25 teams.  525 broomsticks.  75 chasers.  1 golden snitch.

Quidditch World Cup.  This summer.  Frankfurt, Germany.

It’s on, like Donkey Kong.

Okay, maybe that’s more like “It’s on, like Hermione and Ron.”  Ooooooh!

This summer, 25 teams from around the world will meet in Frankfurt, Germany on July 23 – 24th for the IQA World Cup.  IQA, if you’re a complete Muggle, stands for International Quidditch Association, and it’s the international governing body for the sport.  Yes, sport.  It’s played at the college level and beyond, across the world, and while the broomstick regulations have changed over the years to prevent injury, it is as close as you can get to J.K. Rowling’s in-air vision of the game while on the ground.

The US National Team is sending 21 players and 7 alternates to the games, and I got to talk to one of them — Julia Baer — who normally plays chaser for Quidditch Club Boston, a community team in Massachusetts.

She, like probably you, scratched her head when she first noticed Quidditch listed as a sport while applying to college.

I thought it was a joke at first, admittedly.  I’m a competitive person and I adore the Harry Potter books (my application essay drew comparisons between Neville Longbottom and I), but I knew nothing about the sport. About one week into freshman year at University of Richmond, I was returning to my dorm room after class when one of my hallmates ran up, grabbed my hand and told me to change into gym clothes because it was time for Quidditch tryouts. I followed her and fell in love with the sport from the first practice.

She ended up playing 4 years for the University of Richmond Spiders.  Despite the fact that the sport was born in a book description, it’s not for the delicate or faint-of-heart.  Baer has weathered sprained ankles, a separated shoulder, and temporary blindness in one eye.  Concussions remain the number one Quidditch-related injury.  Yes, in case you doubted: This is a real sport.

It’s also possibly the ultimate feminist sport, with a mission statement that outlines numerous times the importance of gender inclusivity.  While other sports maintain separate teams based on sex (and often times don’t even have a team for one sex), Quidditch teams are always co-ed.  That focus on gender inclusivity is what drew Baer into the sport.

I find [the fact it’s co-ed] so fitting for Quidditch because it’s the kind of sport that requires basic open-mindedness from the very beginning. And Quidditch has a great way of being gender-inclusive in that it has developed the “four maximum” rule. This states that there may be no more than four people on the pitch for a team (a team fields seven at a time, including seeker) that identify as the same gender. This ensures inclusiveness across the gender spectrum, not simply for those identifying as female.

Making the game about skill in the sport rather than sex or gender changes the conversation.  Baer points out the ways that Quidditch is truly leveling the playing field.

[Quidditch] is a great opportunity to showcase the power of the gender minorities. I personally love having the chance to outplay male opponents and silence society’s little voice in my head that says all men are better athletes than I could ever be. I’m one of the best players on my team. I’m not one of the best girls on my team and I’m not good “for a girl”. It’s so refreshing to be in a sports community where gender minorities not only compete alongside men, but thrive.

You don’t have to love Harry Potter to play Quidditch.  In fact, the sport has strayed so far from the story that it’s likely that there are people on every team who have never read the books.  Baer admits that it has been a long time since she has thought about Harry Potter when taking the field.

It’s hard for outsiders to separate the sport and the series, however, and that tends to drive them away from giving Quidditch a shot. Personally, I’ll give a nod to J.K. Rowling for creating my favorite sport of all time, but when I’m on the pitch, Harry Potter is the last thing on my mind.

Probably the most important lesson Baer takes away from Quidditch is the idea that if you haven’t found your sport, create your sport.  (And that advice extends beyond sports to all areas of life.)  There is nothing stopping you from leaving the well-worn sports path and trying something new.

I’ve played sports all my life. I’ve played softball, soccer, field hockey, basketball, horseback riding and lacrosse. I’ve been above average at most sports I’ve played, but never once played for a varsity level team. Quidditch is the sport that I excel at. It’s the sport in which I’m (apparently!) one of the best players in the country. I’m extremely grateful to have had the ability to play this sport throughout college and after college. And this sport didn’t exist ten years ago. If you don’t think you’re great at any existing sport, invent or try a new one!

So who is with me cheering on the US National Quidditch Team this summer?

This post first appeared on BlogHer, but I had to post it here, too, because I am so freakin’ excited about the Quidditch World Cup.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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I gracefully stumbled into a low-lying planter at the mall.  I was twisting backwards to try to figure out the name of a new store — it didn’t have a sign above the entrance and had instead etched the name faintly into its glass windows — when my shoe caught on a six-inch decorative planter.  I fell in slow motion, with the ChickieNob screaming, “Mooooooooooomeeeeeeeeeeee” as I tumbled forward, breaking my fall with my hands as I smashed my right knee into the tile.

Not one person stopped eating at the tables around me.  Not one person came over to see if I was okay.

The ChickieNob and I sat there for a while, and then we slowly limped into a department store where I collapsed on a bench near the high heels.  The lump on my leg was so huge that it looked like my kneecap had decided to get itself an extra backup kneecap, just in case, and set it at a jaunty angle like a beret.  (The ChickieNob whispered, “It’s a good thing you didn’t check your unshaven legs when we were sitting in the casual part of the mall and instead waited to roll up your jeans when we were sitting amongst the fancy shoes.”)

I moaned the whole ride home.  Thank you, world, for creating ice.

What was your last injury?

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored posts.

Somehow the topic of Boston’s rap battle situation came up while we were driving, and I informed the kids that if someone pulled up alongside our car and challenged me to a rap battle, I’d have to politely decline because (1) I’m not really good at speaking off the top of my head, (2) I’m not really good at rapping in general, and (3) I really like to pay attention even at red lights, and I wouldn’t want to be distracted by their rhymes.

I told the twins that when I was younger, the thing to do was to pull up alongside a car in traffic and motion for them to roll down their window.  Of course, that meant taking off your seat belt and leaning across the seat because most cars had windows that had to be manually rolled.  It was truly a pain in the ass unless someone was in the passenger seat.

Anyway, once they had the window down, assuming you needed directions or that you were going to warn them that their tail light was out, you would say, “Do you have any Grey Poupon?”  And then drive away.

We were such cards.

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I asked the twins if kids still pump their arm up and down whenever they pass a truck while they’re on the school bus.  It used to be a huge game to get truck drivers to pull their horn for you, and I remember mostly doing it on the bus but also in the car on long trips.

I asked Josh, and he did this as well as a kid, and we didn’t grow up in the same area.  Anyone else?

Unfortunately, getting truck drivers to honk their horn no longer seems to be a thing.

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Of course there was also punching the person next you — hard, in the arm — whenever you saw a Volkswagon Beetle.  Yes?  No?

Punch buggy!

I downloaded the most brilliant set of apps.

So, I go on the fan sites on Wikia a lot to look up facts when the twins and I are reading a book. (Most resent search: “What happens to Foxface in the Hunger Games?”  Could not remember.)  And I decided to look and see if Wikia had an app in the iTunes store.

Did they have an app?  No.  Did they have like 50+ apps?  Hells yeah.

They had a different app for each individual fandom.  They’re all free.  You download them, and then you can access commonly sought information such as characters, locations, actors (when there are movie versions of the book), themes, etc.  I downloaded some of our favourite things: Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Hunger Games.  It makes me so happy to see them all lined up on my phone.

And now, when we’re driving somewhere and trying to remember the name of the boy from District 11, someone can look it up on the phone in two seconds.  Pure bliss.

If you’re having trouble finding the individual ones, do a search for Wikia on iTunes, pull up one app, and then click on the developer (Wikia) at the top to see a list of all their apps.

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Stop procrastinating.  Go make your backups.  Don’t have regrets.

Seriously.  Stop what you’re doing for a moment.  It will take you fifteen minutes, tops.  But you will have peace of mind for days and days.  It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Out of the Shadows” (Inconceivable!)
• “Oh, the Humanity” (Lavender Luz)
• “Two Years Ago and Today” (Torthúil)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Searching for Our Silver Lining has a post about missing the babies who aren’t here.  It is a beautiful post on the process of healing and forgiveness, and she writes, “There are days I think it’s mastered only to pull me back under. Forgiveness is such a funny thing.”  Go read it in full.

The Barrenness has a post about her pregnancy dreams returning.  It’s always such a strange reminder how little control we have over our own mind, despite what some self-help gurus would have you think.  She seeks a reason why these dreams are looping back into her mind after banishing them once before.

Lastly, I usually don’t highlight non-infertility/loss/adoption posts, but this Washington Post article on the author’s sister’s suicide got under my skin.  Rather than sweeping the cause of her sister’s death under the rug, she wrote it into her obituary.  I love these lines: “Here is the truth: You have value. You have worth. You are loved. Trust the voices of those who love you. Trust the enormous chorus of voices that say only one thing: You matter. Depression lies. We must tell the truth.”  My hope (as well as the author’s) is that many lives will be spared from death by depression by writing and talking about it.

The roundup to the Roundup: Wikia apps are so much fun.  Your weekly backup nudge.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between March 18th and 25th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

I’ve been trying to get back into logging my food with My Fitness Pal, though it hasn’t really been working.  I forget all day, and then I eat terribly and think, “What’s the point in knowing how many calories I consumed when I clearly ate too many?”  And so nothing changes.

I finally realized that there were actually four things I wanted to do to make myself feel better: (1) Do yoga daily, (2) Drink 8 cups of water, (3) Get closer to 8 hours of sleep, (4) Balance and limit my caloric intake.  The problem was that I was trying to do all of them at once and it wasn’t working.  So I decided to only do one at a time and see if that worked out better.

So the first thing I did was start doing yoga daily.  I’ve pretty much stuck with this for years, but not in a mindful way.  So now I committed to doing it every morning, and of course nailed this goal since I was already doing it.  Sidenote: it helps to start with something you know you can accomplish.

Next I decided to add in the water thing.  This is huge because I still wasn’t eating well, but I had to say to myself, “Food isn’t your concern right now.  Water is.”  So I’ve been drinking 9 cups of water.  It’s easier than 8 because my water container holds 3 cups of water, and I just fill it 3 times during the day.

And even though there are two things I’m still not doing, I’m focusing on the fact that there are two things I am doing.

And here’s the thing: I have been eating better because the water fills me up so I’m less likely to go in the kitchen and grab a handful of crackers.  (Oh, crackers, I love you so damn much.)  Without trying, I’m actually getting closer to a place where it isn’t going to be a big deal to start counting calories again and looking at the nutritional breakdown of my food to make sure I’m getting enough protein and not too much sugar.  So that is pretty cool.

I’m currently between step 2 and step 3, feeling like I’ve got a good grasp on the water consumption thing and starting to set a bedtime for myself.  I need to begin by not playing video games up until the second I go to bed because that clearly hasn’t been working for me.  I’m feeling like 11:15 is a good time for lights out, so maybe I should read during that 15 minute appendix of time dangling off the evening.

And once I stick to that for a while, it will be time to limit my beloved sugar.

I recently read a good post on Lifehacker about setting negative incentives, which sounds like it would work well for me.  (Of course, it may not motivate you at all.)  The idea is to set a negative consequence that you want to avoid rather than setting a positive consequence for reaching your goal.

I decided to set $20 in a jar.  Every day that I don’t stick to recording my food on My Fitness Pal and staying within the caloric goal, I am going to remove $1.  At the end of the month, I get to take the remaining money and buy myself a new section of the PS4 game that I’m playing.  Each part is about $15, so if I stick to the plan, I will have enough money.  And if I don’t, I know that I have no one to blame but myself*.

In fact, I may make it worse and tell myself that the lost money needs to go toward buying Josh one of his annoying albums that he’ll play in the car, subjecting me to his musical noise.  So not only will I be unhealthy and unable to play more of my game, but I will have to listen to Josh’s music.

So that is how I’m turning it all around.

* I’m pretty certain I’ll only need to do this for one month.  Once I get into a routine, I’m pretty good about keeping it going.  I’m just terrible at starting the routine.