So.

Hi. How are you? You’re looking so good, especially from my vantage point (my daughter’s recycled and very old iBook computer, which is picking up the current internet slack after a thunderstorm fried my own powerbook’s built in ethernet). Really: you lookin’ good.

I thought of you tonight, internets, while being publicly humiliated, because I knew someone would laugh at me and that you’d appreciate being first on my list.

I (and my daughter) have taken up tennis. I’m playing about 4x/week now, including lessons and with the girlchild. Tonight, I played in some sort of ladies rotation dealie involving wine and cheese and the rotation that threw me for a loop. See, y’all, I play with a group of gals on Thursday nights; we have a group lesson with a pro and a good workout and we occasionally get together outside of the lesson and play. Tonight, our pro is out of town, so we headed elsewhere for the wine-n-cheese chick tennis fest.

I didn’t know it was a rotation–I thought I’d be playing in my comfort zone of regular Thursday ladies, but about an hour into the night, I ended up with 3 ladies (I am working towards competitive doubles in about a year) who are in the age 65ish (older, perhaps?) range. They play all the time. At one point, as my level of play ratcheted down from my basic 2.5 level into worse-than-describable, they went into big-diamond, good-mannered, southaaaaan “bless your heart”-ed ness and were so very sweet to me that I wanted to cry. But, as it was my turn to serve, it got even worse. It went from that to halfhearted resignation on their parts. I was awful–they suggested that I deviate from the standard serve* and just bounce the ball and hit it over.

As I told my kind husband, it went from bless-yer-heart to good-fuck-what-is-she-doing-here?

That spell of awful was the longest 20 minutes of humiliation in the last three months. I ran my ass off for about 3 hours tonight and I am utterly exhausted and totally keyed up. I actually feel like I went down a level and that I wore off some sort of lessons tonight, but except for being an object of pity and the excruciating agony, I might decide to do it again one day.

* I have at least 43 different excuses for my horrible performance above and beyond my current 2.5 skill level. They are, in no particular order:

I broke my left knuckle pretty badly one Saturday night a month ago and tonight is the FIRST time since then that I have played without my brace or without my fingers taped together. Remember when Hurricane Gustav was whipping around the Gulf? Well, that Saturday night, I was convinced I heard a baby bird chirping madly outside and went to rescue it, only to slip on wet concrete at 9:20 p.m., about 20 mintues before the power went out for 12 hours, and I live 2.5 hours from the coast! I managed to wrench off my wedding rings as I got up off the ground (it nearly made me vomit to do it) and I haven’t been able to wear them since then. I wore a cast for a few days and my finger is sorta mostly almost better, except it doesn’t bend all the way and it has a freaky red knob coming off the right side of the knuckle. Also, I didn’t ever take the naprosyn the orthoped prescribed and I canceled the second appointment, but surely it’ll heal. I’ve been wearing my wedding band on a little chain around my neck. My finger only sorta looks Frankensteinish.

My very nice, spiffy new NICE tennis racket broke after I used it all of 10 times. They sent it away and got me a new one and strung it and handed it to me tonight before I played. They removed the little mufflery things from the bottom of the strings, too. So, new racket. Broken finger.

Finally, I don’t love talking about these things, but I also am several days early on something, which started just tonight before I left to play tennis.

SO.

Seriously.

Nature, my finger and my tennis racket were all working against me. What’s a girl supposed to do? Lordhavemercy.

I sincerely hope you are well, that you are operating with 10 good, working fingers, that you will never be so foolish as to leave a really good tennis racket in your car in the heat in the deep south for a week (and if you do, certainly don’t tell your pro that you think that’s why your brand new racket cracked all the way through–maybe it WAS the power you’re packin’ in your serve), that your husband supports your idea of a tequila and scrabble night and that the Manhattan Short Film Festival is coming your way tomorrow night and you get to vote on the best short film.

I am working really hard to exercise, to grow my brain back, to appreciate my life (I recently got to tell a roomful of 17 and 18 yr olds that I don’t think that I truly became an adult until I was 32 years old), to lose one pound per week (it’s working and I’m thrilled to be getting my body back), to spend wisely, to create art, to read, to sew (the Children’s Corner skort pattern is phenomenal for little girls), to plot the kids’ Halloween costumes (Red Riding Hood and the BB Wolf), and to clean house as infrequently as I did before.

Peace out. Me and my Frankenstein finger are going to bed. I am around. I am reading the internets when I have a chance. I still love you. I still deeply admire you. I miss you. I urge you to laugh at the 20 minutes tonight when I felt like a buck-toothed, eyeglass-wearin’, stringy-haired, awkward, gangly 12 yr old girl, because the spell of playing tennis with women who tolerated me took me straight back to seventh grade, and I don’t know a single girl who would repeat that, if given a chance.

p.s., in case you are wondering: I have not become one of those intolerable women who wear tennis togs all over town. I was the only person tonight (and am, thus far into this experiment) wearing running shorts and a tee shirt. I own no togs. I still feel guilty enough for buying the tennis racket.