To kiss or not to kiss

So today's catastrophe is not a huge one. I lent my nice Honda Civic to my brother for his honeymoon and instead am driving his piece of junk VW Jetta. I don't really mind junky cars- as long as they drive and are pretty cheap on gas, I don't care about the lack of heat or the taped up windows or the broken door handles or the broken brake light or the ripped seats or the cracked dashboard or the broken odometer etc. etc. Really, I don't mind all that.
What I do mind is that as I whipped into the parking lot at school today, the power steering cut out with a massive squeal. I wrestled with the wheel to get into a parking spot and just barely made it. Oh dear. Later when I got back into the car, it was working fine again. I suppose driving a car like this keeps me on my toes. (especially since the gas gauge doesn't work, unless driving 30 kilometers really does use up half a tank.)
But that is a normal part of life. Speaking of normal parts of life, this morning I went with all the other TWU grads to our grad rehearsal. We were sitting in a huge auditorium listening to the provost give us directions on how to walk up on stage, receive our diploma, shake hands with four different people, and then walk off the stage again. So normal. I was sitting next to my friend Benson and commented on how impersonal the handshake seemed. After all these years and all our acheivements, all we get is a handshake! What a way to celebrate!
Benson said, "Well, what would you rather, a hug and a kiss?"
I said that would maybe be better, since we need to be a more expressive culture anyway. All this cold handshaking- we should celebrate! Be happy!
You may be guessing what is coming next. If you have already guessed, my kudos to you.

Here it is: I foolishly, very foolishly, made a ten dollar bet with Benson that when I came to shake hands with the Faculty Dean, instead of shaking his hand I would give him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Now I am playing the scene over and over in my mind of what will happen on Saturday. I will get up on stage in front of 400 people. I will receive my diploma. I will walk over to the Dean. As he puts out his hand I will throw my arms around him and give him a kiss on the cheek. My tassled cap will bump his and fly off. Perhaps he will call security and they will charge me for sexual harrassment. The President will come marching over and angrily snatch the diploma from my hand. My parents will be sitting in the second row shaking their heads in shame, and I will slowly walk out of the auditorium in disgrace.
Never again, I am telling myself, never again! My big mouth got me into trouble one more time, and this time I am really not happy about it. I suppose I could just suck it up and give Benson ten dollars. The problem is that I need my ten dollars to pay for gas for that stupid gas-guzzling piece of junk.
If only life were simple and I didn't have to deal with complex questions like 'to kiss or not to kiss'.

oops, I said it again.

Seriously, I am a pretty serious person. I try hard to think about what I'm going to say before I say it. (Most of the time, anyway.) The funny thing is, very frequently things just pop right out of my mouth before I have a chance to stop myself, or before I have a chance to think. It's like my tongue has a mind of its own!
For example, today I was sitting outside studying and listening to music on my computer. A friend sat down at my table and after a second he said, "Heather, someone's saying hi to you." I looked up and saw another guy sitting at a table waving at me. What I should have said was "hey, nice to see you too", especially since he is kind of an acquaintance/friend of mine. Instead I gave him a blank look and then the words just popped out.
"Are you talking to me? Cause I don't know you, and usually when random guys say hi to me I assume they're getting fresh with me, and I really don't appreciate it at all."
You should have seen the look on his face, and the face of the girl sitting next to him! I turned back to my computer and of course, at that point I thought of a suitable polite response and I began to feel extremely bad and I took out my earplugs and made friendly conversation with them. I swear, I didn't intend to say that! (honestly, I don't intend to swear, either!)
Or consider this weekend when I was one of the emcee's for my brother's wedding. I was standing up front with a microphone in hand and starting off the open mic by giving a little speech. I started to tell about my brother being so good-looking and always having to fend off girls for him, and how since his new wife came along I have seen so many great qualities in her that complement him, and how happy I am to have an older sister. I was funny and gracious, which is not an amazing thing, you might be thinking, but what is amazing about it is that I had no idea I was going to say that! I had prayed a lot about what to say and how I could honor my sister-in-law when I hardly knew her, and the words just popped out of my mouth!
Or consider that I phoned my brother yesterday to check how his honeymoon was going. I didn't intend to be rude at all, I just wanted to say hi and all that, and when he got on the phone I asked, "Did you sleep well last night?" Of course, that was so funny that I started to laugh and he just hung up. Really, I really didn't mean to say that.
I've been praying for a long time that God would help fill my mouth with gracious, wise things to say. I suppose he is doing that- as I draw closer to him- but he is also still allowing me to make a million and one mistakes. But in a sense, that is also a blessing, because it reminds me how much I need him and how much I need to depend on him just to talk and not get into trouble.

I hate math

Last night I watched a movie in which there was a fortuitous appearance of a third party that kept two people from falling in to sin together. I thought a lot about it last night. How many circumstanses in my life have been fortuitous- meaning that if one little thing hadn't happened, things might have turned out very badly?
This morning I got up and went into the kitchen to have a drink of water. I picked up our brita water filter and held it under the tap and turned the tap on full blast, just like I do every morning. Only this time the tap leapt to life, spraying me full in the face and all down my front and all over the counters with cold water. I jumped back, sputtering and soaking wet and heard Miriam laughing from the other room.
"I forgot to tell you, Heather!" She said. "Last night I knocked the faucet and it broke. You can only turn it on a little bit, otherwise it sprays out."
I went to dry off feeling a little bit grumpy. Afterwards I thought, what if that was fortuitous? What if there had been a sniper sitting in the tree outside my kitchen window about to shoot me, but as I leapt away from the sink I threw his aim off and the bullet lodged in the roof above us? Of course, I didn't really hear a gunshot, but you never know.....
Today I have a math final exam. My last math exam ever. In high school I hated math and swore I would never take it, and guess what! This is my fifth semester of math! Sometimes I wonder if I am crazy. Well, I kind of feel like I've been going crazy the last few days studying calculus from dawn till dusk. The good news is, that in a few short hours I can give away my textbooks and burn my notes and never take math again! Hallelujah for calculators and computers and accountants!
But really, perhaps it is fortuitous that I've studied all this math? Perhaps years down the road I will be visiting a school in Angola and they will ask me to teach math for a week and I will know how. Perhaps this year when I do my taxes the math will come in handy. Perhaps one day I will be working for a chemical engineering company and haveto solve a complicated integral in order to program my polymer-making machine. (Highly unlikely.) Perhaps one day I can help my kids do their homework.
If nothing else, however, studying math has helped to develop discipline and character. Now when I see a huge list of problems that I don't know how to do, instead of feeling like crying and giving up (okay, I still feel like crying everytime I do math), I just grit my teeth and get down to it and somehow get it done. Math is something that must be done every day. It is a discipline, not unlike running or push-ups or praying or reading your bible. As you work at it regularily, it becomes a more and more powerful tool. As you work at it, it becomes an integral part of you.

Aaaahhhh! Did you notice that? I just used the word 'integral' in normal conversation!!!!! It's taken me over! It's consumed me! I hate it!

Singleness of heart

Today after several hours of studying calculus I was feeling particularily discouraged and decided to go for a walk outside. The sky was misty and gray and I borrowed a jacket from my brother and wove my way into the back 40 and down the muddy trails. I poured my heart out to God about all the things that were bothering me, how much I wanted to get close to him, how much I loved him.
I finally stopped under a sweeping moss-covered tree, on a decrepit old red bridge that was suspended over a muddy creek. On the banks of the river bright yellow skunk cabbage flowers were poking out of the dark earth. It had stopped raining and suddenly as I stood there against the railing, the sun came out from behind the clouds and flooded the whole little valley with warm sunshine. It was so beautiful, my words couldn't ever do it justice.
I asked the Lord, how can I love you with all my heart but still be passionate about other things? Psalm 86 says "teach me your way, O Lord, and I will walk in your truth. Give me an UNDIVIDED heart, that I may fear your name. I will praise you, O Lord my God, with ALL my heart; I will glorify your name forever."
But even I can read the tension in these verses. David was a married man. He was king of a nation. His interests were divided. How could ALL of his heart be praising God when a good part of it must have been occupied with the practical concerns of life?
I feel discouraged because I want all of my heart to be completely for the Lord all the time, but it isn't. When I try to fast and pray all I think about is food. If I think about devoting my life to the mission field and staying single, all I want to do is get married. When I try to pray my mind wanders. I enjoy my studies so much and I love spending time with friends.
How can my heart be undivided towards the Lord?
As I walked away from the river, the sun filtering through the trees and making everything sing, I felt this overwhelming sense of God's love. It is so amazing, I think, that even though I try and try but never manage to love him completely, he still loves me! He love me completely! He loves me all the time!

Perspective is everything

In this life we all have trouble... but there are also wonderful experiences, too. It seems that there is always a mix, like you can't have pleasure without pain or joy without suffering. Sometimes it is easy to let the hard things in life get you down, which is why I like to write about what went wrong but how I am seeing the bright side of things.
These last few days I have had a healthy mix of the two. Yesterday I was marking assignments for my students and discovered some first class plagiarism that is going to necessitate a failing grade... I felt terrible! You know, that sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. But it is not just concern for my student- it is concern for myself. This particular person has been quite aggressive and there is a lot at stake over their grade on this assignment. Dealing with the problem is already involving my supervisor and probably the head of the department and a couple of others. I am at the middle of it, feeling a little afraid of confrontation and having to stick to my guns and speak the truth, despite what might happen to me.
My motto for this semester has been "Take heart, Heather."
It came to me in a dream one night and I thought maybe it was a message for someone else. But very shortly after, sitting in my calculus class and feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders and oh so discouraged, it came back to me. Take heart!
The Bible tells the stories of all King David's trials and in the midst of it, when David is facing intense discouragement, it says that "David found strength in the Lord."
He didn't give up, he found strength in the only true source of strength and he gained heart! I want to be like that.
So last night I went and listened to some absolutely wonderful orchestral music (I've decided that I want my own little orchestra to put me to sleep at night). But on the way home I began to get sick. I stumbled into the house and threw up in the toilet and fell into bed feeling like I was going to die. (The funny thing is that I probably got food poisoning on my own cooking. How ironic is that).
This morning, of course, I feel like a million bucks. I decided to dye my hair, with some temporary hair dye I'd got. Light auburn, I think it was, which is quite similar to my natural hair colour. Or so I thought! What a fiasco! Horror of horrors! You won't be able to recognize me when you see me!
The tragedy of this morning is that my hair is not light auburn. It is PURPLE! I look like I'm wearing a halloween wig. I've washed it a million in one times, but the colour is supposed to last 3 weeks.
But I am not going to let that get me down. Perspective is everything, they say. I want to take heart and not become discouraged and despondant about this. The good thing is, it is only hair. And perhaps my inner beauty will become more evident since I don't have the outer beauty to stand in its way now.

Breaking news

The big news is: yesterday I finished my last chemistry lab ever (unless of course I go on to do a master's degree in chemistry but it is highly unlikely) My students hugged me and said goodbye and it was kind of an emotional, wonderful experience.
Also, today I handed in my last calculus assignment ever. Actually, that is a bit of an un-truth. Our prof decided to give us a quiz instead of taking our homework and I didn't know how to do the question he gave us.
Calculate the cube roots of i.

In retrospect maybe I could figure it out. I did actually do the problem, a week ago, but I was lying on the grass in my swimsuit trying to get a tan and I didn't fully pay attention to the details of the question, I guess. So I had to suffer the consequences of handing in a blank sheet of paper.

But I am not going to let that bother me. I believe in miracles: I believe I will pass my calculus final and manage to graduate.
Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what is unseen.

10 things I don't want to own

You might be thinking to yourself, is this really a useful thing to blog about? Oh, just you wait! I am about to give you some of the most helpful advice ever! (Courtesy of the hullaballoo staff.)
1. A white tent. I was thinking about this today- wouldn't a white tent be the most ridiculous thing in the world? All it would take is one camping trip and it would be covered in mud and tree sap and dust and all sorts of stuff. Nope, I definately don't want to own a white tent.
2. A case of Stella Artois beer. What I mean by this is I don't want to own this NOW. You see, I'm still in school and technically not allowed to drink. But I think I would go crazy having a case of Stella Artois in the fridge and know that I'm not allowed to drink it until April 28th.
3. A deck of clear playing cards. There would be no poker faces needed- you could just look at the backside of my cards and know exactly what I had up my sleeve.
4. A Mac computer. For all you apple fanatics, pc's happen to have the best spreadsheet program around and I've never seen a Mac equivalent. Oh yes, they say, you can get a version of Microsoft Excel that you can run on a Mac. Let me ask you: If you have to buy expensive versions of great Windows programs just so that you can run them on a Mac, why don't you just use the pc!!!?????
5. A popcorn maker. I don't want to own it because it would be a waste of money because I don't like popcorn. Anyway, microwave popcorn is a million times easier to make.
6. A wedding ring. Let me ask you: what makes more sense: to buy an expensive piece of metal that sits on your finger and burns you if you ever get electrocuted and necessitates your finger getting chopped off if you break it and that has to be removed everytime you wash dishes and that might fall down the shower drain one day and that is unhygenic and that is completely useless- OR- to give your honey something useful like an good Bosch drill or a new set of pots and pans? Enough said.
7. A pair of fluffy slippers. Not only do they look stupid, but my feet are always hot.
8. A new car. Why buy a new one for loads of money when you could buy a perfectly good used car and use the money to save lives or something like that? If I ever buy a new car someone should shoot me.
9. A dark blue highlighter. The other day I was wishing I had a better colored highlighter than the silly yellow ones everyone uses. A nice bright red or a deep rich blue. Then I thought, well, that would be kind of pointless since it would obscure the very words I was trying to illuminate.
10. A bag of marshmallows. Last time I had a bag of marshmallows I melted them in the microwave to try to calculate the wavelength of a microwave based on the 'hotspots' that appeared in a dish of marshmallows. And in the process I got melted marshmallows all over my hair, my clothes, my hands, the inside of the microwave... it was a disaster.

Why you should never laugh and drink at the same time

Funnily enough, today was another one of those very ironic days.
My friend Brad told me a while ago that he thought my life was tragic. Not one great tragedy, but a serious of little tragedies.
I suppose I agree, which is why I began Happy Heather's Hullaballoo in the first place, because I recognized my own tragedies and realized I needed to turn them into something to laugh at or I would jump off a bridge.
I woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed this morning and decided to wash my hair. Now you might think that is pretty standard, but not so! I am on a hair treatment plan for dry hair: not washing it. Apparently I am washing it too often and removing the natural oils from it, so I decided to cut my hair washings in half. Today was the fourth day, yuk! I couldn't stand it and shampooed the heck out of it.
I drove to school and found out that I could barely carry my laptop and backpack into the building because my shoulders were so sore. The reason for that is the badminton skills test I had yesterday that I threw all my heart and energy into and subsequently pulled every muscle in my body. Was it worth it, you ask? Well, yes if you consider my final score of 14/30. I know what you're thinking: that's a failing mark! I completely agree in the strictest sense of the word. But really, how important is badminton? Have you ever met a brilliant doctor that was also a fabulous badminton player? I think not. So I decided not to take it too seriously. It's only a reflection of my personal worth, after all.
So then I had a presentation about automatic detection systems for chemical warfare agents, complete with photos I found of handsome soldiers in their combat gear. (I tend to choose my topics based on the kind of graphics I am allowed to include). Everything went fine except for the fact that instead of pushing the 'screen link' button on my laptop I pressed 'hibernate' and I couldn't get my computer to unhibernate. Oh well. I suppose it needed that extra rest.
After class I had free time and sat to study. I had brought a bowl of jello that I had made in a baking fit last night (don't ask how I managed to bake jello, you probably don't want to know). Well, after a while I went down to the bathroom and discovered to my horror when looking in the mirror that the lovely rasberry jello had dyed my lips, teeth and mouth all bright red! Horror of horrors! It's a good thing I wasn't scheduled to meet the love of my life today.
Back to academics... in calculus class I mastered the art of sleeping sitting up and somehow being able to open my eyes whenever my prof turned my way. The only problem with sleeping and waking so frequently is that it is hard to control ones eyes- once in a while when he looked at me strangely, I realized I must be staring at the front of the room, cross-eyed and with drool coming down my chin.
After calculus I flirted my way into getting a pile of extra tickets for my grad ceremony from the University registrar. (He whispered to me not to tell anyone, which is why I'm not telling you HOW MANY extra tickets I weaseled out of him). I did some miscellanous homework and fell asleep reading for my history class. I'm sorry, but the history reading room smells like my pillow and it is quiet and dark.
I made a cup of tea and brought it into my history class. All the desks were in a circle and as I sat down and put my cup of tea down, I performed an amazing act of coordination and skill. I managed to flip the lid off my cup, pour half of it down the front of my shirt and pants, the other half all over the desk and chair and my backpack, and catch the empty cup and lid upright, all in one instantaneous motion. Such skill, I know. That's why they all call me 'coordination woman'. (Actually, not too many people call me that.)
When we got it all cleaned up I decided just to tell people that I was leaking from the inside out, that was why I was soaking wet.
Then during the class- I don't even know if I was laughing- maybe just breathing! But I inhaled an enormous mouthful of water from my Nalgene bottle and started to choke. I barely kept myself from spraying water into the middle of the discussion circle, but I couldn't breathe and I choked and coughed and choked and coughed and then tears started to pour out of my eyes so that everything went blurry and the whole class stopped and waited for me to die. Thankfully I survived.
The irony is that I went home and made vegetable curry for dinner, something I always hated as a child. Some people's tastes change with age, but I don't know about mine. I think I still hate vegetable curry. I just have 2 liters of it left in the fridge now, that's all.

Snow and sun

You know those mornings when we wake up after having slept only a couple of hours (or none at all!) and the sun is still below the horizon and you watch it come up quietly and try to summon the strength and joy to make it through another day?..... Only this morning the sun stayed behind the clouds and I sat through my first class at school, fighting with my eyelids to stay open and my mind floating in a million other worlds that didn't include analytical chemistry.... When I walked out it had started to snow, and massive fluffy flakes were coming down like God had suddenly realized summer was coming and he had to get rid of a whole pile of leftover snow...
I waded through the slush in my flip-flops and thin shirt and tried to hug myself to keep warm. All I wanted to do was sleep (or cry, usually when I'm super tired they go together).
When I had a break I went into a lounge and curled up on a chair with an old blanket that was there and put my head phones in, trying to drift off to sleep despite the noise around me.
The song was in French, (one of the few good French songs I've ever heard!) and I mentally translated while I listened.
Merveilleux Sauveur... (marvelous savior)..... je connaite ta gloire... (I (see) your glory).... Blessed, loving, exalted, precious Jesus.
Suddenly I am lifted above the slush and the cold and my exhaustion and I am kneeling before the throne of Jesus. Oh, worthy are you Lord!