For Kiersten

I'm Obsessed with Augusta Audrey Gowen Manlove Brown

I CAN'T STOP READING THE FORUM!!!!! I CAN'T STOP LAUGHING AT "LOOKING FOR MANLOVE" And I really need to. Because I have a FREAKING MIDTERM TOMORROW!!!!! For a class that I really need to do well in. But Nerdfighteria is just too engrossing right now...

One more reason to love Nerdfighteria

This is just one more reason to love Nerdfighteria. John asks a question offhand in one of his videos, and people want to answer that question, so they start to search through genealogical records. The mystery deepens, and no one has any clue what actually happened. Ideas start flying everywhere, and become more far fetched. But still people search.

The mystery of Gussie Audrey Manlove also illustrates one of the things I hate about humans on the internet. People who post without reading what other people said before them, and people who say stupid things. Also, people who don't capitalize, spell check, or use proper grammar.

That being said, I am enthralled by this mystery and I hope that we nerdfighters get to the bottom of it.

It's Time To Evaluate My Progress

The Ultimate Accomplishments of Awesome List:

(x=accomplished, /=partially accomplished or in progress)

[/] Study things that are interesting to me
[] Memorize a book of the bible
[] Journal like crazy
[/] Color a lot more in my coloring books
[] Look at the Stars until 2 in the morning
[] Stay up all night talking
[] Go to Chicago
[] Dance all night
[] Sign Language?
[] Learn how to apply make-up
[] Dress Up for no reason
[] Have a tea party
[] Buy more tea
[] Buy a New Teapot!
[/] Pen Pals!
[] Photo shoot
[] Walk through Kalamazoo with Emily, singing along the way
[] Have more Kalamazoo adventures
[] Finish my dress
[/] Become comfortable with my singing voice
[] Reread Fahrenheit 451
[] Own Last Words of Notable People
[/x] Own/Read all of John Green's books
[/] Watch every Vlogbrother's video [I'm down to the last five months of video, well, the first five months.]
[/] Read a lot of poetry
[] Read The Hunger Games
[] Read Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
[] Read Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
[] Read two Shakespeare plays I haven't read before
[] Read the Phantom Tollbooth
[] Wear my Octopi shirt
[] Have fun awesome walking adventures with some of my favorite people
[] Camp out in my backyard with some of my favorite people
[/] Blog about interesting stuff, not just keep a type of online journal
[] Write a short story
[] Do the Romans 8 thing Emily, Kiersten and I talked about
[] See at least one musical
[] Go to shows and artsy things
[x] Go to at least one museum
[x] Think about my life, a lot
[/] Read my bible every day. Maybe read the new testament in three months or something like that.
[] Make my people/ideas/quotes/inside jokes book
[] Index my journals by people
[/] Hang out with people more
[] Decrease World Suck [I'm not sure how to measure this...]
[/] Learn how to do the nerdfighter salute
[x] Read Mere Christianity
[/] Practice Structured Procrastination more often
[] Grow Closer to James and Jesse
[/] Deal with issues caused by event in childhood/forgive people
[] Reread LotR in a month
[] Read the Silmarillion
[/] Be Bold
[] Name my newly acquired teapot
[x] Fast something (for a month)
[] Learn six new words and use them regularly
[] Write at least 5 appreciation letters
[] Have Deep and pointless theoretical conversations
[] Acquire at least two sundresses
[] Wear dresses/skirts at least once a week once it's warm (55 degrees and up)
[] Learn to juggle
[/] Name all of my turtles
[] Road Trip?
[] Watch Dr. Who?
[] Start Using French the Llama in normal conversation [I'm not sure if this means in conversation with my nerdfighter friends or everyone else]

The recent additions:
[/] Memorize five poems
[] Read all seven Harry Potter books in a week

[] Help others accomplish their UAoA lists

[] Get rid of excess stuff/pare down my material goods/give them to a charity

[] Pare down my facebook friends list

[] Get a tattoo

On Tattoos

Well, not really tattoos, plural. More like tattoo, singular. Because I really think that it's going to happen when I'm in Kalamazoo next week. I'm going to get my turtle! And it's going to look like this:

And it's going to be on my ankle! Also, thoughts on me actually getting a tattoo?

My Morning

Go Back to Sleep on repeat.

Two twenty minute naps already.

Pacing around my room gesturing emphatically.

Making flash cards.

Exam later.

Want Sleep...

Alternatively, I'd settle for lunch.

How awesome am I?

95% on my Microbiology midterm? I totally pwned that test. (The mean was 80% and the median was 83%). Basically, I'm awesome.

...

However, I do have two midterms this week that I feel woefully unprepared for, so I guess I'll have to wait until Thursday afternoon to assess how awesome I am at school.

...

Or how awesome I am at procrastinating...

Also, I am currently watching vlogbrothers videos, which is definitely not a good use of my time. But man, is it fun.

I Am Perpetually Six Years Old

Yesterday all I wanted to do was:

Climb a tree

Play in the Mud

Fly a Kite.

Instead, I ate goldfish crackers.

Six Word Memoir - Sestina Form

So I wrote this six word memoir for my English class last year. It's in the form of a Sestina, which is a really cool, and kind of complicated, poetic form. Basically you have six stanzas of six lines, each with the same six end words repeating in a predetermined order, and a final stanza of three lines which uses the six end words. It's pretty awesome. Anyway, while I was walking home today, the first stanza popped into my head, and I wanted to share this with you. I hope you enjoy!

My father always said I was a hippie

biker chick, a private joke between the

two of us, like the "Hannah

banana from Montana" joke he constantly says, smiling at

my feigned annoyance. I get my revenge by laughing

at him, when I'm not laughing with him at the world.

I suppose I am a product of my world

so I'll blame him for my hippie

tendencies. Still, some of the responsibility lies with my laughing

mother, the ubiquitous gentle presence in my life. The

next load of blame I lay at

my brothers' feet - the reasons I was called Ja-Hannah

or even Je-Hannah

in my childhood. They exposed me to their world

of music - at

home, or as we got older, at "hippie"

house shows showcasing folk and punk and other genres - the

urge to start laughing

stifled at being in the presence of so many older non-laughing

people. James and Jesse would introduce me as their little sister, Hannah

and I would smile and shake the

hand of another dreadlocked person - the ever expanding world

of my hippie

friends recorded at

home in my journal, late at

night after arriving back at the house, laughing

at my encounter with a hippie

or two. In the morning, my parents would ask "Hannah,

how was last night?" and I would tell them of my experiences in James' world

careful to leave out the

sordid details - with the

suspicion my father already knows and at

the same time, to spare my mother worry for James and his world.

Because when she's worried, she's no longer laughing

and we're her babies: James, Jesse, and Hannah,

and we're all a kind of hippie.

Hippie Hannah

Laughing at

the World

More Turtles!

I thought I would show you my turtles that already have names. Also, I think it would be fun to see if you guys can guess/figure out/remember where the names came from. So I'm not going to tell you why they have the names they do. At least not yet.

1. Fred

2. Cordelia

3. Durnik

4-11. Left to Right: Fuzzy, Jade, Farid, Izzy, Ewoyen, Jack, Tamerlane, Baby Ben

12. Rochester

13+14. John and Henry

15. Polgara

16. Rupert

17. Esther

18. Mark

There is also French the Llama, but I'm too lazy to take a photo of him.

I Need YOUR Help

So one of the things on my Ultimate Accomplishments of Awesome list is to name all of my turtles, but I don't know what names to give them! I have seventeen to name, and I need you guys to give suggestions.

1. Megan brought this little key chain back from Japan for me. It's a little bell.

2. This one is also from Japan, made of wood, also a key chain.

3. From the Nature Connection. I think this one might have a name, but I'm too lazy to go read all of my journals to find it. Made of clear stone.

4. Made of wire, Alyssa gave me this for my birthday, along with French the Llama.

5. A little bobble head turtle. I honestly can't remember where I got this. I have a vague idea of a garage sale... Oh, this is from the garage sale of Jesse's girlfriend's family. I think.

6. I made this out of yarn a year or so ago.

7. A dollar bill turtle, made it eight or nine months ago.

8, 9, 10. These are from Japan, Megan got them for me. Apparently they're supposed to be lucky. In case you can't see one of the little turtles is silver and the other is gold.

11-16. I need to rename these little clay turtles from El Salvador as well.

17. Megan made me this hat, and even though I don't know where it currently is, the turtle on it needs a name.

.

Just one more Valentine's Day Post

Just a couple XKCD Valentines for you.

I Like Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day makes me happy because it's a day celebrating Love. And I know that Greeting Card Companies make a lot of money off of it. And yeah, it may seem like a day in which guys have to buy expensive jewelry for their significant other. It can be complicated. But it doesn't have to be. My mother usually buys some chocolates and leaves them with a little note for my dad and us kids. Valentine's Day celebrates Love, and that is a beautiful thing. Really, it's about doing something to please your significant other because of how you feel about them. It's not an obligation, it's an opportunity.

And I know that a lot of singles call it "singles awareness day," but really. It's a day celebrating love. And that love doesn't have to be romantic love. It could be Best Friend's Day or National Spread the Love Day or something like that. I just feel like it's a day celebrating something positive, and a lot of people seem to miss that, or just be cynical about it.

On Valentine's Day

I feel happy. Why is everyone so cynical? Yesterday in my writing class, this kid was ranting about how Valentine's Day was a scam generated by struggling greeting card companies to produce extra income. I whispered to my neighbor, "He's just bitter because he doesn't have a Valentine."

I like Valentine's Day. I like it when people hold hands.

~James Duke

Total Trust

So all of you probably know that I love Fairy Tales. I've been reading them since I was about ten. I haven't stopped yet. Except now, I read retellings, novelizations. The only retelling of Rapunzel I've read is called Golden, by Cameron Dokey. I'd recommend it for those of you who like fairytales. Anyway, there is this part in it about trust. I'll copy it out here.

"It's hard to describe precisely what happened then. Later I realized that I had been given my first real glimpse of sorcery. As Melisande gazed upon them, many in the crowd cried out. Some fell to their knees and covered their faces with their hands, while others stood perfectly still, as if they had been turned to stone. In the end, though, they were all the same in one thing: Each and every one of them looked down. No person there assembled could hold the sorceress's eyes with their own.

Then she glanced down at me, and it seemed to me as if my heart would rise straight up out of my chest. All of my fears were laid bare, and my hopes also. A voice in the back of my mind instructed me to look away or I would have no secrets left, but I did not. What had I to conceal? This was not some stranger, who saw only my strangeness. This was the woman who had raised me since birth. The only one I knew and trusted. This was Melisande.

And so I held her eyes and did not look away. After a moment, she smiled. I smiled back, and at this, my heart resumed its proper place and all was right once more."

Lately, this is how I've been feeling about God. Total Trust. That one day, I'll be in heaven and God will look at me and judge me (except instead of seeing frail broken me, he'll see his perfect son) and I'll just look at the only one who truly knows me and the only one I truly know and trust. And I won't look away. Because he is my God and my Daddy, and I love him so much. And he loves me so much. I honestly can't wait.

A (very) Short Story

This post isn't about anything very interesting. I just remembered something and had to tell it to someone. So I decided to tell you people who read my blog!






I SAW A SQUIRREL SNEEZE YESTERDAY!!!!!!
And yes, it was the cutest thing I've ever seen.

On storytelling

So basically, this is going to be fun. So I have a whole lot to tell you before I actually start writing this. Mkay, so basically I've recognized another of my identities: storyteller. I've known this for a while, the fact that I tell stories. But I've never actually called /thought of myself as a storyteller. But I am a storyteller. It's kind of genetic/family thing. My grandma is a storyteller. Like she goes into schools and to conventions and tells stories. It's pretty cool. Anyway, so I tell stories. And I kind of like to put my life into story format, in case you didn't know. So basically I have this new project: writing down some of memories from when I was a kid, like a memoir. And my first story is going to be about sledding. Actually, that might be the second story, because I've already written one, three years ago, for class. Here you go. It's called Tree Memories. I know, very creative.




My memories associated with my early childhood usually have one common theme: tagging along with my brothers, who are two and four years older than I. We spent most of our summer vacations outside; playing millions of make-believe games and running around our yard and the forest across the street. I always wanted to do what they could do, whether it was riding a bike, going to a sleepover, or climbing a tree. I was the typical youngest child, continually being told "You're too young!", "You'll mess it up!", or "You won't be able to keep up!". My dearest goal was to catch up with James and Jesse. The first time I climbed a tree all by myself after watching them do it for months, I experienced a feeling of euphoria that no amount of scolding from my mom could lessen. I was four, and the only tree I could climb was cut down with the rest of the woods a month after I learned how to climb it.

My childhood was defined by trees, my knowledge of the neighbors limited to the trees in their yards. I grew and learned to climb the twisted apple tree at the far edge of Mr. Mills, one of my favorite neighbors (he always gave me salt water taffy), yard. It made a fine secret clubhouse. Especially the spot ten feet up where there were three "seats" we could sit in and conduct our business. The tree that dropped "helicopters" (a maple) in Helen's yard proved to be a satisfactory alternative for the clubhouse when the new neighbors (Mr. Mills moved) cut down the apple tree to make room for a fence. I eventually learned to climb the tree with spiky blue-green needles (a blue spruce) in our own backyard, after Helen died and we could no longer play in the maple tree. In the end, there was only one tree in the immediate neighborhood I couldn't climb; the tall evergreen with the soft needles (a white pine) next to the spiky tree in our backyard.

The lowest branch of the pine was at least six feet above the ground and the distance seemed even longer because I was little. The tree was tall, with slender, bendy needles that seemed to come down all on one day in the fall, leaving a carpet of slippery orange, perfect for making beds and chairs. I was always mystified to how all the orange needles knew to come down together and how there were still needles on the tree after that magical day.

I finally learned to climb that tree after watching Jesse clamber up the trunk. The trick was to take the white mini ladder, jump and catch the second lowest branch, then swing my feet to the lowest branch. Then came wriggling and reaching for higher branches to pull myself to a sitting position. I couldn't go any higher than the lowest branch, but that was okay with me. Getting down was relatively easy. I just reached down to the branch I sat on and twisting, swung myself to where I had a free drop to the ground.

One muggy day in July when the dirty air clung to everything and air conditioners were strangely silent, my mom worked in her garden and I played by myself in the backyard. I was eleven and liked to climb the white pine tree to just sit and think. I had already climbed up and jumped out of the tree two times and was swinging down a third time when it happened. I felt the hood of my blue jacket catch on a branch and I was stuck, dangling above the ground. My hands were twisted awkwardly above my head. My jacket was pulling my arms tautly back. And worst of all, my shirt was beginning to bare my sinking stomach to the hot, humid air.

My three options to get out of the tree: call my mom to help while swallowing my pride, drop and rip my jacket and probably break something as I landed, or silently free myself while dangling six feet above the ground. Thinking fast, I chose to try the last alternative. Breathing hard and hanging onto the branch tightly with my right arm, I reached behind my back to tug at the hood. It was wound securely around the tip of the branch and wouldn't budge. My sweaty forehead was hot in the motionless air as I twisted and turned, struggling to unwind the uncooperative cloth. My arms grew tired and my fear increased with leaps and bounds. I jerked around, my fingers fumbling with the unseen material when suddenly, my hood came free! I dropped to the ground, breathing heavily and feeling the adrenaline coursing through my body, thankful that I wasn't hurt and that Mom hadn't seen me.

I mentioned this incident to my mom several years later. She laughed and told me that she had known what was happening all along and had decided to see if I could handle it on my own. I guess that's a fitting ending to the first time I got myself out of a tricky situation by myself.

RIP Redwall

A small piece of my childhood died on Saturday. I can remember listening to the audiobook of Redwall with Jesse and my mom, breathless with excitement as Matthias fought the evil snake in the quarry. As I grew older, I actually read the books, and continued to check out audiobooks to listen to while making bracelets. I've listened to some of those audiobooks so many times that now when I read the books, I can hear Brian Jacques' voice in my head, reading to me. And while the plot lines followed the same pattern, I still enjoyed reading the new Redwall novels every couple of years. Brian Jacques, you will be sorely missed.

My thoughts today

Sometimes time lags behind, and drips like molasses in January
A phenomenon I have been witness to
Long ago, the dark liquid dripping
at a slow, measured pace
almost too slow to call it dripping
and christen it a dribble.
This week, or rather,
this weekend
has been like that.
Time slows and dilates,
like those melting clocks in that famous painting by that guy with the awesome mustache.
I'm not usually a fan of mustaches,
I think they make guys look like pedophiles,
but Salvador Dali's was truly a masterpiece.
And now, it is time to get ready to leave
time to turn out the lights
shut down this machine
and close the door.
To brave the snow
and slush
in this Midwest winter.

What a name!

I would hate to have this guy's name.





This is one of the reasons I love to study history. For little gems like this, or like the Defenestration of Prague. Sometimes, history is just funny.