I was mistaken last week--this week, tomorrow, is my final USTA match. I think I've only had one win this season, which is disappointing. I don't know why I'm so fearful of hitting the ball, but I just give away points. I'm going to try not to think about this and just play as hard as I can. After last week's match, I'm on a high and ready to redeem myself at #1 singles tomorrow. I have a sitter coming, which has taken a good deal of prep; I can't stand strangers coming to stay in my house and feeling like it looks like a pigsty. Right now it's more like a cleanish pigsty, but it's the best I can do. And Ollie will make it to his own tennis lesson, which is a good thing.

If we can find the time tomorrow, we are only a day or so away from finishing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. We have averaged 120+ pages a day for the past four days, so if we work at slightly above that pace tomorrow, we'll have it all wrapped up and be able to move on to the 6th book and be done well before the 7th comes out in three weeks or so. It is taking all of my spare minutes and my time to myself after children's bedtimes to get to this point, but I'm looking forward to reading some different books once we finish this series. There are so many on our list that I'm eager to get started.

Friday is the first meeting of the boys' book group. I hope that they will be cooperative. I hope that Ollie will find some books that he wants to read. I hope that Walter will listen as we read so that he can participate. But it is exciting for them. Today I took Ollie to B&N to look at possible selections, and I think he has a few. We didn't buy all of them because that was going to get expensive, but he is ready to say what he wants to see happen and what he has liked in the past. More on that to come.

Tomorrow after tennis we are going to Sunday Park for a picnic. It sounds hot. Today was horrendous in terms of heat. The rain that is supposed to arrive Friday cannot come soon enough. It was so hot at the pool today, even in the water. And all three older kids have red faces from me not protecting them well enough. Their bodies are looking rather white, but their heads, no matter what I do, seem to be in trouble. I hope that we don't melt in the heat. And I need not even think about Richmond Olympiad in the afternoon. I'll need to remember to pack plenty of water. Even then, it's rather unbearable there. The weekend promises a much better forecast, with lower temperatures and lower humidity.

I need to get pictures on here again. I have them. I've been taking quite a few at the pool and when we have been out, it's just a matter of uploading them to the computer and then putting them on here. I haven't done it much yet, so I'm less familiar with the process, and for me, if it's not automatic, it doesn't happen.

Kerry accused me of making bad decisions tonight. With a blinding headache with the air pressure today, I took BC powder, which is full of caffeine, at dinnertime. Now here I am, still with a headache, but likely to be awake all night. We shall see.