Everything and nothing at all.

The Kills

It’s actually 3rd period at the moment, but I just got home from school; the entire 1st and 2nd XI girls hockey teams have been excused for the rest of the day to play against St. Mary’s, a South African school’s touring teams. To be honest I’m actually nervous right now, upon hearing that they’ve played/are playing against schools like Kamo or Dio around Auckland, all of which are in the Auckland Secondary Schools A side that we play in, which means they’ll give us a pretty hard run.

I knocked someone out cold on tournament last Friday. Our team ended up coming 1st-equal after 3 round-robin games on Friday and Saturday, finishing nil-all in the finals against Baradene; I’m actually thoroughly diappointed and frustrated that we didn’t win outright. If they had done a countback we would’ve been declared the winning team – we had far more PC’s, and were completely undeafeated in the tournament, having already beaten them in our first game on Friday; not to mention we hadn’t conceded any goals all weekend.

I’ve always been on the receiving end of injuries – having my nose fractured by a hockey ball on my 15th birthday, having my face hit with a hockey ball on several occasions, being bashed elsewhere with hockey sticks and balls (I have a fresh bruise by my knee off a hit from our captain), etc etc – but I hadn’t been on the giving end of anything major, until now. To be fair, it wasn’t fully my fault, but it could’ve been avoided if either of us had done things differently. Basically, the girl had attempted to tackle me at about the 25, but missed, so I ran on with the ball to the 16/approaching top of the circle, saw a wide gap at the goal, went to take a hit and on the upswing – BAM! – I stopped cold. And froze. And she blacked out with blood oozing out of her head. You’re not supposed to stay running in someone’s blindspot after a failed tackle… you’re meant to go around and in front. I don’t know what she was thinking (obviously she wasn’t thinking), but as bad as I feel for having done that, I can’t possibly have known she was there; we’re taught – and it’s instinctive – to start swinging your stick for a shot at goal the minute you hit the 16 line on the run to the circle… I can’t imagine me checking my blindspot at the same time as I would if it were in my car.

Turns out she’s fine and was laughing but the end of the match, but I was completely stone cold for a good few hours.

The night before that was the best night I’ve had in a while – I’ve been bogged down by doing so much music practise and trying to keep up with my A Levels that I’m going insane – because THE KILLS were in town! We saw them live at the Transmission Room, which is a pretty cosy little venue, so it was completely sold out, and they were amazing.

Alison was so freaking sexy! I’d wondered how they’d pull off drums, and turns out they played to a pre-recorded track – but even then they were soo tight. Ahhhh I can’t get over how good it was. She reminds me of a wilder version of the character Alison off the movie Yes Man. Same hair, same music, same scene. Me in a few years’ time? Maybe. Hopefully.

I kind of believe in this “jinxing” business

Do you ever say “touch wood!” or “knock on wood” and touch something wooden when you tempt fate with statements such as “I’ve never been mugged” or “it looks like the rain’s holding off”? To me it also kind of relates to Murphys Law – ie: the one time that I didn’t check whether my house keys were in my bag, I ended up being locked out for two hours whilst sick, trying to not throw up on the back deck.

Anyway, during hockey* tournament on the weekend, we were all in the changing rooms putting our gear on ready for a team talk and our game. A few of my team mates were putting on their inner socks – they’re like tube socks with stirrups that go underneath shinguards – when I turned around to Hannah and said:
“Ooh, I’ve been meaning to get some, my shinguards get so grossly sweaty”
Hannah: “Yeah they’re great, and they stop shinguard rash too”
“What on earth is shinguard rash? I’ve never gotten it”

…whilst I usually say “touch wood” and the matter is laid to rest, it’s not to hard to guess that yes, indeed, I forgot to this time; six hours later after a nice long shower, I was curled up on the couch watching tv when I suddenly thought “what the heck is that nasty, stinging sensation on my leg?!”, only to look down and discover a huge patch of sore pink and red on my left leg, right where my shinguard was. I coated it with aloe vera and it improved somewhat. But the next time the same patch had returned… oozing blood this time :(.

*field hockey

2nd place looks like a tradition

I’ve been piled under stacks of music, paper, and for the past two days, lots of sweat and muscle pain. This weekend our school’s boys and girls 1st XI hockey teams played in the annual Massey Tournament held at Crown North Harbour Stadium. It was only a round robin competition, the boys winning the cup yesterday due to a lack of teams, and only having to beat 2 teams in the process, whilst we played three matches into this afternoon undefeated. Until our last match against Kristin College, we had only conceded one goal, and as we were the last game of the tournament, and the only two undefeated teams, it ended up being like a pseudo-final. The disappointing result was that we lost 2-0. The upside was that they didn’t score any field goals – it was an awfully tight game, and anyone merely watching, ignorant of the score would’ve had no idea who was winning. The fact that they only managed to score off penalty corners meant that we covered the field well, but our defensive PC was just a bit weak, especially with a young, inexperienced goalie, but that’s all room for improvement.

I don’t deal well with coming second. I think it’s so much harder than coming third – in a non-round-robin tournament with actual semis and finals, at least if you come third it means you won your last game? I guess there’s always the novelty of being in the finals… but still. This just feels like deja vu from Southern Skies in Australia last year – losing a long-fought, undefeated battle, settling for second… Someone said after our game today that “well 2nd place looks like a tradition for us” – but I’m unwilling to agree. I don’t want to play with that mindset hanging over me.

Hi, today my name is Sophie

I was not a happy chappy when my manager rang and informed me that I was working 10am-6pm both Saturday and Sunday this weekend – especially since I had hardly been at school all week! Alas, I sucked it up and went to work yesterday, bracing myself for the inevitable headaches that were to strike – and strike they sure did! But surprisingly, at the end of the day I was feeling perfectly fine except for a case of exhaustion and exterme sore feet… where had the heavy-headedness gone?

Apparently, we’re all meant to wear badges with our names on them, but I never got issued one, so I ended up having to wear Sophie’s for the day yesterday. It felt bizarre, no one other than my co-workers had ever felt the need to address me with the use of my name, but once I was “Sophie”, it stuck. It got to the point where – and I kid you not – my classmate who’s been in my form class since year 9 (we’re year 13 now) came in for a coffee yesterday, to whom I was overtly friendly and said hi and all the standard things you say to someone who you’re supposed to know “pretty well”, and just ten minutes ago I logged into my gmail to discover andemail alerting me that she’s left me a message on facebook asking if it was indeed me that she saw at Columbus yesterday… merely because I was wearing someone else’s name tag. Surely, surely seeing me for a minimum of 30 minutes per day (for two years it was about 3-4hours), and actually being a semi-close acquaintaince of mine for the past 4 years and 3 weeks must mean something against the three-minute brief encounter at a cafe?

Another thing that I was pondering inbetween the countless cutlery sets I folded was – would it be better off doing a boring, quiet job sitting on your arse all day (because yes, sure you wouldn’t be exhausted, but my golly would the time pass slow), or would it be easier doing a fast-paced, hectic job like mine, except having to spend the whole day on your feet?

The smell of comfort

I’ve been sick at home all week, only tallying up a day and a half at school. It’s barely the end of summer, not even autumn yet, and already I have this awful sinus infection that makes me nauseous, my head heavy and dizzy, and has given me the most disgusting gunk at the back of my nose and throat – I just want to spit it out, but oh it’s just there… I’ll spare the gory details.

So sitting around at home hasn’t been really productive. I’d tried to read my American history and economic tetbooks – the pages that my friends have tried to get me to catch up on, but to no avail. When I’m sick like this, nothing works. I couldn’t even handle skim-reading the newspaper – somehow I read the same line 5 times without it registering, and completely gave up. My sole comfort so far has been watching old episodes of ER and Sex and the City online; and today I vamped this place up with a new theme. The header features a photoshopped image of layers of photos from over the summer, it’s not very exciting, but I was just so sick of seeing the old theme. In addition to all this crap, I can’t seem to stop stirring up problems with the boy. I have a short temper, an inability to express how I feel other than the negative, and me being completely burnt out just does not help, especially when he goes to a different school and I’m always preoccupied. But oh, I don’t know, it’s all a mess in my head, I just want it all to be okay. He came around for a while earlier today. Then for about two minutes after dinner. And despite all the shit that I put the both of us through, when I hug him, the smell of him is like the smell of comfort to me. It’s nice. And in those moments I feel safe.