Tennis, tennis everywhere. This week I have five matches, thanks to a rainout last week. For that one, I now have a 6-0, 6-0 win thanks to a line on the other team defaulting. But I am on for the other four days. So far I have a 4-6, 6-1, 10-4 win from Monday, and tomorrow I have a 3.5 match at ACAC playing at #3 doubles with a partner I've never played with before. Thursday Michele and I are playing at #1 singles, or at least I hope we are. I'm not in the mood for singles right now--too much pressure when my rating is on the line, and I'm not psychologically stable enough to ignore my feeling that if I blow it, I'm going to be a 3.0 for the rest of my natural born existence.

Right now I am taking a reading break to watch a show on the National Geographic Channel about human feet, with no legs, washing up in shoes in British Columbia and northern Washington. I really cannot imagine a more disgusting topic, but I'm strangely drawn to it despite the nastiness. Today was a fairly productive day, about which I will post pictures tomorrow, so I'll save the information about Shalom Farms for that. Last night I went to a used curriculum sale that typically nets me much of my material for the following year, and though it was not as good as I remember past ones to be, I did come home with a few gems. I bought two IEW products--The Elegant Essay, which is aimed at high school students, and Teaching the Classics, a DVD set that sets out a procedure for analyzing literature. I don't particularly need that, but I am fascinated by procedural methods of teaching skills, so I look forward to watching it and using the materials with my boys. My understanding is that the techniques and charts can be used with any age student. I also got some very entertaining SAT prep books (I especially like the vocabulary one, which has extremely funny sentences), the next Wordly Wise for Ollie, and a used copy of Algebra 1/2 by Saxon. But the best find was a little group of older books from the 1950s that are just delightful. One is by Elizabeth Coatsworth, who I really like, and the other was a mystery story by Mary C. Jane called Mystery in Old Quebec. We read it all today as a read aloud, and everyone loved it. It is well written, well paced, just the right length (123 pages with some illustrations here and there), and quaint enough to make us all smile at its language and what the children were allowed to do--10 year olds left on their own all day long in an unfamiliar city in another country while their father is in business meetings. I'll be looking for more books by her, though I suspect they have probably lost popularity and may be out of print because they are no longer "current."

And speaking of the library, I paid a $60 fine today. Yes. I'm embarrassed. But it's still cheaper, I suppose, than buying all those items I didn't return in a timely fashion. I figured the best response to that would be to turn right around and check out fifteen new items, including three movies (movies are what get me into trouble most of the time).

Meanwhile, we are still reading My Louisiana Sky and we just finished The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. As luck would have it, the movie of that appeared on the Disney Channel yesterday, and despite our tight schedule, we saw all of it by watching the end earlier in the day and then the rest of it later, since there was a reshowing (no, I don't really know how to use our DVR, and we happened upon the movie halfway through in the first place).

Now I'm obsessed with the idea of a spontaneous trip to Quebec. I've never been to Canada, and I'd like to go. Of course, I have no time whatsoever for something like that in the foreseeable future, but that, in my opinion, is what is wrong with my life right now. Details, details, but we also don't have money for it, and I'm not brave enough to camp solo outside a major city so far from home when I know nothing about the place.

Overcorrection is a word that has become a bit prominent in my mental life lately. I spent a few hours with a new friend before I left for camping on Friday, and we were discussing some of our "overcorrections" in our life. Like having four kids and wishing for more when I was an only child. Or making camping a priority in our family when I never once went camping or hiking or even really into the woods when I was a child. Or wanting to take on a lot of volunteer responsibilities when I don't have a significant paying job that makes me feel competent and useful and contributory to society. Now, I'm not sure that this overcorrection is "bad," so to speak, but perhaps it is explanatory, or perhaps it is a clue to what is wrong with how I conduct relationships. I make no bones about the fact that I am to blame for my awry relationships, and any clues about what drives my selfish single-mindedness are, well, clues. It doesn't mean I have the faintest clue about what to do about these clues or, blush, that I feel especially ready to renounce what I want (you're probably not going to get me to stop camping, for instance, though I suppose I could be flexible and not involve other members of my family in my own passions). Counseling will probably never be particularly helpful to me until I decide that I am ready to change. So far, I'm just not sure. I'm sort of sad to say that, but it's hard to let go of my own hopes and dreams with a clear heart and conscience, even if my own hopes and dreams are seriously flawed and self-destructive. I guess I cling to my right to self-destroy in the name of dreams. At least it sounds kind of romantic, right? I promise I will grow up and be mature some day, so perhaps I'm in the adolescent phase right now and harmony is yet to come as I develop.