a girl in today's world isn't careful, the path from innocence always leads to a downward spiral of shattered hopes and broken dreams.

Until you're choosing to take off the white dress and dance on stage in black leather and a whole lot of exposed skin singing about boys being trouble instead of laughing with joy because the boy finally earned your daddy's approval and you can go pick out a white dress to marry him in.

I hope that some day, Taylor can remember what she wanted.  Until then, I'll be singing her early songs while I wait to wear a white dress on my wedding day.

The Insanity of a Non Traditional Student

Today is the dawn of a new semester!  Personally, I am avidly celebrating the end of the solitary confinement that comes with breaks in the school year and getting excited for a steady routine,  consistent social life, and yes, also homework!  I don't have to endure another break until... Well, summer pretty much!  I'm looking forward to an entire semester of uninterrupted structure, growth, confidence, and limited alone-time with which to drive myself to complete and unenjoyable insanity.  Now I get to enjoy the fun kind of insanity!  You know, the kind where you watch The Hobbit in theaters five times and can quote large chunks of it before it's even out on DVD?  The kind where you come home from work covered in mashed potatoes and toddler snot and declare it evidence of a successful day?  The kind where you pass the time in your car by reciting the Lord of the Rings to yourself?  The kind where you have conversations with your cat as though she was your child, including telling her that "we do not bite our friends"?  The kind where you sit on the floor and then try to get up only to fall over because you're standing on your own hair?

Okay, maybe you can't relate to THAT kind of insanity... Ahem.

The class this semester is Intro to Poetry, including but not limited to Beat Poetry, being early Slam Poetry, for which I am incredibly pumped!  My professor is a soft-speaking Frenchman with a mustache whose demeanor and participation policy suggest him to be a fellow introvert.  He's careful to address and acknowledge the thoughts of every student expressed in discussion, and he has a passion for words.  As an unnecessary however additional perk, there are also some guys in my class with potential to be cute, pending a preliminary ruling on their character/personality.  I'm already in love with this class!

Having been finally granted residency by the University of Iowa earlier this month, I am one step closer to the day that I can take more than one class at a time, which would be wonderful as the rate at which I am currently taking classes will not let me graduate any sooner than a decade from when I started.  Returning to life as a full time student isn't quite a visible future for me yet as working full time and studying full time does not a sane person make, and I am trying to avoid college debt as much as possible.  But I'm a resident at least.  It's a step in the right direction, and the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Another "possibility" with which to speed the acquisition of my Bachelor's degree would be spending a summer studying abroad in Ireland.  The more I think about it, the more I want to do it, but yet the more tricky it sounds.  The program itself is about $6k (covers the program, a living situation, and a bus pass), then there's air fare, then there's text books, then there's food and spending money, then there's not working for three months, then there's bills back home, and all of this after the hassle of finding a sub-leaser or something for wherever I might be living if this ever happens (and don't talk to me about living situations, that line of thinking still scares me after last year!).  The financial end of things alone makes the study-abroad idea for me impossible until 2014 at the soonest, and that's if I take out loans to do it.  Not to mention the fact that if you stick me in the middle of Ireland by myself, I might take a wrong turn somewhere and never come back.  Literally, I might get lost in the air port and die before I ever make it back to the states!  I mean, when Bilbo went on his adventure, he got to follow thirteen dwarves who already knew where they were going.  The people affiliated with the Irish Writing Program meet you at the airport in Dublin... I have to make it at least that far by myself!  And then there's figuratively of course.  (Bilbo: "Can you promise that I will come back?" Gandalf: "No, and if you do, you'll never be the same."  Yay, fun kind of insanity!)  Besides, I start getting homesick after two or three weekends in a row in Iowa City... A different continent for three months?!

But I really want to do it!

In addition to school and the probably unnecessary worrying over it, I shall be continuing the editing process of my painfully rough draft of my still untitled WIP.  This is one of the less-mutilated pages:

Nothing says "progress" like several pages in a row covered in bright X's with the words: "This Entire Page is Obsolete!"

My novel kind of fell by the wayside in the aftermath of my car accident that kind of consumed my life there for a lil' bit, but about half-way through break it came back to serve as a safety line for me.  I got caught up and frustrated in the dark, non-enjoyable insanity of winter break until I came to the realization that I was sitting around waiting for my life to happen.  I want to be married, have kids, and write books.  It's all I've ever wanted.  It's STILL all I want.  But that doesn't mean that I have to sit here right now going through the motions and letting life become a desert that leaves me parched of passion and excitement.  I am Kaycee Lynn Pancake, I'm the ONLY Kaycee Pancake that there ever has been or ever will be!  God made me who I am and put me where I am for a purpose, and that purpose wasn't to become someone else before I can start living.  So, I started editing my WIP.  And maybe, just maybe, this is the novel that I can send out into the world when it's done!

Regardless of the small victory over the dark insanity I experienced over break, I've been terribly torn as of late between looking at the mountain and looking at the ground at my feet.  The mountain is taking forever to climb, and the ground at my feet has been looking the same lately with no evidence or promise of forward progress.  I know that reaching the peak will be worth it, even if it is just to find the next mountain, but I'm trying to learn how to live the life I have right now.  I've spent most of my life thus far existing and surviving  just trying to make it to this or that, but what about right now?  There's got to be something special, something worth while about who and where I am in this moment, and it always gets lost in the anticipation and fear concerning whatever peak I'm pursuing.  What about the present?  God gave me this special moment for a reason, and this semester, I'm going to try to find out what it is.

Carpe Diem.

Pleased to meet you, 2013!

Another year has come and gone, as has a visit from my family!  I'm always especially more aware of how quiet my place is right after the Pancakes leave it, so I shall take this moment to commemorate the old year and welcome the new one with Lord of the Rings playing in the background!  (I'll be watching that a lot in the weeks to come to tide me over until The Hobbit comes out on DVD... the movie theater has been making a lot of money off of me!)

Anyway, in all seriousness...

2012 held my first semester at the University of Iowa... Which I thoroughly enjoyed despite the challenges that came with it!  It was also a great year getting to know my friends here in Iowa City, a journey that I am looking forward to continuing in 2013.  I also got to watch my family grow in so many more ways than one this year as each of them have been entering new seasons of life including (but not limited to) caring for grandparents, going through high school, buying houses, and being pregnant!  I seriously can't wait for the little one to arrive so I can be Crazy Aunt Kaycee!

My little brother asked each of us to list our top five memorable moments of 2012, and I'm pretty sure that my top one was pushing the EMT out of my way to go hug my Daddy the night of my car accident on I-80.  Speaking of which, I had my last chiropractor appointment, so aside from the formal signing off of papers, I can officially and with painful eagerness leave all things car accident in 2012 where they belong!

And now, I stand on the brink of 2013.  Honestly, from here, it sure does look an awful lot like 2012, which in some ways kind of saps the New Years nostalgia that I usually love oh so very much about this holiday.  I'll be working in the same place, just new kiddos from time to time.  More school, though probably still one class at a time.  Weekend trips (hopefully NOT involving Ryder trucks on the interstate!), making friends, quiet apartment with my fur baby, most likely a move in the summer, but that part's pretty scary to think about because--as much help as this place needs--I really and truly DON'T want to move... But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Really, I'll cross every bridge when I come to it.  I mean, I have thus far, right?

Maybe there will be some special boy involved somehow in 2013, but maybe there won't.  There probably will be tough, lonely times like the ones that seem to enjoy visiting every time school goes on break.  But there will also be fun times.  There will be writing and reading, there will be laughter and tears.  It's gonna be a tough year, and it's gonna drive me nuts at times.

But it'll be okay, because God and I have got this!

And who knows?  Maybe twelve months from now, 2013 and I will be friends :)