MY SEMESTER IS NOW OFFICIALLY OVER

And I mean "over" in the sense that it has now come to its natural conclusion, not that something so dramatically awful has happened that there's no point in continuing with it.)

NOW I CAN HAVE MY FIRST COMPLETE SUMMER BREAK EVER.

(And work on getting a job.  And a driver's license.  And a car.  And applying for things like scholarships and other schools.  But, you know.)

I AM HAPPY.  Even the fact that I had to walk a mile in the rain doesn't matter.  I had great conversations with my professor and the wonderful coffee hut lady and some dude on the bus who's a total European history buff.

[ Also, I have a brand-new tumblr and it's a lot of fun.  

I also have fantastic books out from the library that I'm rereading (because now I have TIME and spare brainpower!) and THEY ARE SO GOOD.   (The Queen's Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner.)  Go.  Read.  (Seriously, you should read them.  They're some of my favorite books of all time.  The Thief is the first one.  Do not be put off by the slow pace at the beginning.) 

Hopefully, I didn't fail my math final.  Keeping my 4.0 GPA would be a really nice cake topper right now.  (Unfortunately, KVCC is going to make me wait THREE WEEKS before they post final grades.  Yrrrgh.)

Darn it, I just love my friends so much, and [*insert effusive, rambling emotional post about how amazing and smart and goofy and unique and nerdy and beautiful they are and how amazing they've been in my life and how grateful I am for them and how I don't know what I'd do without them*] I am way too happy to go to sleep right now, even though it is four minutes to one o'clock in the morning.

La chocolat, trés délicieux

HPA's Willy Wonka was quite super.  One of my bestest friends (as the nutterific Grandma Josephine—hi Emily! *waves* ) and her little bro (as a rainbow-striped Oompa-Loompa) were in it, and they were fantastic.  I love homeschoolers and theatre.  Especially because they're a good combination.  The only disappointment (which was in no way related to the production) was my post-show chocolate yen, which could not be fully sated because every single Wonka chocolate bar in Meijer was gone.  (It was incroyable.)  But the chocolate I did get was very tasty, and I am thankful for it.  (And thanks very much to Rick and surgery-bound Connie for giving me and Rachel their show tickets!)


(Random interjection of enthusiasm for parenthetical clarifications!)

Say hey to more weddings, eh?

I went to the U.P. for my cousin's wedding this weekend.  That was completely super.  It was a sort of deep, incongruous experience, because this particular cousin has never previously either a) held a serious conversation with me, or b) hugged me, both of which happened on Saturday.  (Well, a didn't really happen, because I barely saw him, but it didn't happen in reverse, which is new.)  I saw a whole new side of my cousin, and it was sort of amazing, in a great way.  (Shout-out to all my relatives who started reading my blog while I was up there this weekend.  Haha.  Hello, there! :)
*Obligatory extra paragraph for my grandmother.  Love you!  Am I correct in inferring that you like mushroom pizza? That's great, because as far as I know, we two are the only people I know who like it.  Also, hurrah for dessert options!*
Weddings are the best, and by golly, I've been going to a lot of them this summer.  Three already gone and one, possibly two, more yet to go.  Weddings always turn on the faucet in my brain that thinks about the future.  I wind up investing several hours of deep thought into ideas and plans for my own wedding—assuming it will someday happen—and, this time, perhaps because this wedding was full of family members, my siblings' weddings (Weird thoughts, especially since it's going to to be some time before any of them get married.  So I presume).  I even got somewhat teary-eyed, which is an interesting rarity for me.  Considering how emotional I tend to be, one would think I'd cry more at these sorts of events, but I don't.  I just marvel.  And dance a lot.

I am so blessed.

I'm not exactly sure how many readers of this blog know what's going on in my life right now.  To those who do, this might seem like a weird sentiment.  Aside form all the normal stresses of shyness and school and uncertainty and major decisions, my home life has gotten fairly screwed over in the last couple of weeks.

But I have never felt so loved in my whole life.  I mean it.

In the last week I've gotten three Facebook messages out of the blue from people whom I know don't know what's going on with me, just saying "Hey, I've been thinking about you and praying for you, and you're amazing and I love you".  And I've gotten several calls and emails—and hugs and prayers—from people who do know what's going on.  

People are taking time for me.  Even just a few minutes, but they're taking time for me.  And for once, I don't feel guilty about it.  I feel utterly awed.  God's reshaping the weird mentalities I've had about myself and my relationships with others for as long as I remember—like He promised me He would.

I am so goshdarned blessed.  God loves me so much.  It literally floored me earlier—I couldn't even stand upright, I was so amazed and humbled by all the ways He keeps finding to show me I'm loved and favored, even though a lot of things are emotionally and circumstantially really sucky right now.

So—I love you guys.  Thanks for being my friends, and sticking by me, and taking time for me.  You're awesome, and I wouldn't be here without you. 

"Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow." – James 1:17

Psalm 136

Also, Matt Smith as the Doctor contains an awful lot of epic win.

(Saw the first two episodes of Season 5, at long last.  Made me slightly less disconsolate about the end of David Tennant's tenure, which contained a possibly nonpareil amount of utter awesome.)

Monday sucks. / Birthday. / Monikers. / Birthday surprise!

I refuse to start this post with an excuse for why I haven't blogged in almost a month, so I won't.  (Partially because I don't have one, but mainly because they're obnoxious and unoriginal, unless it's a really good one.  And typically they aren't, I think.)

This past Monday seems to have been fairly universally horrid.  (Monday is usually begging to have someone light a match to it and laugh maniacally as it burns, but this one was particularly awful.)  It was big and bad and ugly for our immediate family for reasons I cannot presently expound upon on the Internet, but prayer for all of us would be welcome.  I found out tonight that someone very special to my grandma died on Monday (which was also her birthday, in a twist of bitter irony).  And a lot of my friends posted Facebook statuses about generally suckish things that were happening to them on Monday.  Though Hannah appeared to have a fun self-revelation on Monday, which is always exciting.  But mostly, Monday was really terrifically not terrific, and I've been trying to sort out the rest of my week bit by bit since then.  AUGH.  At least classwise, 'tis nearly done.

I am so sad that I didn't do a birthday post on the 8th.  i was going to do like a little journal-y thing with bits if things that happened and were observed by me throughout the day, and a screenshot of the birthday wishes email I got from YourPants.com, and it was uber cool, but then it was 6 minutes too late by the time I realized I hadn't actually posted it and I was kind of devastated.

So!  I have named my laptop at last!  Its name is Asfaloth.  That's the name of Glorfindel's white horse in the Fellowship of the Ring.  (For any non-book-devotees reading this, it was Arwen that rode Asfaloth in the movie, taking Frodo to Rivendell.)  That's one Accomplishment of Awesome achieved!  I need to go through my list and update what I have and have not accomplished…I know i've accomplished at least 4 or 5 (barely a dent in my 74 1/2 items, I know)  and failed one…Anywho.

My bamboo plant:  Spritely Fetch-the-Battle-Axe Takemoko.  I think.  The first name is still under debate (yes, it's supposed to be irony).  I'm thinking about something more Asian, possibly.  Or an obscure, long, and thus awesome adjective.  But I definitely like the last name and the middle addendum. 

Oh, and my friends threw me a surprise party last week.  Which was AMAZING.  Because I've wanted a surprise party since around the age of 11 (8ish years), but I didn't say anything about it, because, you know, my parents wouldn't remember that idea long-term and they couldn't use it the same year or it wouldn't be a surprise.  (Just the way parents work.  Or, mine do.)  (They did throw me one when I turned six, but it scared me and I ran and hid in a kitchen cupboard instead of being social, like you're supposed to do at your own birthday parties.)  The Sunday before, Gwen and I had actually had a conversation about surprise birthday parties, about which I promptly forgot and thus did not suspect a thing, even when Mom was like , "I have to go run errands at 7 at night!" and then "didn't hear" any of my queries about where we were going.  Thus, I was caught very off guard when lots of people leapt out from Adam and Terra's living room furniture and yelled, "SURPRISE!"  It has been reported that my face turned purple.  We ate lots of tasty party food and watched The Road to El Dorado (just about the best/most quotable movie ever, made before DreamWorks started making crappy live-action films) and lots of Tim Hawkins videos and it was SO MUCH FUN and MY FRIENDS ARE AWESOME, even if all of them couldn't be there.  
It made the previous Tuesday, which was my actual birthday, less depressingly anticlimactic, which is most bodacious.

So, it's forty minutes past midnight, and I still need to write a 600-word paper for my humanities class tomorrow. Thusly I bid you all a very fond farewell.  (I feel as though this is a quote from a movie in which someone dies immediately after saying that…Hm.)

(Oh—Bilbo Baggins says that right before he leaves the Shire forever.  Not really dying.  But still a drastic end to his life as he knows it.  Possibly good and possibly bad.  I sense that I'm about to launch a tangential and philosophical discussion right now, and I really need to not do that right now, so…guten nacht.  Maybe I will do this *points upwards* later.)

Wonder I

  Sister, cast a shadow (Brother, tell me why)
  You're holding back the sun (No, it can't be done)
  We're towering to these spiders (But I feel so small)
  Is it all right (Is it okay)?
  It's okay; I feel small too
       Wonder, wonder I
       If I stood on your shoulders
       Could I touch the sky?

————————————————————————————————


There are (sort of) three kinds of people in the world:  the Lack-Awesomes, the Contagious-Awesomes, and the Intimidating-Awesomes.  Lack-Awesomes are self-explanatory and not the subject of this post.  Many of the people I know are Contagious-Awesomes, which means they're so awesome they're just lots of fun to be friends with, and proximity to them helps draw out your innate awesome.  I know a lot of these people.  I love them a lot.  But I also know several Intimidating-Awesomes.  These are people who are just as—maybe even more—awesome as/than the Contagious-Awesomes, but instead of spurring on your awesome with their awesome, they unwittingly scare your awesome into a cowering in the corner, condensing it into a forgotten little puffball of tangled deoxyribonucleic acid.  It's like one of those stacked bar graphs:  there's a set amount of awesome to be split between two people, so the more awesome the Intimidating-Awesome displays, the less awesome you can show.  The heat of their awesome evaporates your awesome (or at least that's what it feels like).  I know a couple of people like that.  I feel miserably inarticulate and and juvenile and boring around them (even if they're younger than me), which is ridiculous, especially since they're all uber nice folks.  I've always wanted to be friends with the Intimidating-Awesomes, but it's kind of hard to do.  I always get a tad bit starstruck, and starstrickenness makes it decidedly difficult to be (feel) awesome.  

[EDIT, approx. 12:27 a.m.]
…I just had a realization (I think with some help from God; late-night prayer rocks)—I think a lot of the cause of Intimidating-Awesomes is that they tend to be either 
1. really extroverted, or 
2. just like me. (That is not meant to be a brag on myself at all, by the way.)  
  ~  Extroverts tend to either be great for holding up a conversation with an introvert, or terrifying to to an introvert, because they naturally tend to emit awesomeness in their interactions with people instead of bottling it all up and quietly channeling it into things, like introverts tend to do.  Thus, it can feel like a standard I have to measure up to in my side of the conversation/interaction.  And I'm usually incapable of doing so (or feeling as if I am) because I usually have a completely different mode of self-expression than those sorts of Awesomes.  
  ~  People who are just like me (in terms of personality and often hobbies and talents) are people I'm really attracted to (friend-wise) but also feel a natural sort of competition with because we're so alike.  I REALLY feel pressure to measure up to (or over) their portion of awesome, but it's quite difficult due to the fact that's our types of awesome are usually very similar, or at least similarly expressed.  Thus, it's hard not to subconsciously view this sort of person as a rival, even while really wanting to befriend them.

[Wow, I wasn't expecting all of that.]

[ From the retrospective semi-objective viewpoint, it's an interesting phenomenon. ]

Now I have to figure out what to do with all of that.  (I apologize; this is a hazard of impulsive real-time blogging.  My "deep" posts are not neatly packaged.)

A song about British bowler hats and yellow snow and lack of organs and dance parties and recurring bipolarity.

I made an amazing playlist for New Years and am throwing a one-person dance party in my newly clean room.  (The linked version is missing a couple of songs, one by Glowfriends and two by Charlie.)

The Demskes are AWESOME.  My family is also AWESOME.  And putting them together makes a SUPERFABULOUSGREATUNFORGETTABLESPARKLYEPICDOUBLYAWESOME bonanza for New Year's!  YAY!  Movies and food and goofy camera moments and arguments over board games and food and movies and Nerf gun wars and food (including snowman-shaped marshmallows and chocolate cream cheese balls), and even sleep.  ILOVEIT.
Ordinarily, I would be one to write a very lengthy and nostalgic and idealistically futuristic post, but I have too much energy to at the moment.  Also, I did a lot of that in my Christmas post.  Suffice it to say that 2011 is going to (what rhymes with eleven?  Besides the number seven, and a couple of proper names, and heaven, which I can't use without saying something ridiculous and/or presumptuous.) be…purposeful (at least, as purposeful as Kiersten can get), with the help of my Ultimate Accomplishments of Awesome list, which I really need to write up somewhere.  And I hope to enjoy school and better my friendships and go crazy for Jesus and get in shape and do some thinking about the future and have lots of dance parties, one-person or otherwise.

I'm now, because I wrote this post three hours ago and my computer wouldn't let me post it, watching Miyazaki movies on YouTube.  Yay!

…One more addition to my Accomplishments of Awesome list:
74a. Get down to business to defeat the Huns.
74b. (Possibly with a wonderfully choreographed musical number.)

Kiersten's Not-Quite-Ultimate-Because-I-Think-I-Left-Something-Out-By-Mistake YouTube Accomplishments of Awesome List for Christmas Break 2010:

1. Marathon the Vlogbrothers videos
2. Watch the Charlie videos that I missed
3. Look up all the musicians that Hannah and Emily post on each others' Walls
4. Watch the rest of Alex Day's (appropriate) videos
5. Finish A Very Potter Sequel
6. Try to find out where my posted MovieMaker project disappeared to

Reenactment No.1

Encounter with Eccentric Talkative Person #237:  Jamaican dude in a striped sweater that made me think of chocolate.  (It was ivory-and brown-striped, and it made me think of the half-white chocolate striped Hershey's Hugs.)

The Gull Road Wal-Mart Metro Transit bus stop.

It was too cold to stand outside next to the old ladies who were smoking, so I wandered into the little glass partition and seated myself on the black metal bench (which was beyond icy; I was glad I had a long coat). 

He was hunched over his phone, but he was hanging up as I got there.  

For the purposes of this blog reenactment, I will refer to him as The Over-Friendly Jamaican Guy (OFJG).

He had a pretty thick accent (which was flipping sweet, but also means you need to use your imagination and insert me saying "Sorry, what?" after 85% of his sentences).

OFJG:  Allo!

Me:  Hi. 

OFJG:  Ah you a student? (points at my bag)

Me: Yeah, at KVCC.

OFJG:  Me too!  What you major in?

Me:  I don't have a major yet.  I'm thinking I'll probably go into English.

OFJG:  Oh!  I do nossing.

Me:  Nothing?

OFJG:  (laughs) No, nossing, not nossing!

Me:  (befuddled look)

OFJG:  Nossing!  (finally pulls out his phone and types "nursing".)

Me:  (slightly embarrassed) Oh! Nursing.  Cool.

OFJG: (nods, points at old ladies smoking outside.)  Do you smoke?

Me: (wide-eyed) No.

OFJG: You drink?

Me:  (awkward laugh) Oh, no!

OFJG:  Ah you mahrried?

Me:  Er, no.

OFJG:  (shocked)  Oh, you not mahrried?!  Why not?!

Me:  I don't think I'm old enough yet, I guess. 

OFJG:  Oh?  This yoa first year in college?  You live with your parents?

Me:  (nod)

OFJG:  When you plan on getting mahrried?  You want to graduate first and den get mahrried?

Me:  Um, probably.

OFJG:  You go for master's degree, den?  Long time?

Me:  i don't know yet.  It depends on what I decide to major in.

OFJG: (knowing nod)  Ah.  You have a boyfriend?

Me:  No, not yet.

OFJG: (again, shocked) What?  Why not?

Me:  Um...I've never been asked, I guess.

OFJG: Oh!  Why you never been asked?  You don't know?

Me:  No, not really.

OFJG: (shakes head in despair)  You don't know.  Ah.  What's yoa name? 

Me:  Kiersten.

OFJG:  Koastah?

Me:  KEER-sten.

OFJG:  Oh! Oh!  KEA-stin.  Nice name.

Me:  Thank you.  What's yours?

OFJG:  My name is Abie.  "A" for "opera", and "B" for baseball.  Easy to remember, yah?

Me:  (totally confused by "A" is for "opera")  Yup, easy to remember!

(long, quasi-awkward pause)

Me:  (spotting the bus pulling in across the parking lot)  Oh!  Are you taking the bus?

OFJG:  Yes, of course I take da bus!  Do you have a phone?

(I politely declined to give him my number, and then his phone rang, and our conversation was halted.)

I passed him in the hallway at school later, and he was like, "HEY, MON!"  but I didn't see him afterwards.

It was a highly entertaining and quite unforgettable  encounter, and I have very much enjoyed regaling it all day. I wish you were here so I could do it in person for you.

Modesty (What's Going On Up There?)

Earlier today I was on Wikipedia—I don't even recall what I originally looking up; I tend to spend time just surfing Wikipedia, as geeky as that might sound—and I came across the article about The Rebelution, a Christian youth ministry self-described as "a teenage rebellion against the low expectations of ungodly culture."  this caught my eye in particular because I heard the founders, twins Alex and Brett Harris, featured on Focus on the Family not long ago, when they were about my age, and I'd thought their story was a pretty cool one.    In any case, I saw that a couple of years ago they did a modesty survey:  300-some hundred girls submitted questions about what in their behavior or dress provoked a guy's...masculine hormones, and during a 20-day period, over 1600 guys of all ages wrote in to give their opinions.  Yes-or-no statements were presented, and each guy rated how strongly they agreed with a statement, with the option for them to provide additional text responses.  Over about two hours, I surfed through the entire survey and read most of the text responses.  It was admittedly rather eye-opening.

As a Christian girl, I usually strive to dress and behave in a fashion I believe is modest and honoring to God.  Though, i must admit that throughout my more recent teen years at least some of that has been out of insecurity about my appearance, rather than a conscious desire to be modest.  
While I wasn't overtly surprised at a lot of guys' responses about how specific clothing items were or weren't stimulating to the imagination, I was startled at a lot of their reactions towards girls' intentional immodesty.  A lot of them said they feel insulted or degraded when a girl flaunts herself.  While I know a lot of guys want to keep their imaginations elsewhere and their minds pure, it hadn't occurred to me that guys would feel disrespected by girls' attempts to control or allure them by dressing provocatively as girls often feel disrespected when guys objectify them.  Just as not all girls want to be eye candy, not all guys are comfortable with seeing or imagining it.  It was actually surprisingly encouraging.  While it is obvious to me that upstanding Christian guys do exist who actually want to see less skin from a girl, it was awesome to see it from so many.  There were a few open questions at the end (e.g., "If you could say one thing to your sisters in Christ about modesty, what would it be?")  that were free text responses instead of multiple-choice scale, and that was the most encouraging of all.  I read a lot of informative and encouraging responses.  Most of them clearly expressed that in no way were they trying to shift all the blame for their lustful thoughts onto the way a girl dresses, but they expressed sincere appreciation over a girl's attempt to dress in way that wouldn't act as a "stumbling block" and actually said they find a modestly dressed girl "refreshing", especially in friendships.  A lot of them expressed that when a girl shows too much, it's actually really awkward.  

Last year I read Relient K's book The Complex Infrastructure Known as the Female Mind, where they "categorized" all the stereotypes of girls they'd observed over the years. (Quite humorous.  I recommend it, if you don't plan to take it too seriously.)  In the back they broke all guys down into a mere two categories: "The Ape" and "Mr. Wonderful".  "Each guy on the planet is The Ape and Mr. Wonderful...but each only on a part-time basis", they said.  The Ape is the utterly mannerless, more vulgar side that neglects personal hygiene, revolves around macho aggressiveness, laughs at horrifically dumb jokes, and tends to focus on girls in the more "unwholesome", hormonal-driven ways.  Mr. Wonderful, on the other hand, has "staggering good looks", adores and respects his family, is hardworking and driven (but not ruthless),intelligent, polite, humorous, trustworthy, considerate, the most outstandingly upstanding citizen around, has no annoying bad habits, and an undying romantic who treats his lady like a princess in absolutely every way.  "Each guy is a strange and beautiful mix of self-centered slob and selfless gentleman."  It is so bizarre (and, I confess, really funny) to me that they broke down girls into a dozen-plus basic categories and even then had to add a disclaimer saying, "This doesn't cover everyone", and then said, "All guys are a mix of THIS and THIS"—and it just baffles me. Girls don't even make that much sense to me some of the time—and I think I have a pretty femininely-wired brain, cognitively speaking.  How much more baffled can guys get?

But, I digress.  It was really refreshing to me to see, in plain black-and-white, so much desire in so many guys to be the "Mr. Wonderful", who wants to be driven by a focus on God and a desire to like a girl for her personality and spirit instead of driven by libido.  Even though I have seen those same desires and principles lived out in the lives of guys I know (and for whom I have a very hefty dose of respect and appreciation) it was pretty darn awesome to see so much in words.  I admit, occasionally it weirded me out to see the extent of detail guys could give in their answers, but it was kind of eye opening as well.  I—along with most girls, I think—really don't have a good understanding of just how visual the male brain is wired to be. And I'm like, if guys' minds conjure up this much even when they don't want to mentally undress us, how far does a guy who doesn't check his thoughts let his imagination wander?  To me, personally, it was a bit of a wakeup call, and definitely an inspiration.  

Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight.  For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful.  1 Peter 3:1-5 (NIV)