Tennis has been heavily on my mind the past few days. Well, actually, it has been on my mind heavily for the past week or so. I'm trying my hardest, without even holding my racket, much less being on a court with another human being, to figure out what my USTA rating would be. I want it to be 3.5. I hope it would be 3.5. 3.5 sounds like fun, it sounds challenging, it sounds like a nice skill set to be working in, and it sounds like I wouldn't be badly beaten every single time. 4.0 sounds on paper like where I might be (hey, I could even make a case for a 4.5...on paper, that is!), but I don't believe in paper. Paper doesn't play matches with real live opponents. So unless forced to do otherwise by someone with more experience identifying placement, I'm going to call myself a 3.5. I've settled on this idea that a pro is going to have to tell me what to do based upon watching me.
So while I've been on this tennis kick, I went to my closet and pulled out my high school yearbooks in hopes of seeing what my season records were my junior and senior year. Unfortunately, that information wasn't available, but I was able to pretty much mesh what information was there with what my brain remembers, which is that when I started, I lost two, and that seems correct--the team's season record was 7-2 that year. I also couldn't remember the names of all six starters that year. As I recalled, our only losses were to the usual suspects, Cox and First Colonial.
But meanwhile, I got lost in the voluminous writing on the back and front pages of my yearbook. I don't know if everyone's high school yearbook is similar, but I had at least one person, sometimes two, claim entire blank two page spreads for themselves. Donna's entry is a cacophony of text, drawing, a combination of the two (her name upside down and backwards written in words), and just sheer insanity. I laughed so hard reading it, although I can't say that I've read the entire thing because it is so non-linear. And here's the kicker: I can't remember what about half of this stuff she wrote means! What I do remember reading her entry and many of the others is that obviously my life in high school was comprised of one personal joke or reference after another with just about anyone I knew. We must have sounded like we were talking or writing in a secret code, because I sure as heck don't know what we were talking about! Here are some of the things that I can't remember:
* Nightmare on ice skates, Part 1 Bobby-obby-obby
* Hey, guess what? I played in the park, but I didn't hear Freddy in the bushes. (although I think I have a guess on this one...)
* Party at J-Man's House! Stay all night--Maki and Mary Frances did! (I don't know who J-Man, Maki, or Mary Frances are)
* The Mystic Order of the Holy Ham (this rings a bell, but what does it mean?)
* Bossy Cow Jokes
* something about SQUIDS from AP English class?
* Lichens. Several people mentioned something about lichens.
* Bitte klopfen and the sacred caterpillar (this was from creative writing class, it seems)
* More than one person asked if I was "naked or was I nude"
There are these hysterical pictures, too, including "A Rare Photo of HELL The Day You Graduated," drawings of Donna and I in our pickle costumes (we honestly had professional photos done with us wearing John Lennon sunglasses and wearing posterboard pickles), and a drawing of me waving my nose hairs at someone. Then there's the occasional totally "out there" comment from someone I knew very well, but I can't imagine making the particular comment they made. There's Joe Kennedy, with his odd little half-calligraphy blurb about incredible person blah, blah, blah stuff, and than at the end adds a "P.S. You really look good in a formal." What's that supposed to mean?! Then there was some joke about "Let me know when you get those sex-improvement video tapes you ordered," coming from Jason Bair. Huh?
Then my very amazing tennis partner, Kalpana, had all kinds of little gems that I can barely attach any meaning to. "Be a Woman." I definitely remember saying that, but not the context. And it seems I had a big thing about "Hit her where it hurts!"
Finally, Tricia left this entire treatise on silence. With a big blank space for it. Obviously, silence seems to have been a big problem between us. Why do I always end up spending time with people with whom this silence thing becomes an issue?
Other notable comments about high school based on my yearbook: I had longish hair, and it was still very naturally blonde. Trish Goodwin is on probably every other page. I seem to have missed getting in the picture for half of the activities I was in. I still picture everyone looking just as they did then.
Back to the present, Frances was fully recovered today. By the time she got up this morning, she was doing running flips onto the mattress in Rutledge's room and she was eating waffles. She tested negative for strep, which is not quite what I wanted to hear, since it means that this was probably a virus, but looking on the bright side of things, at least it was very short-lived. The vomiting phase lasted only 1.5 hours, even if it was a bit intense. And although she had an intermittent tummy ache all day, it didn't exactly slow her down. So I'm hoping that if I am similarly cursed with the illness that it will be as quick for me.
Ollie lost three of four matches today at the wrestling tournament. He was pinned in under 30 seconds by the first opponent, but steadily imrproved as the morning went on. The bye in the second round affected his momentum, I heard; too much time between his first and second match made him lose interest. And his nemesis from last year broke his arm today and will be out for the rest of the season. Not that it makes a difference to Ollie's season, since Ollie has moved on to Midget and Trey is still a Bantam. Since this is the tournament where Ollie broke someone's arm last year, it seems pretty clear that the referees need to be a little more on top of things as far as making it clear when the time is up so that no one shoots an unsuspecting person.
I suppose between not having approrpriate BRAT diet items in our house during a possible stomach virus and just needing food in general, we somehow ended up overdoing the grocery shopping today. We went three separate places, spending a rather large amount at each, resulting in an even more staggering grand total. But now we have so much food that our fridge can barely hold it, and even the garage fridge is feeling the pain. Both Frances and I are highly interested in protein, so we have many nuts and trail mixes and cheeses. Hopefully this will help both of us stay on a more even keel. And I engaged in a rather naughty clandestine shopping expedition of my own, which was probably not the best idea on a day of major grocery shopping and when I haven't checked the balance in our checking account recently. The truth is going to come out sooner or later (I vote sooner), so I hope that my lovely new tennis clothes make Kerry smile as much as they made me. I never did find my missing white skirt, so I had to do something, right?! Now I just have to figure out the answer to this burning question of tennis etiquette: if my skirt is orange/salmon, what color should my shorts/bloomers or whatever you call them be? I hope that white is an appropriate answer!
Saturday, December 2, 2006
Friday, December 1, 2006
What Do You Do All Day?
Amazing...I skipped an entire day of blogging, didn't even write part of a post to finish on another day. It's the first time since probably the very beginning of September, and possibly before. The world did not come to an end.
Yesterday's sinus headache was finally eradicated with a shot of espresso and three more ibuprofen, and perhaps an improvement in weather. I really got around yesterday. Home in the morning, out to Ashland and the park in the early afternoon (though I forgot skateboards when we were going to the skate park, and by the time I realized it we were too far along to turn around), back to Midlothian to gymnastics, out to Target, around the bend to refuel the car, back to gymnastics for a while, out to run three more errands, then to tennis out in the other direction again. Overall, though, it was an invigorating day. Way too much equipment and special clothing to keep track of, though, considering we had to leave the house around noon and cover three sports with special needs.
I should probably spare both any potential readers and myself any extended tennis rapture. Suffice it to say that although I am physically very out of shape and I counted myself fortunate to still be standing up and not lying flat on my back staring at the lights as I came to with the smelling salts, I had a great time. Running is okay in my book, and I suppose it has some purpose to someone at some time, but I just like to hit the ball. A lot. I think I need some special alone time with the ball machine. I may have completely lost my edge, but it's still as much fun as ever, and just like any of the last few times I've played, I can't stop thinking about how I'm going to make this a regular thing again. Embarrassing confession: I laboriously wrapped the grip of my racket while I was at the park, and I couldn't figure out which side of the tape was supposed to face the outside. I made the best choice I could, and at the end there was this sticky piece of adhesive something on a little point, and it was the wrong side out. I ignored it and stuck tape right over top of it. Hmmm....
I just had the funniest conversation with Rutledge. He doesn't speak a lick of English, which is a lot of why it is amusing to chat with him. He has so very much to say, and it's not difficult to figure out what he means, but you can go back and forth for ten minutes with him and not notice a single, recognizable word. He was pleased with himself for coming up with a play on words with the way he pronounces "no" and "nurse." He couldn't stop laughing about that. Then the wind started blowing while the windows were open, and he had shut the bedroom door, and the door started rattling. At first he was concerned about what was happening. I told him about the wind, and he chattered at me for a while about it, then got off the bed, went to the door, and started shaking it and saying the same gibberish there, then laughing. He just can't get enough of his own jokes. And it's always interesting to be having these odd little discussions with someone in nothing but a Christmas t-shirt, a diaper, his massive, chunky thighs and ankles, and pink Care Bears slippers.
Walter is playing Timez Attack, which is the math game that I have been dreaming about and describing as my ideal for reinforcing math facts--enough appearance like a familiar video game, but no excess narrative to wade through and plenty of practice. Many, many thanks to Christi M. for sharing the link. Since it's Friday, we're going to call this math for today. He even asked on the way home from wrestling tonight whether he could play it again at home. Definitely! Ollie and I are catching up on the GeoBee challenges that we have gotten behind on this week. And a couple of minutes ago I came downstairs to hear some woman moaning on the television, Ollie about three inches away from it (he needs those glasses!), and then a very slimy-looking baby. Of course, this woman was draped from head to toe, as was everyone else in the room, in scrub green, and the commentator said something afterwards like, "There was little injury." Can I say how much I just hate shows like A Baby Story or that other one that is even more medical-disaster oriented? All of those shows give me flashbacks to how no one would leave me alone when I was pregnant with the twins, everything signified impending doom and necessitated a trip to some medical office halfway across town or some invasive diagnostic test that needed to repeated at two or three different locations. Do you know how many types of ultrasound wands there are?!
Frances is shirtless, painting on a piece of wood that she has pierced little stars into with the tip of a philips head screwdriver. Rutledge was eating yogurt, and while I was putting a different color of paint into a pot for Frances, he took the yogurt into another room and dropped it all over the floor and then it seems to have exploded forward about four feet in blobs all over a sisal rug. Nice. And of course his body is covered in yogurt, and then he proceeded to scream for ten minutes because I took the yogurt away from him. Frances has just wiped brown and yellow paint down her chest because she couldn't find a paper towel fast enough. And when I told her to go into the downstairs bathroom to wash her hands now that she is done, she became belligerant in saying, "But we ARE downstairs." Yes, I said, that's why I said use the downstairs bathroom. "But we already ARE downstairs." Just go into the bathroom and wash your hands! Don't touch anything on the way! I'm waiting for the third load of laundry to finish up, managed to fold two other loads from last night, put away toys in Rutledge's room, including tossing a bunch in a bag to take to the attic. And I have been irritatingly single-minded about searching for the missing tennis skirt. I remember where I was last time I had it--it was right before that poop disaster in the hallway last Saturday, and I thought I was going to be playing tennis at any minute and was ready; then I decided that this white skirt was not the appropriate attire for this level of cleaning. Now I've been through all of my drawers, my closet, all of the clean laundry, sorted the dirty laundry, and now I'm on to searching in other poeple's dressers, their dress-up bins. I am rather frustrated. I need it.
Frances is talking to me now about whether she is ever an "orphalin," which I think is an orphan. It is not a very comforting conversation. I think she wants to be a partial orphalin, like when Kerry and I both aren't home and she is with a sitter or great grandmother, but when I said that orphan usually means that your parents are not coming back, she got that furrowed brow look of hers and walked away.
Because we had slipped into a spiral of mess-making with Frances painting, Rutledge getting too close to her, Rutledge eating lots of messy food and carrying it around with him (spaghetti, yogurt, drinks in open cups) and I could see us breaking down into naptime, I figured we might as well descend on someone else's house and take our madness elsewhere. Sure enough, Rutledge stayed asleep for about an hour and half, and the other kids played together for once without major incident. Frances is SUCH a girl now--everything is about holding hands, going to the bathroom with a friend along for company, trying on other people's clothes. Ugh. Not, of course, that I was being terribly much better, sitting on the floor in this friend's upstairs hallway fluffing out Christmas wreaths and attaching bows, climbing out the window onto her roof or manning the 9-1-1 phone just in case she fell off, and sharing my most recent outrageous a-bit-too-personal story, and how I should turn this into a book, which we unanimously agreed must be written under a pseudonym. And then worse yet, it was on to trying on formal dresses, not that I have any reason to wear one or would normally care, but by the time I left I was trying to figure out where I might go dressed like this. I was reminded that I have no concrete New Years Eve plans, too, which was either a comforting or appalling prospect, depending on how I was looking at it from minute to minute. Anyway, this dress trying-on was its own little comic session. There was the blue dress we both tried on (okay, I only held it up to me and some glob of skin fell out of this part cut out of the front and it was obvious this was one kind of dress that would never happen for me...) and we both had plenty of commentary about what is wrong with us post-children. Then there was the dress that was working, but which I got trapped in the sleeves of while I was taking it off and ended up stuck sitting shirtless with no bra on for about five minutes trying to undo very difficult buttons while a large number of children were passing in and out of the room. And of course there's the mortifying fact that if I were to wear it, some serious alteration would have to happen because I am facing the truth that I have, without question now, dropped two cups sizes in as many months. And that this is going to be the state...forever. Of course, I don't want to remedy the situation, really. Which led to my favorite recent discussion topic: Should I get an IUD? No one is saying what I want to hear. No one. The responses have ranged from, "Why would YOU need one of those?!" to "What do you mean? You don't want to have my dark-haired babies?!" Sigh....
But on to more appropriate topics.... Today was weigh-in for the Richmond Rumble, and not only did we manage to get extremely lost after being forced to take a detour at the River/Cary intersection, but Ollie weighed under the minimum for Midget, which doesn't bode well. Perhaps we should have kept his fingernails on. This was one serious weigh-in. He was in his singlet, but before getting on the scale three people strip-searched him for signs of fungus and lingered a bit too long on the burn scar on his arm (which admittedly does look a little suspicious for recovery from ringworm), then declared that he could not be weighed until his fingernails were cut and shoved a nail clipper at us. Even more foreboding is the fact that as we were slowly making our way through the parking lot, Trey, his underweight nemesis pulled up. If only Ollie could have made 50 pounds, he might have had a fighting chance of wrestling against someone else. It seems that Kerry and Debbie and Mark have a deal with Ollie that when he beats Trey, we will have a big pizza party for him. So Ollie asked, "Will both Marks be there?" Yes. "Could Trace and Zane come?" Sure. "What about Marty and Peter?" Yes. Then Frances asks about Lainey. Sure. Unfortunately, the reality of this happening is incredibly slim. So we might as well invite everyone we know!
Okay, bad end to the day. Frances threw up while we were watching The Polar Express, and four times again before the movie was over. Hey, it's only 5 or so times this year she has had something like this :( And most of the rest of us usually come along for the ride, eventually. Out of character for myself, I'm almost hoping that my turns comes quickly so that I know it's over with and I can move on with my life. This is so very much not fun, and one of the bad times for having a large family.
Yesterday's sinus headache was finally eradicated with a shot of espresso and three more ibuprofen, and perhaps an improvement in weather. I really got around yesterday. Home in the morning, out to Ashland and the park in the early afternoon (though I forgot skateboards when we were going to the skate park, and by the time I realized it we were too far along to turn around), back to Midlothian to gymnastics, out to Target, around the bend to refuel the car, back to gymnastics for a while, out to run three more errands, then to tennis out in the other direction again. Overall, though, it was an invigorating day. Way too much equipment and special clothing to keep track of, though, considering we had to leave the house around noon and cover three sports with special needs.
I should probably spare both any potential readers and myself any extended tennis rapture. Suffice it to say that although I am physically very out of shape and I counted myself fortunate to still be standing up and not lying flat on my back staring at the lights as I came to with the smelling salts, I had a great time. Running is okay in my book, and I suppose it has some purpose to someone at some time, but I just like to hit the ball. A lot. I think I need some special alone time with the ball machine. I may have completely lost my edge, but it's still as much fun as ever, and just like any of the last few times I've played, I can't stop thinking about how I'm going to make this a regular thing again. Embarrassing confession: I laboriously wrapped the grip of my racket while I was at the park, and I couldn't figure out which side of the tape was supposed to face the outside. I made the best choice I could, and at the end there was this sticky piece of adhesive something on a little point, and it was the wrong side out. I ignored it and stuck tape right over top of it. Hmmm....
I just had the funniest conversation with Rutledge. He doesn't speak a lick of English, which is a lot of why it is amusing to chat with him. He has so very much to say, and it's not difficult to figure out what he means, but you can go back and forth for ten minutes with him and not notice a single, recognizable word. He was pleased with himself for coming up with a play on words with the way he pronounces "no" and "nurse." He couldn't stop laughing about that. Then the wind started blowing while the windows were open, and he had shut the bedroom door, and the door started rattling. At first he was concerned about what was happening. I told him about the wind, and he chattered at me for a while about it, then got off the bed, went to the door, and started shaking it and saying the same gibberish there, then laughing. He just can't get enough of his own jokes. And it's always interesting to be having these odd little discussions with someone in nothing but a Christmas t-shirt, a diaper, his massive, chunky thighs and ankles, and pink Care Bears slippers.
Walter is playing Timez Attack, which is the math game that I have been dreaming about and describing as my ideal for reinforcing math facts--enough appearance like a familiar video game, but no excess narrative to wade through and plenty of practice. Many, many thanks to Christi M. for sharing the link. Since it's Friday, we're going to call this math for today. He even asked on the way home from wrestling tonight whether he could play it again at home. Definitely! Ollie and I are catching up on the GeoBee challenges that we have gotten behind on this week. And a couple of minutes ago I came downstairs to hear some woman moaning on the television, Ollie about three inches away from it (he needs those glasses!), and then a very slimy-looking baby. Of course, this woman was draped from head to toe, as was everyone else in the room, in scrub green, and the commentator said something afterwards like, "There was little injury." Can I say how much I just hate shows like A Baby Story or that other one that is even more medical-disaster oriented? All of those shows give me flashbacks to how no one would leave me alone when I was pregnant with the twins, everything signified impending doom and necessitated a trip to some medical office halfway across town or some invasive diagnostic test that needed to repeated at two or three different locations. Do you know how many types of ultrasound wands there are?!
Frances is shirtless, painting on a piece of wood that she has pierced little stars into with the tip of a philips head screwdriver. Rutledge was eating yogurt, and while I was putting a different color of paint into a pot for Frances, he took the yogurt into another room and dropped it all over the floor and then it seems to have exploded forward about four feet in blobs all over a sisal rug. Nice. And of course his body is covered in yogurt, and then he proceeded to scream for ten minutes because I took the yogurt away from him. Frances has just wiped brown and yellow paint down her chest because she couldn't find a paper towel fast enough. And when I told her to go into the downstairs bathroom to wash her hands now that she is done, she became belligerant in saying, "But we ARE downstairs." Yes, I said, that's why I said use the downstairs bathroom. "But we already ARE downstairs." Just go into the bathroom and wash your hands! Don't touch anything on the way! I'm waiting for the third load of laundry to finish up, managed to fold two other loads from last night, put away toys in Rutledge's room, including tossing a bunch in a bag to take to the attic. And I have been irritatingly single-minded about searching for the missing tennis skirt. I remember where I was last time I had it--it was right before that poop disaster in the hallway last Saturday, and I thought I was going to be playing tennis at any minute and was ready; then I decided that this white skirt was not the appropriate attire for this level of cleaning. Now I've been through all of my drawers, my closet, all of the clean laundry, sorted the dirty laundry, and now I'm on to searching in other poeple's dressers, their dress-up bins. I am rather frustrated. I need it.
Frances is talking to me now about whether she is ever an "orphalin," which I think is an orphan. It is not a very comforting conversation. I think she wants to be a partial orphalin, like when Kerry and I both aren't home and she is with a sitter or great grandmother, but when I said that orphan usually means that your parents are not coming back, she got that furrowed brow look of hers and walked away.
Because we had slipped into a spiral of mess-making with Frances painting, Rutledge getting too close to her, Rutledge eating lots of messy food and carrying it around with him (spaghetti, yogurt, drinks in open cups) and I could see us breaking down into naptime, I figured we might as well descend on someone else's house and take our madness elsewhere. Sure enough, Rutledge stayed asleep for about an hour and half, and the other kids played together for once without major incident. Frances is SUCH a girl now--everything is about holding hands, going to the bathroom with a friend along for company, trying on other people's clothes. Ugh. Not, of course, that I was being terribly much better, sitting on the floor in this friend's upstairs hallway fluffing out Christmas wreaths and attaching bows, climbing out the window onto her roof or manning the 9-1-1 phone just in case she fell off, and sharing my most recent outrageous a-bit-too-personal story, and how I should turn this into a book, which we unanimously agreed must be written under a pseudonym. And then worse yet, it was on to trying on formal dresses, not that I have any reason to wear one or would normally care, but by the time I left I was trying to figure out where I might go dressed like this. I was reminded that I have no concrete New Years Eve plans, too, which was either a comforting or appalling prospect, depending on how I was looking at it from minute to minute. Anyway, this dress trying-on was its own little comic session. There was the blue dress we both tried on (okay, I only held it up to me and some glob of skin fell out of this part cut out of the front and it was obvious this was one kind of dress that would never happen for me...) and we both had plenty of commentary about what is wrong with us post-children. Then there was the dress that was working, but which I got trapped in the sleeves of while I was taking it off and ended up stuck sitting shirtless with no bra on for about five minutes trying to undo very difficult buttons while a large number of children were passing in and out of the room. And of course there's the mortifying fact that if I were to wear it, some serious alteration would have to happen because I am facing the truth that I have, without question now, dropped two cups sizes in as many months. And that this is going to be the state...forever. Of course, I don't want to remedy the situation, really. Which led to my favorite recent discussion topic: Should I get an IUD? No one is saying what I want to hear. No one. The responses have ranged from, "Why would YOU need one of those?!" to "What do you mean? You don't want to have my dark-haired babies?!" Sigh....
But on to more appropriate topics.... Today was weigh-in for the Richmond Rumble, and not only did we manage to get extremely lost after being forced to take a detour at the River/Cary intersection, but Ollie weighed under the minimum for Midget, which doesn't bode well. Perhaps we should have kept his fingernails on. This was one serious weigh-in. He was in his singlet, but before getting on the scale three people strip-searched him for signs of fungus and lingered a bit too long on the burn scar on his arm (which admittedly does look a little suspicious for recovery from ringworm), then declared that he could not be weighed until his fingernails were cut and shoved a nail clipper at us. Even more foreboding is the fact that as we were slowly making our way through the parking lot, Trey, his underweight nemesis pulled up. If only Ollie could have made 50 pounds, he might have had a fighting chance of wrestling against someone else. It seems that Kerry and Debbie and Mark have a deal with Ollie that when he beats Trey, we will have a big pizza party for him. So Ollie asked, "Will both Marks be there?" Yes. "Could Trace and Zane come?" Sure. "What about Marty and Peter?" Yes. Then Frances asks about Lainey. Sure. Unfortunately, the reality of this happening is incredibly slim. So we might as well invite everyone we know!
Okay, bad end to the day. Frances threw up while we were watching The Polar Express, and four times again before the movie was over. Hey, it's only 5 or so times this year she has had something like this :( And most of the rest of us usually come along for the ride, eventually. Out of character for myself, I'm almost hoping that my turns comes quickly so that I know it's over with and I can move on with my life. This is so very much not fun, and one of the bad times for having a large family.
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