Zaza plays badminton

I like to succeed at everything I do. All joking aside, I am normally quite talented and smart, not to mention able to hold my own in athletic competitions. I was thinking this the other day as I walked to my badminton class.
Why badminton, you might ask. I am asking that myself. The first two classes weren't that bad, we just went over rules and how to hold the racket and whacked the shuttle around a bit. But the third class..... the day started out bad because I had to walk to school in the snow. With four inches of slush on the side of the road I decided to wear my gortex hiking boots. And then to avoid the whole wet pantlegs thing, I wore capris that ended just above my boots. And a t-shirt and a sweater and a coat, the works.
The class started badly with a rules quiz that I only knew the answers for half of. Then we set up the nets and I was paired up with three other students for a game of doubles. Three other experienced, athletic students.
The game commenced with me realizing the t-shirt I'd put on had shrunk in the wash and showed my stomach. I elected to keep my sweater on so I wouldn't get kicked out of the gym for indecent exposure. (Hey, going to a mennonite school is no picnic).
Then it happened. I couldn't hit the birdie. I stood there like an absolute idiot, swinging my racket for all I was worth at this stupid little piece of plastic, and after 5 or 6 tries I got it to plop over the net and land out of bounds.
"Good job, Heather!" My teammates were very encouraging.
Every time it was my turn to serve, I could see everyone relaxing and taking a breather, knowing that I wouldn't be able to get it over for a good 5 minutes. They had those pleasant smiles on their faces that you see on parents at their kids piano recitals. Keep up the good work, Heather! Oh, it almost made it over that time! Way to go! Have another try at serving! Re-serve! Re-serve again! Okay, why not have a third try?
And then I slipped on a bit of water on the floor and went flying.
By then I was sweating so much I desperately wanted to get rid of my sweater, but the instructor had stopped to watch my progress and was lingering at the side of our court.
The birdie still wouldn't go over the net. I swear, there was something wrong with it.
By the end of the class the president of the badminton club suggested I come to the remedial practice sessions on sunday afternoons, because if I couldn't learn to serve, I would fail the badminton skills test and I would fail the course and fail university and fail at life. (Actually he didn't say ALL of that, but I could feel it.)
Then a cute guy walked by and seeing my hiking boots, asked with a smirk, "So, are those your non-marking gym shoes?"
I looked down and realized how ridiculous they looked with my socks creeping up and the capris showing a full inch of ankle.
When my teammate walked by and told me I was making progress, I almost threw my racket at her head.
So things are quite desperate, really. If I don't learn how to serve before the skills test, I might as well drop out of school and get a job at McDonalds.
You might wonder about the Zaza. That is kind of related.
Alpha was reading a baby names book out loud. Guess where Heather was? In the list for natural elements, along with names like Rock, Wind, Grass and Winter.
Ridiculous. Who ever heard of a world-class badminton player named Rock? I decided to choose a name from the 'sexy and glamorous names' list; which is why I am making my family call me Zaza now.
I can picture myself next week on the badminton court, with a stylish little white tennis skirt, making the birdie soar over the net and the president of the badminton club congratulating me and asking me if I would tutor him in badminton and I would say, "actually, I'm too busy being glamorous for that. Try someone else."
Except for the fact that they don't wear little white tennis skirts for badminton. Oh well. Maybe I can start with full length pants.

Hullaballoooooooooo!

Today I opened my email account expecting to see '0 new messages'.
Except I had 10 new ones (4 of them I had sent to myself, but still, ten emails is quite something!)
(Okay, fine, one of them was junk mail, but still...)
But the email that caught my eye was from UBC.
Yes, it's true! I've been offered an interview for medical school! I am very very happy and excited all at once. As the founder and president of Happy Heather's Hullaballoo I want to offer my heartfelt thanks to my friends and family who have been praying about this with me, and guess what! You can still pray! Because the interview is February 25th, with a panel of three people, and it's sure to be grueling.
Congratulatory cheques can be sent to my home address.

The fine art of cross country skiing

Saturday morning I was groggily eating my breakfast and looking at the morning sun when lo and behold on the street outside our house, dressed in pink and blue spandex from the 70's was an old lady cross-country skiing! Besides her amazing outfit, I was so impressed to see her skiing on the street and very gratified to be living in such a great place where it was actually possible to do so.
When I went to Vancouver for the weekend I picked up my skis and announced to Miriam on the way home to Langley that I was going to ski to school the next morning. She laughed when she saw my skis in the car.
"You can't ski to school, Heather."
"How come?" I had planned out how I would ski the flat parts and when I came to an uphill I would take my skis off and walk up. It would take about half an hour, I figured, to be generous.
"These aren't cross-country skis."
"What are you talking about?"
"Cross-country skis have different boots that only clip on the toes, leaving your heels free to lift up and down. Also, they are skinnier and shaped totally different."
Obviously Miriam wasn't acquainted with skiing like I was.
"No worries." I assured her. "These will work exactly the same! I'll just carry them up the hills."
"They also use long poles to propel themselves along."
"I put poles in the trunk." I didn't mention that I'd never used poles before and I had no idea how. I can barely manage two pieces of equipment, let alone four.
As we got closer to home my joy began to evaporate a little. There was no snow on the roads. It had melted overnight while we were in Vancouver.
"No problem." I told Will. "The weather report is for 2-5 cm tonight."
"That's tomorrow night, not tonight." Will started to laugh too.
I pictured myself skimming along the pavement and into the bare blackberry bushes around the bend in the road.
"Besides," Miriam said perfunctorily, "It's uphill all the way to school. It will take you more than an hour to walk carrying your skis."
I carried my skis in the house and leaned them up behind the door, staring gloomily out at the slush and pavement outside our house. Sam would probably say that hardcore skiiers can take a little pavement, but somehow the picture of me sweating up the four-kilometer hill with skis over my shoulder seems a little silly. I think I'll wait for tomorrow and a little more snow.

The year commences

This morning I walked to school (about 1 hour) in the snow, everything white and glowing around me and the flakes coating me like a frosted cookie. The snow is incidental: the walk is a purposeful part of my list of New Year's resolutions.
1. Exercise three times a week. (by this I mean vigorous exercise, which is not what I am doing right now)
2. Eat healthier (Timbits only once a week, no alcohol, no chips unless I absolutely must, no pork, etc.)
3. Improve my French and Italian (I am not quite fluent in French yet, and my Italian is non molto bene, but I am sure it is going to get better soon thanks to the great books my mom gave me for christmas)
4. Visit one more country (Anywhere! I don't care! Top choices include India, the Carribean, Egypt, Morrocco, Scotland, South Africa, Somalia, Botswana, Congo, Sudan, etc.)
5. Get more piercings (Anywhere! I don't care! Just kidding. Probably my ears, although Dad tells me I already have enough holes in my head.)
6. Fly a plane (not fly IN one- actually fly one myself, along with some good-looking flight instructor, of course)
7. Play ice hockey (I am going to try out to play in TWU's CAN-AM games next month- Canadian girls playing against American guys, it is so so much fun)
8. Spend more time praying.
This is probably the most important resolution, the one that I hope to accomplish if all else fails. And it is probably the most difficult to keep, I realize. I need God's help just to get close to him. But I love Him with all my heart and I desperately want to spend more time with him, learning about him, and becoming more like him.

Some things just escape me

Do you ever wonder if you're missing something? Not as in clothes or stuff like that, but essential pieces of information that everyone knows and somehow you just didn't get.
For example: One of the toilets at my parent's house splashes up a bit when you flush. Over the years I perfected a technique to prevent getting splashed. I like to call it the 'flush and jump'- you can probably guess that I would flush and then leap out of the way to prevent getting wet.
I was laughing about it with a friend one day and they said to me "Why don't you just close the lid and then flush it?" I was stopped dead in my tracks. It had never, ever occured to me to close the lid before. I felt extremely stupid.
Another example: chemical compounds can sometimes carry a positive or a negative charge (cations and anions), or they can be a radical species. Convention dictates that the electrons around an element are described by two little dots (Lewis dot diagrams). A cationic species has a little plus sign, and an anionic species has a little minus sign, and a radical species has one little dot. For years and years I struggled to understand radicals and their reactions, thinking that the single dot represented half of a positive charge.
Then one day as I read a textbook the light went on: a radical was not half of a charge: it was neutral! Radical reactions involved a neutral species! In an instant a world of understanding was opened up, the flood of light illuminating countless confusing moments. One thought was foremost in my mind: no one ever needed to know how stupid I indeed was; I would keep the secret of the radical 'half-charge' to myself.
Of course, those of you who know me well know I can't keep secrets about myself, so one day it inevitably slipped out as I talked with my boss at school. "Oh, that!" He said, smiling. "I used to think that too about radicals. It wasn't until I'd worked for a few years that I finally understood how it actually worked."
Ah, the comfort!
The point is that things escape all of us. Some of us keep it quiet until we've figured it out. Some of us tell everyone and reveal our silliness. But all of us have things that escape us, whether toilet flushing techniques or chemical reactions.