One Day More

It was a stressful day today. Two days before the wedding, and we spent about three hours driving around Spanish Fork trying to find stamp pads in colors besides red and black. Ben was cranky, I was cranky, and his little brother was in the back seat feeling sick the whole time.

The past few days have run the gamut of possible human emotions. Our families have arrived in town, and it's been great seeing them (especially my adorable freaking nieces). We've been scrambling to finish up things that probably should have been taken care of long ago. For example, Ben is out as we speak purchasing a wedding tie.

....Yeah.

I went to the temple and got endowed yesterday, so anyone who's done that knows the intensity of emotions that go with that. And then on the way home we almost witnessed a terrible car accident, so that shook me up a little too. I've hardly packed and I'm supposed to move in with a real, live boy this weekend, which will be awesome and probably traumatic.

But you know what? We're getting married the day after Thanksgiving, and I couldn't think of a better time to be grateful. SO many people have helped out with the wedding plans and will be helping out on the day. My cousin Rachel, who I didn't even know that well, took our engagement pictures for free, designed our invitations, is taking our wedding pictures, designed the signs for our reception, and is coordinating a lot of the decoration. My good friend Holli is making the cake, arranging the bouquets, and drawing the poster/guestbook. People have thrown parties, lent us decorations, given suggestions, taken me shopping..... I can't even begin to describe how incredible our friends and family are for all their help.

And on top of all of that, I am getting married on Friday. To Ben, no less. I am so excited I can hardly think. I am so thankful for Ben. He is sensitive, he's fun, he's musical, he's laid back, he's smart.....and most importantly, he helps me to be a better person. We can talk about anything, especially the gospel, and we've learned so much from each other. 

One of the greatest things about Ben is that he is extremely selfless and caring. It's been a huge learning process not to take advantage of this. I am a naturally lazy and selfish person, so having someone around who cares so much about what I want is wayyy too easy to abuse. I've been kind of a jerk, but I'm getting better. He loves me even when I'm crazy. 

Watching how he treats people has taught me so much. I love going to visit his grandparents with him. He is so comfortable and sweet and caring with them. He and his grandma will argue all the time because he insists on doing the dishes. Before his grandpa passed away, Ben was so good about helping him around the house, standing behind him and putting Grandpa's feet on his own as they walked him to the dinner table. I'm jealous of his relationship with his grandparents. I've never been very good at being comfortable with relatives, partly because I grew up so far away in Minnesota and partly because my family's super awkward. (You know it's true.) Ben has taught me a lot about the importance of family and love and charity.

I should probably get back to packing. It's been nice to put down a few words about how I'm feeling. This whole week has been a blur, but I still cannot wait until Ben and I finally are sealed together in the temple of the Lord at 12:00 on Friday, November 23rd. Until then, I'll enjoy family, some good food, and try to stay calm.

My Favorite Dessert

The timing of my rare blog posts is kind of hilarious, because the one of last times I wrote on this thing, I was just barely introducing Ben, and now it's time to post the story of our engagement. Take that as you will, but I will have you all know that we dated for a solid 5 months, which is practically aeons in BYU time.

Ben and I had been dating for a little while, and we had definitely talked a lot about marriage, but Ben has this aversion toward the whole we're-engaged-but-not-really-yet thing. He thinks that if you're going to start planning the wedding, there had better be a ring. So I always found it immensely amusing when he himself would bring up the topic of marriage. I'm sure a lot of people can identify - when you date someone seriously, it really does just come up pretty often. However, Ben had made it quite clear that he was going to take his time, so once we passed the 3-month mark (which was about when both my now-married siblings got engaged), I didn't allow myself to get anxious. I mean, I was already pretty sure I was gonna marry this kid, but I wasn't gonna push it. He'd figure it out soon enough.

We had actually had a conversation a few weeks before that fateful day where Ben had reassured me that he would like to meet my parents before we got engaged. I thought that was fair, and that meant I got to relax until our Minnesota visit a month from then. Even the very day of our engagement, he was spinning a web of false security, complaining that he wouldn't like to go ring shopping because he bet the workers there would try to swindle you out of your money or some honky like that. Bull - he had already bought the dang thing, but I took the bait hook, line, and sinker.

Anyways, I had mentioned a few weeks ago that we hadn't gone on very many real dates lately, cuz I'm a whiner like that, and Ben took the opportunity to ask me out for a date the Saturday that we were at his parents' house in Evergreen, Colorado.

The evening arrived. I got all gussied up because Ben had hinted that we might be going somewhere a little more fancy, then we drove down (their house is a 15-minute dirt road drive up a mountain) to Evergreen Lake. We got out and walked around the entire lake, which was beautiful. It reminded me of home in Minnesota - a stark contrast to dry, brown Utah. Don't get me wrong, I love Utah . . . but yeah.

When we got back to the car about a half hour later, Ben told me he had just realized he'd forgotten his wallet. Sighing, I offered to lend him money for dinner, but he was insistent that I was not allowed to and that we had to return to the house to get his wallet. I thought he was merely being chivalrous and agreed. He assured me that the walk around the lake had taken less time than he intended, so our mysterious reservations for dinner wouldn't be put into jeopardy by his mistake. So home we went.

I sat in the Jeep while Ben went inside to "get his wallet." He returned with not only that but two big lumberjack coats from his dad so that we could keep warm in the car, whose entire back roof was off (I'm really not a huge Jeep fan for that reason....at least not a fan of the removable-roof-Jeeps). I bought the story, and we began our descent.

When we were only a little bit down, though, Ben stopped the car and pulled over, putting into park.

"We're here!" he announced proudly.

For a brief second, I was a very confused person. And then I looked out to the field in front of us and realized that there was a table there, with chairs and settings all put out like a fancy restaurant. Every chick flick-consumer's dream - a romantic dinner date in the forest! Aw Ben, you shouldn't have.

So I got all excited and we got out and went to our table. A full steak dinner was already there waiting for us, including a way-too-huge cut of meat, buttered asparagus, corn on the cob, rolls, and a ridiculously delicious-looking cake. So I got even more excited. And then we sat down and ate.

Partway through the meal, I noticed a little sugar bowl in the middle of the table with its lid on.

"What's this?" I asked as I reached to take off the top.

"It's a surprise!" Ben warned, reaching to stop me but forgetting that he still held his utensils.

I received a sharp poke in the thumb from his steak knife. Despite my injured glare, he continued, "It's your favorite dessert . . . let's save it for later."

My favorite dessert! But what would fit in that little sugar bowl? And why would we have this so-called "favorite dessert" when we already had a piece of cake each? Then I realized - Ben had learned early on in our relationship that I was obsessed with Lindor Truffles, and he had made good use of that knowledge by giving them to me as gifts more than once already.

Those beautiful, blessed things.

So I realized that there must be some truffles in there. I sighed happily - what a great boyfriend - and we continued dinner.

Ben finished long before me, but I took my sweet time. Keep in mind that I still had absolutely no idea that this kid was about to propose - I thought he had just planned an especially creative and romantic date. Meanwhile, he was probably freaking out the whole time. Well, at least he did a good job of hiding it. Commendable, really.

Finally, Ben announced that it was time for my favorite dessert. He took the lid off the sugar bowl and took out a small, chestnut-colored box. He kneeled down in front of me, and it was then that I finally, finally realized what the heck was going on.

. . . and I am a little embarrassed to say that I flipped out. My mind was straight up blown. I had not suspected a THING, I had not prepared myself mentally, and I was suddenly being asked the most important question of my life in a beautiful meadow on a mountain in Evergreen, Colorado. In an instant I felt so young, so naive, so unprepared to be the adult that would spend the rest of her life with another person, through thick and thin, loving them unconditionally and always.

I babbled a little bit, patting Ben's face and shoulders frantically and hugging him to me, not yet crying but instead saying very immature things like, "Holy crap! I had no freaking idea! What the crap! How did you--what--when? Holy CRAP!" I hadn't even looked at the ring yet, much less given an answer to the poor guy on one knee in front of me.

Finally I got my bearings enough to give him the answer I had known I would give for a long time:

"Yes!"

He stood up and we finally shared a proper hug. The huge-ness of the occasion overwhelmed me, and I began to sob. Everything was a blur. I was so happy and scared and excited and humbled. But I never once doubted my decision, because I had made that decision already - I made it a little bit every day that I spent with Benjamin Young Christensen. From the very first date, when I laughed with my roommates about my ice-skating adventure with "that funny fro kid from church," there was always a feeling in the back of my mind that I could have something very, very good with him. I knew I would like him before I was even very attracted to him, and I knew I would love him before those feelings actually came. I had always kind of known that I would marry Ben, but we still had to learn for ourselves, getting to know each other and figuring things out one crazy day at a time.

I have no doubt that things won't stop being crazy. They sure haven't since we got engaged. There are plans to make, both for the wedding and for our infinitely more important marriage. There are a ridiculous amount of things to do, and now that the semester is starting again soon, we will both be that much more busy. But Ben has been absolutely incredible at reminding me that the only thing that really matters is that on November 23rd, 2012, he and I are going to kneel down and be sealed for time and all eternity in the Lord's holy temple.

I am so excited for that day. I am so excited for every day that I will spend as Ben's fiance and then wife. Our life together is going to be one crazy, hectic, hilarious, beautiful ride, and we are only getting started.

A Blog Post about Hawaii

Hey yo. I have spent the last two weeks on the beautiful island of Oahu, Hawaii. We've done so dang much and I want to tell everyone everything about it, but I'm pretty sure most people don't care, so I'm going to write it all down in my blog because no one reads it anyways! Excellent plan, huh?

To begin the journey, Ben and I drove down from Provo to Beaver, Utah to meet his parents and two siblings. We left Ben's car at his uncle's house there and joined the family in their suburban to drive to Las Vegas. Our first stop was the Bellagio Fountains, which I had never seen, and during which I threw up into a trash can for precisely the whole show. Not actually sure what was going on in my body, but I had definitely been through a lot of weird body things for that whole week previous - fever, chills, sore throat, headaches, weird rashes . . . the whole shebang. The family walked me into the hotel to recover, and after a few minutes I felt a lot better.

Still haven't seen the show . . .

At the airport, we joined up with Ben's brother Jordan/Quinston (his family calls him the former; the rest of the world calls him the latter), his wife Janie, and Janie's family of 9 people. And so the chaos began.

The flight left at about 1 AM, so I spent most of it fitfully dozing and worrying about the weird rash I mentioned earlier . . . Seriously, it was weird. No, it was not an STD. I think I may have had an allergic reaction to some medication. Basically it was a bunch of abnormally shaped, raised areas on my skin that were surrounded by redness. It started out as a small one as my jaw. The next day, that had disappeared and I instead had a few on my chest. By the time we were on a plane en route to Honolulu, I had huge, foot-long splotches all over my thighs and stomach. Kinda terrifying. I also watched the first part of Tron. I can imagine that's a weird enough movie as it is, but watching it half asleep was something else altogether.

Visually, awesome. I also had no idea what was going on.

Finally, we touched down in Honolulu. I was in Hawaii! My mind was blown again that I got so lucky to go on this trip for so little money (Ben's parents took care of most of the cost . . . I only had to pay a fraction of the airplane ticket). We ended up having to wait for about two hours (it was around 5 AM Hawaii time) as the four parents bumbled around trying to get the rental cars back to us . . . We probably looked like something out of a movie. In fact, during the whole airport experience I felt like the family in Home Alone; we had 17 people running around that building ranging from age 9 to age 60.

Unfortunately, the lady in charge of our house rental accidentally rented the house out to someone else for a day longer than we had thought, and so we had to stay in a hotel in Waikiki our first night. That wouldn't have been TOO big of a deal, except it was now 8 in the morning, we were sleep deprived and smelly, and we weren't allowed to check into our rooms until 3 PM.

So we headed to the beach! Waikiki Beach is definitely a big tourist destination, but it was still early in the morning, so we had a few hours of good surfing (or surf-attempting) before the crowds came in. Ben and his brothers and dad were already pretty decent at surfing, so they helped me attempt a few waves. Ben had to push me to help me catch the waves, but I stood up twice! I'm pretty proud of myself.

This is me! With . . . a bikini and dyed hair.

FINALLY we were allowed to check into our hotel. We relaxed most of the evening, snacking on li hing mui - pronounced "lee hee moy - a very salty-sweet dried plum treat. Ben and I walked up and down the street that night and looked at all the tourist shops and street performers on the beachfront.

Still not my picture, but we did see a guy like this on our walk!

Edit: Oh hey, guess what! I totally didn't finish this, and now I feel too lazy. I guess you only get to hear about my first day in Hawaii. Suffice it to say, it was lovely, guava jam is awesome, and I am back in America.

New Things For Tasha

This summer is a summer of new things! Here are just a few of such endeavors that I am excited about.

1) I suppose I'll just be right up front that there has been a boy hanging around quite a bit lately. His name is Benjamin Young Christensen, but we usually call him simply Ben. I am quite fond of him. Here is a picture of said fellow.

Fortunately he doesn't usually wear skinny jeans. He is in fact in costume for our hipster date to the art museum. Those are my pants, actually. . . . Yeah, get uncomfortable. Here are a few more hipster pictures of our excellent get-ups.

Don't we look SO authentic? I was pretty proud. We had to quite a bit of scrounging to acquire all those accessories.

Anyways, here's a picture where you can see a tiny bit better what he looks like. It's pretty dang hard to get a decent picture of this kid, so cherish them when you can.

Except it apparently decided to be all stretched out and weird. Yeah, that's a bottle of Prego. No connection to the word "pregnant," of course. Of course. . . . 

I'm gonna be honest. I'm mostly just blogging about Ben because he absolutely hates it when people get all internet-y with their relationships. I had to bother him a lot to even get our Facebook relationship approved. Now I can spite him more! Hooray! Always the goal in a healthy relationship.

Anyways, Ben's gone for 3 weeks on tour with his folk band, which is probably why I even have time to even write on this stinking blog.

Okay, on to more new things:

2) Soccer. Did you know that I have never played a real game of soccer? It kind of blows my mind, because I've played (at least once) pretty much every other mainstream sport out there. Basketball, volleyball, football, rugby, Ultimate Frisbee, kickball, racquetball, tennis, softball/baseball . . . but soccer somehow never quite came up. However, things changed when some kid from my new ward came knocking to see if anyone wanted to join his intramural soccer team.

I was feeling bored (probably due to the aforementioned absence of Ben - I'm pretty pathetic), so I decided to finally give the sport a try.

This is not me. This is someone who is good at soccer.

We had our first game tonight. Fortunately, the other team had to forfeit because not enough of their players showed up. So instead of having pressure and the resulting frustration with my suckiness that would have come upon myself and my teammates, we just had a nice, calm game where my suckiness didn't have the opportunity to anger people as much. And, if I do say so myself, I really did pretty well for my first time. I may yet get the hang of this thing.

3) I moved to Centennial Apartments a couple weeks ago - the land of enchantment. But seriously, this place is a little haven of BYU Mormon-dom. It's great fun watching all the starry-eyed ward members flirt and frolic. I feel so old. I'm a freaking senior now, people. I've done stuff.

I'm excited for my ward. They play sports like NOBODY's business. Soccer on Tuesdays, Frisbee on Wednesdays, basketball on Thursdays, and volleyball on Saturdays. I mean WHAAAAT?!! Heaven. HEAVEN. Plus our bishop is a big ol' ex-Baptist with a sense of humor. I can tell I'm gonna like him already.

4) Like last summer, I'm going to put more time into gigging and recording now that I don't have school to worry about. Speaking of which, have you heard my new song yet? I've been shamelessly promoting it all over my social media recently, so I'd be surprised if you haven't. I'm pretty happy with it, though! I wrote it for Deseret Book's web series Pretty Darn Funny, which I helped work on as part of the film crew these past few months. I had a great time! Here are some of us at a fellow crew-member's wedding last weekend.

I miss these people. Working on PDF really taught me a lot about film, business, social media, and storytelling. Plus, it helped me realize that film could very well be something I want to do with the rest of my life. Even though I only had a small position on the crew, I had an absolute blast just being a part of something like this. 

A few more new things in store:

5) I'm finally getting off this continent! Hawaii, here I come!

6) I may purchase some sort of vehicle - most likely a scooter, but I've toyed with the ideas of getting a motorcycle or maybe a car. We'll see.

7) I finally have a stinkin' BALCONY! I have waited so long. . . . 

8) A couple new part-time jobs in the wings. . . . We'll see how those turn out. Still waiting to hear.

In general, I'm just excited for this summer to get into full swing. Summers in Provo are absolutely fantastic.

On Memes, Twilight, and the Modesty Note Fiasco

I've been wanting to get a few things off my chest lately, mostly because people on the internets are going crazy about them and I'd like to have my say.

First off, memes. There's an interesting thing going on in my Facebook newsfeed. Every other post will be a meme. The posts that aren't memes are people saying how much they hate memes. And by hate I mean absolutely loathe. These people are passionate about what everyone else posts on their Facebook or Reddit or whatnot. Apparently it's a big deal to them.

But you know what, I'm gonna be honest. Sometimes, I get annoyed by memes. Especially those "What so and so thinks I do" ones because they're rarely even that funny. But a lot of the time, I think they're hilarious. That's right, I said it. I like the idea of people taking shared ideas and concepts and being creative with them. I kinda dig it. And while there really is a bit too much meme-ing going on right now, it's just a phase. The internet world has those. But they change, like, twice a month. Okay, so your news feed is a little clogged up right now. You will survive.


Secondly - Twilight. That's right, I'm going to talk about Twilight. In my circle of friends, who are mostly educated, mostly socially functioning, and mostly self respecting, it is assumed that you hate Twilight. I think most adults in America assume that you hate Twilight. If you like Twilight, you are an absolute idiot.

Well, guess what? When I first read Twilight, around the age of 14, I loved it. I read the first book multiple times. I've read all the books at least once. Whenever the topic comes up nowadays, I laugh it off with everyone else, but apparently there was something redeeming about those books in my high school brain. I'm not ashamed. I'm not saying they're quality literature either - I had a tendency to read non-quality literature along with my C.S. Lewis - but come on, people. Don't just hate on something because that's the thing to do. If you've read the books and then hate on them, sure. I'll accept that. I still make fun of 'em because, honestly, they're pretty silly books. But, like, Justin Bieber, they're somehow redeeming to freaking-millions of people, so why don't we all just calm it down.

Finally, that little modesty note fiasco that everyone's getting all riled up about. I'm not going to take sides either way, which is what I think anyone who can step back and be objective about this should do. I'll just make a few points and walk away.

1) Despite what everyone says, it really is part of the rules here that skirts must go to the knee. True, she's not showing any skin there, but we've been told a ridiculous amount of times that leggings don't make outfits modest. And don't think I'm being self-righteous here. I could see myself wearing the same outfit. I don't see it as inherently immodest. I just know that here at BYU, one could see that as being against the honor code.

2) On the other hand, what that kid did was harsh. It was Valentine's Day after all, and she was a complete stranger.

3) However, the note was not nearly as dousche-y as people are making it out to be. In fact, by reading it you can tell that he really didn't want to write it in an offensive way. He was trying to encourage others to abide by the Honor Code as well, in his own way. And if you didn't already know, it says right in the Honor Code that we're supposed to do that. The point is, if he wanted to mean, he could've said it a lot worse.

4) Nevertheless, I don't think his reaction was warranted. If you feel unsafe seeing a girl in that outfit, you're going to be screwed when you go out in the real world. No matter how good of an atmosphere we want BYU to be, we need to be able to let other people do their own thing a little bit. Take care of yourself, encourage your friends to do the same, and try not to incite any ridiculously scathing internet wars.

That is all. Thank you for listening.

Secret Freaking Genius

Sometimes I really want to write everything that's going on in my head, but it all slips out too fast to put into words. You'll just have to take it on good faith that it was freaking genius.

I have too much to say and nobody's home right now.

Ay carumba! My life is insane. I love, love, love it. Today = good. Where to start? So I get weekly-ish letters from the English and Humanities programs with updates and job opportunities and stuff. One of them (can't remember which) talked about applying for TMA 378, a New Media Production class. I thought it sounded cool, so I applied on a whim. They took a super long time getting back to us--told us the night before classes started, in fact--but finally, I was informed that I was in. Today I went to the first class. I am. SO. Excited. Enough to put periods where they don't belong. I can't really tell people much about it, which is even more crazy, because everyone knows I love telling people about things. All I can say is that I'll be a production assistant and work on the ad team for a crew that is making a comedic web series for an client you have more than likely heard of. We read through the script for the first episode today, and it is most definitely funny. This is going to be a big deal. Keep your eye out for it. I'll definitely advertise my butt off once I'm allowed to.

So that's really exciting. Plus there are so many other things. Rehearsal for Big Band Night starts tomorrow! I'll be a part of the cast and singing at least one solo with Synthesis, which is ridiculously cool. I'm also excited because I've got a few articles published and/or waiting for publication by The Student Reivew, so there's another thing to toot my horn about. Sorry, by the way. This is mostly a horn-tooting entry. I just really need to toot it. It's all bundled up inside of me and I'm about to explode from all the excitement and non-tootedness of it.

It's also good to be back in Provo. The break was wonderful and relaxed and fulfilling, and I got to hang out with my family and closest friends back there. I flew back into Utah on Monday and have been reuniting myself with everyone--most especially all those wonderful kids who went on the study abroad to Amman, Jordan without me! I missed them more than I realized. That's another exciting thing! My second job is working as a research assistant for Dr. Dewey, a linguistics professor at BYU. If everything pans out right, I will be accompanying the 2012 Arabic Study Abroad as a research assistant this coming fall. In other words, I'll FINALLY be getting off this continent!! Yayyyy, party for Tasha.

Hm, what else? I'm excited for all my other classes, too. I've decided that while I'm in school, I might as well take classes that I enjoy, dangit. So here's my schedule: Monday, 8 am racquetball with my good friend and coworker, Ryan. Then work for 5 hours, then go to Writings of Isaiah with none other than Terry Ball as my teacher. Tuesdays I have Ethnic Lit with a chili-pepper professor, volleyball, American Lit, Jazz Voices, and Scandinavian Choir, taught by a friend of mine. Holy buckets! That's a lot. Wednesday I go to racquetball, then I have that film class I was telling you about, then I work for another 5 hours. Thursdays are the same as Tuesdays, except I swap Scandinavian Choir for Big Band Night rehearsal. Fridays I've had to keep completely open because I will be spending every Friday starting this week on set with the crew for TMA 378.

Yikes. On top of that, I'm doing my work-at-home job for Dr. Dewey, trying to write my own screenplay, being an FHE mom, and attempting to eat healthily and often enough to survive.

I am so stoked.