Chiropractic Adventures

After a wealth of medical mishaps so far in 2016 (migraines and such being attributed to stress [hilarious] leading to some significant caffeine cuts among other substantial lifestyle changes that almost killed me, a daycare virus, meds to treat the daycare virus, a 911 call and then a trip to the ER in response to those meds, and other meds dorking with pre-existing anxiety... it's been fun!), my neck is out.  Probably due to the constant coughing and the month's worth of two anxiety attacks a day.  It's been hurting all the way down into my upper back and down my right arm.  So it was time, I needed to find a chiropractor here in North Liberty.

Not all chiropractors are created equal.  And what's worse: I can't tell what I'm getting into until I'm in their office.

So I made an appointment for a neck adjustment.  I was very specific.  I left work thinking that it would be ten minutes, twenty tops, and then I could be back in the classroom.

I walked into the office, filled out two forms in addition to the hour I'd already spent online filling stuff out ahead of time, and then the lady walks me over to a rack of gowns and shows me to a dressing room.

Crap.  This is not going to be 10-20 minutes.  Cue one more anxiety attack.

This chiropractor checked my vitals, for goodness sake!

More questions, lots of checking angles and what not, a couple of fancy chiropractor gadgets that take your spine's temperature...

"Now let's get a couple of X-rays..."

While she was developing those X-rays, I texted the assistant director at work that I would be late.

Then she did a bunch of measuring and dots and lines and such on the X-rays to find all of the anomalies in my spine and stuff: one of my hips is 8 mm smaller than the other, and apparently my tailbone is off.  There was also some obvious irritation in my scoliosis (which she found long before the X-rays, and I know was from the muscles being tense and pulling on it from my neck being out).

So she adjusted my tailbone and that spot in my curve, checks and finds that I had gained 10 degrees of motion (so impressive, seeing as how I couldn't move at all when I went in there), and says that she doesn't want to adjust everything at once, "No need to jerk on your neck if we don't have to," (But we have to!  Please just pop my neck!), "so we'll see how that does over the weekend and come back on Monday.  Ice is your friend, and take it easy!"

Okay, I'm going back to work now!

I'm dangerously close to being immobile again.

So I've been moving my thesis around the house today, I've done a lot of it standing at the kitchen counter trying to keep things stretched out as best I can while I write.  I found throughout the day that my left arm was about an inch longer than my right.  "Something has gone seriously awry," I texted my mom (who is a chiropractic guru... her chiropractor is one of those lots-of-gadgets types.  All I need is somebody to break my neck for me).

Then I popped my shoulder.  My arms are the same now.  :)

Now then, if anyone has any awesome tricks for how to pop one's own neck, that would be stupendous!

Another Year of Adventures

I rang in the New Year last night with my little brother and his girlfriend.  That's how weird of a year 2015 has been, and probably how weird of a year 2016 will be!  (Don't get me wrong, she's cool, and my little brother is a gentleman, but if you know me, and if you know my little brother... me being a third wheel to him and his girlfriend wasn't something anyone probably foresaw for our family!)

2015 had its moments though!  First of all, I got to become an aunt again!  On Sunday, January 18, I woke up to a text message: a picture of a baby's face.  So I called my brother.  And then I jumped in the car.  And four hours later while my dad and I headed for the hospital to meet the newest little Pancake, I called my boss.  "So, I'm in Nebraska right now.  I am prepared to drive back in time for work in the morning, but..."  Because my daycare is awesome, I got to stick around and fall in love with the little guy in person from day one!

Also in 2015, my older nephew finally came to the point where he remembers me between visits!  Now when I come home, he gets excited and runs to me for a hug instead of looking at me like I'm a weirdo for a few hours before having anything to do with me.

At the end of February, I went to ReWrite: The Ragged Edge, a writer's conference co-hosted by Ted Dekker.  Besides being crazy exciting to road trip to Texas to learn about writing/publishing from Ted Dekker, I got to hang out with more fellow writers than I've ever personally known for two days (which granted sent me into an introvert coma, but it was good for me!), gain some insight into the publishing industry, and create a game-plan for my writing career.  That game plan will probably never move as quickly as I'd like it to, as it certainly hasn't while juggling school and a full-time job at the same time, but we're getting there.  All in God's time!

I was blessed to have my mom come with me to be my wheel-man (... person...) down to Texas, but on the return trip I dropped her off with her parents in Oklahoma City and drove back to Iowa City solo: being the longest trip I've ever taken solo, and one of my proudest feats of adulthood.  I did it without the GPS!  It was also one of the moments most responsible for my survival as an introvert in 2015: I needed those eight hours of silence and solitude!

I went on my first mission trip this year!  My campus ministry took a group of us to Seattle, WA over Spring Break to work with the homeless community.  I've never been able to afford the time or money to go on a mission trip before, but someone anonymously came forward and offered to pay for me to go, and my daycare (because they are awesome) came together to make it happen so I could leave for another week (this was RIGHT after ReWrite), and so I got to experience Seattle, see homelessness, love on people as best I knew how in a week, and be a part of an awesome team helping out in whatever way we could.

I moved again in 2015.  My roommate graduated with her PhD in Organic Chemistry and moved to Texas to pursue the next step in her career, so it was time for my bi-annual shift into a new apartment with a new roommate.  I hate moving.

But it's okay, because also this year, I renewed the current lease with my new roommate, which means (so long as all goes according to plan), the next time I move will be back to NEBRASKA!!!!!  WOOHOO!!!!!

Ahem.  Sorry, got super excited there.

I survived one more Semester from the Underworld this year.  I took Parent Teacher Communications, Reading and Writing Gothic Fiction, and a Thesis Workshop simultaneously while working full time.  I survived (mostly) and got straight A's.  I plan to never do this to myself ever again.  But the Hawkeyes were 12-0 for their main season, beat the Huskers, and are playing in the Rose Bowl today, so the semester wasn't complete misery!

Go Hawkeyes!

We said goodbye to a very dear friend in 2015.  Tony Pifer and his family have been very close to my family since before I was born, and his impact on my parents' life is a huge reason that I am who I am today.  He was one of the kindest, most gentle men I have ever known.  Thank you for your life and your service to Abba Daddy, Tony, and I can't wait to see you again someday!

Then after one more round with anorexia (it was a quick one, and God and I won, so in your face, ED!), I made it through the semester and crash-landed into Christmas Break!  I had all kinds of fun at Christmas this year: I drove through rain all day long until it snowed for ten minutes, at which point I put my car in the ditch, and then I got the stomach flu Christmas morning!  But I was with family, and the stories will live on in Pancake Infamy.

So now here's to 2016: more schooling, more writing, building an author website, snuggling nephews, and watching for what God has in store for the year, one day at a time.

Become One of my Fifty

It takes a tribe of ten thousand fans to make a viable career in writing.

As I approach the publishing industry with a heart for writing stories and dreams of getting them to readers, ten thousand sounds like an awfully big number.  In fact, it sounded impossible the first time I heard it, and I took my fear of it to God.  "Is this really what You want me to do?  How can I reach ten thousand people?"

I'm coming to learn that I'm not going to reach anyone, that's God's job, but back in March when He and I had this talk, He gave me a new number.  "What about fifty?"

Will you be one of my first fifty?

I release a quarterly newsletter called The Breakfast Table in which I update my first fifty fans on my writing career: my degree, my journey into the realms of Publishing, and the ways in which I'm continuing to grow as a writer by God's grace.  There are also little bonuses: as one of my fifty, you get to be among the first to hear about things like website launches and book releases when the time comes, and some issues contain shorter pieces I've written of various genres.  As one of my fifty, you get sneak peeks on both sides of a new writer's life.

I can't do this without you.  I can't live this dream of writing if I have no one to read it.  If you're willing to help me out, if you want to see what the life of a writer is like, send an email to kaycee_pancake@yahoo.com.  Put "One of my Fifty" in the subject line  and let me know that you want in on the adventure.

I promise, it'll be a wild ride!

Literary Criticism: A Rant from Within the Confines of Academia

I wanted to share with you the fruit of my higher education, to impart upon you some of the crucial knowledge that my university is so generously lavishing upon me in order to make me a better informed, educated, well-rounded individual.  Because education is an investment, after all, and you can't assign a dollar amount to your mind!  What magic, secret knowledge from within the ivory walls of academia am I going to enlighten you to today?

Literary Criticism.

Basically, you take a box--preferably an outdated one that was once created by some "great thinker" or another whose ideas have since been completely and utterly debunked by reality, such as Freud's psychoanalysis or Marxism for example.  But it doesn't necessarily have to be an outdated one; a currently over-thought perspective will serve just as well for this box: Feminism perhaps, or Queer Studies (that's literally the term, if you laughed you are probably an uneducated barbarian without the intellectual capability to discuss this blog post any further).

This box defines your identity as a reader: it's Who You Are.  Because, you know, college kids are learning who they are, and the more we can influence that developing identity with our mushy ideology, the more effectively we can ruin them for proper functioning in the Real World.

Now then, does everyone have their box?  Okay, now here's this story.  It doesn't matter when it was written or by whom or about what.  Maybe it was written before Marx was born, maybe decades after Psychology figured out that Freud just needed a cold shower, maybe it was written by a man about men and has absolutely nothing to do with women (because, you know, if it isn't about women, then clearly the guy was a chauvinist pig).  Now take this story:

Wad it up and shove it into your box, stamp it down if you have to, light the edges on fire if necessary, and make it fit in there.

Viola!  Literary Criticism!

Now, of course we're going to teach you how to do it, so here's an assignment to go find some.  But it has to be within the last twenty years so it's new and edgy, otherwise it isn't relevant to the discourse anymore.  Because, you know, there's so much new to say about Hawthorne from the past twenty years that nobody could've possibly thought of earlier, even though the guy lived and died in the 1800's.  And it has to be published by a University press, because you can't trust anything that's written outside of academia, it might be tainted by the Real World, and we can't have any opinions from the Real World, now can we?

To help you find an acceptable article, I've given you this ambiguous list of publication criteria with no explanation whatsoever as to what any of these terms mean, OR that list of ten specific journals you can pick from, but none of them will actually have any articles on the piece I wanted you to look for.

Oh, you've done the assignment and met every single criteria except the time of publication?  Weird, most of your classmates did the same thing.

So all of you have a grade of "Incomplete."  Back to the drawing board, suckers!

Meanwhile, here's this week's reading list.  Not that we'll actually have time to discuss half of it or anything, but you'd better read it all twice anyway, just so you're "prepared for class."

People, I cannot tell you how ready I am to graduate and get out of here.

~  *  ~

I should inform you however that I am loving my Thesis workshop!  I'm writing about Tolkien as a writer: the research is fantastic, the writing is a blast, and I don't feel guilty or stupid after investing six or more hours at a time on it.  Tolkien is teaching me infinitely more about writing and my own identity than any of these silly literature classes ever will.

As for that Parent Teacher Communications class... Yeah, we won't talk about that one.

A Funny Story

The sole purpose of this blog post is to make you laugh.  And so I can laugh a little bit longer about this.  You're welcome.  :)

So... This happened this weekend.

How did this happen?  I set a stack of workshop essays on my bookcase.  (The fact that my roommate and I were responsible for the assembly of this bookcase may or may not have been a contributing factor to its literal downfall.)

So after I put the workshop essays on it, we sat down on the futon to eat dinner and enjoy some Once Upon a Time.

Then we see it shift out of the corner of our eyes.

And the next thing we know, the cat is in the hallway (praise Jesus Gracie's been making her run to keep her in shape!) and the bookcase is all over the living room.

My parents are visiting in a couple of weeks, and I am so blessed that my dad has agreed to assemble my next bookcase for me!

Until then, I guess this will have to do:

Have a great week everybody, and look out for falling bookcases!

Advisement of Heartbreak

Academia dealt a pretty big blow to... well, everything really, over Easter weekend.

I was nearing graduation, I was making life plans around when I was going to move back home and have some time freed up for pursuing my writing career.  Seven classes.  So close!

Before I left for Nebraska to spend Easter with my family (including having a sit-down, number-crunching, life-planning session with my dad), I had an appointment with an academic adviser.  I was just going in to touch base, see if it mattered which classes I took first, if any of them were only offered one semester, make sure I wasn't missing anything.

I was missing something.  I was missing a big something.

Seven somethings.

They're called "electives."

"But I'm done with my Gen Eds," I said.  "I should just be down to English classes now, right?"

"Well, you have your Gen Eds, and then you have your English classes, but then there are all these extra credits that are just, you know, 'electives.'"

It was like she dropped a rock in my gut, and I wanted to run out of her office crying right then and there, two minutes after sitting down.

"Well, but I'm still a senior, right?" I asked, wanting to salvage a little bit of academic dignity.  Academic dignity is rare and incredibly valuable as a nontraditional student.

"Well, I think they listed you as a fourth year student, but we like to say that seniors are between x credits and y credits, and you are at z credits.  So you aren't really a junior, but you're just barely on the cusp of being a senior, so you're just kind of, well, 'there.'"

Which is exactly how I've felt for my entire college career in the eyes of the University, but it still stung hearing someone say it out loud, someone who knows nothing about me, someone who is annoyed with me for making her come into the office at 8 AM and just wants me out.

So then she started doing that thing advisers are trained to do where she helps me decide what electives I want to take, like you can decide that in one random sitting.  "You could study museum curating and work in a museum, you could take some journalism classes... you know, I don't really know why, but you really look like a librarian!"  (I was wearing grunge pants and an Elsa t-shirt under a polka-dot jacket.)  And then came The Question: "What do you want to do with writing when you graduate?"

I'm not ashamed of my answer, but I know I'm judged for it fairly regularly.  "I just want to be a stay-at-home mom and write novels."

"Oh," she said, glancing down at my purity ring.  "So you have a husband and kids?"

I grinned a little, my you-have-no-idea grin.  "Not yet."

It's easy to be joyful around Easter time.  Easter is when we get to celebrate our salvation, how much God loves us, how powerful He is.  It's easy to get caught up in a "spiritual high" on Easter.  So that's what I did all weekend.  (Except for the half hour cry-fest on I-80, but anyway...)

But then I had to come back to Iowa City, and there was homework to do, and there was craziness at work (I work in daycare, it's practically made of craziness), and there was no writing time, and all I could think was "I can't do this for three more years."

It's felt like breaking up with a boyfriend--you come to love something so much, it becomes a huge part of your life, a part of your future, and when it turns out to not be what you thought, everything you thought you knew about the thing, about your future, about yourself, is suddenly flung into question.

It's felt like starting over, even though I know it isn't.  I've been here for almost four years now, and whether that lovely adviser admits it or not, I am a senior, and I still have no student debt to my name.

It's felt a lot like heartbreak.

All of this to which God asks: "Do you still trust Me?"

I'm still here, doing what He's sent me here to do.  He started this, so I have to trust Him to finish it.

Dad and I are still scheming, and we've got it down to two more years.  The electives allow me to go for a bonus minor in Educational Psychology, something that will allow me to study both my day-job profession and my target audience as a writer (young adults), and still have room for two fun classes, like Classical Mythology or something.  ("You need something easy, something you can show up for and pass without thinking about it," my dad said.  I scrolled down on the list of possibilities.  "Oooo!  I could take Latin!")

So this is me: still trucking along, still hanging out in Iowa City, still trying to balance Work and School and Writing.

Still trying to trust God's timing.

Become One of my Fifty

It takes a tribe of ten thousand fans to make a viable career as a writer.  Ten thousand people to anticipate, buy, and read my books.  I learned this at a writer's conference in Texas, and driving back to Iowa, God and I had a long chat about it.  "You've called me to write, God, so I have to write.  I have to do this.  But God, ten thousand fans?!"

Like the number 10,000 daunts the Creator of the Universe.

But God knew that I was overwhelmed, so He gave me a new number.  What about 50?

Would you like a front-row seat to the life of an emerging writer?  Would you like to join me on my journey toward publication, and more importantly toward the task God has laid before me?  Would you consider coming alongside me?

Will you consider being one of my fifty?

I have a quarterly newsletter to let you in on where I am in my writing pursuits.  You can see what I'm up to, what I'm reading, what I'm writing, what progress I'm making.  You can be the first to hear about the details of my website and blog launches, you can receive shorter pieces I have written, and later on you can be the first to hear about release dates.

Send me an email to kaycee_pancake@yahoo.com, and I will add you to my list!

I have just sent out my first issue of my newsletter, but it isn't too late!  If you send me an email within the next week, I'll be sending out one more round of this newsletter next weekend.  Please join me, and I promise you an adventure!