Over the past few months, I've taken up playing tennis again. I played in high school and was decent. By decent I mean that I was generally able to make contact with the ball, most of the time with the racket. But I more or less gave tennis up after graduating and so it's been 6 years since I've really played.
So I started playing again, against a wall at the park, and have been regularly for a while. It's amazing how quickly and exponentially one can improve when you start with bloody awful. I mean, it was bad. I was more than a little worried that I just didn't have it in me anymore. But I'd even venture to say that I'm better now than I was in high school. Maybe it comes with age, the ability to take direction and apply it. Because I hear all the lessons from my coach in my head, but the difference is that I can actually manage an effort to do it right. Or maybe it had something to do with the coordination issues of an already klutzy-by-nature teenager.
I like to fantasize that the firefighters at the station next to the courts have been watching me improve over the past months and are cheering me on. But in reality they probably just do firefightery things and never even notice I'm there. And if they do, it's more likely that they see my goofy ass chasing after a stray ball and wonder how it's possible that I ever manage to hit it with the racket at all.
The weather is, however, absurd. It's already been above 100 degrees. And you can practically drink the air. I love South Florida, but it's officially ridiculous how hot it is here. Oh, August, how I dread your coming.
But, aside from a general lack of harmony among my body parts and the commencement of a typically mad South Florida summer, it's fantastic to be playing again, to be active. To exhaust and drench and invigorate. It is one great joy in my life right now. But that damned wall talks some serious trash.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Paper Tigers
Sometimes I have too much to write about and end up intimidated by a nice blank text box. Here's a mash up. It may get longish.
First of all, I'd like to take this opportunity to commend myself on my excellence in chocolate abstinence. Saturday will mark me halfway. 50 days without it and 50 yet to endure. Although I'm happy to report that "endure" really is, at this point, too strong a word.
I'm also making some very small progress with the butterflies. I've neglected my picture looking, to be sure. But I have been making an effort to be generally closer to any butterflies that happen along my path. Sans freakout. I do feel obligated to admit to one panic attack, where I found myself trapped in my apartment with a moth, flying towards me. Suffice it to say that when my husband informed me of my horror's true identity, a bee, I was more than happy to get up off the floor and pull the blanket off my head.
I've also been brushing up on my classic literature. We've been frequenting the public library. In our year long absence from civilization, i.e. Mississippi, I'd forgotten how much I love a library. So far, I've been into Austen. I attempted Emma in middle school and found it pretty insufferable. I've now read Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park and am fairly certain Emma will hold more interest for me now. At first I felt like Austen's style of writing was strangely straightforward and a little dull. I ended up thoroughly enjoying Pride and Prejudice, although I assumed that I might because I was already familiar with the story. But actually preferred Mansfield Park, at least up until the end. While I really enjoy Elizabeth Bennet as a character, Fanny Price is pretty impossible not to like or at very least respect. I was all but cheering for Mr. Crawford, though, when that blew up in my face. I couldn't ever tell where the book would go, a happy point to me, though not uncommon. I'm a lovely audience, almost always unsuspecting and then afterward quick to forget and therefore likely to read/watch/listen again. But I don't care for the way Austen wraps up a story. So brief and indifferent. What's striking to me though, is to consider the stories rewritten for our time. It's almost impossible and would never work for a good story, I think. It's incredible what changes we've undergone as society as a whole. Really just bizarre to think about. I could get all anthropological here but no one wants that.
So back to the classics...I'm also reading Kipling right now. A Kipling Pageant, and currently Rikki Tikki Tavi, for which I've named a cat. And on the list are, well, the classics. The stuff we're all meant to read at some time or other. 20,000 Leagues, 1984, Animal Farm, Dickens, Shakespeare, Moby Dick, etc. Any suggestions welcome, and of course any suggestions that aren't necessarily considered to be "classic" literature.
I also have something to say on a few children's books. Sam and the Tigers by Julius Lester is undoubtedly one of my all time favourite kids' stories. It's apparently a retelling of another story, Little Black Sambo, which was thought racist. I read Little Black Sambo too, online, but Sam and the Tigers is so lovely and perfect to me. It's imaginative beyond the story itself, witty, with some fantastic similes and written in a great voice. Plus the illustrations, by Jerry Pinkney, are well done and you've got to love the tigers' expressions. We also checked out a cute little book of haikus about a Japanese garden with a little girl. Colson kept calling it the princess book because, to her, all little girls in books or stories are princesses. I love haikus.
So, I've been worrying about our water play. See, we have fountains for kids to play in at the park we frequent, and also at the zoo. Now, at the zoo, we don't have control over whether or not the fountains are turned on, so on one hand I feel less guilty about letting the girls play in it. At the park, we turn them on ourselves and they spout for an amount of time and then shut off until turned on again. So, at the park we're intentionally bringing about the water wasteage and at the zoo only condoning it. What am I to do? It's such a highlight of fun for the kids...Does it drain into a pool and reuse itself? I wonder if that's not the case at the zoo because of the strong smell of chlorine to the water...at the park I'm less sure. Thoughts?
And to conclude, while we're on the subject of zoos. I'm often wondering how the animals feel. I know that a lot of the time zoo animals, for some reason or another, can't live in the wild. But I can't help but wonder about the quality of life of a wild animal kept caged. Heck, I even worry about my house cats being too much confined.
"Oh, restless are we all, until true freedom is realized." -Jupiter Sunrise, "Master Susuki"
First of all, I'd like to take this opportunity to commend myself on my excellence in chocolate abstinence. Saturday will mark me halfway. 50 days without it and 50 yet to endure. Although I'm happy to report that "endure" really is, at this point, too strong a word.
I'm also making some very small progress with the butterflies. I've neglected my picture looking, to be sure. But I have been making an effort to be generally closer to any butterflies that happen along my path. Sans freakout. I do feel obligated to admit to one panic attack, where I found myself trapped in my apartment with a moth, flying towards me. Suffice it to say that when my husband informed me of my horror's true identity, a bee, I was more than happy to get up off the floor and pull the blanket off my head.
I've also been brushing up on my classic literature. We've been frequenting the public library. In our year long absence from civilization, i.e. Mississippi, I'd forgotten how much I love a library. So far, I've been into Austen. I attempted Emma in middle school and found it pretty insufferable. I've now read Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park and am fairly certain Emma will hold more interest for me now. At first I felt like Austen's style of writing was strangely straightforward and a little dull. I ended up thoroughly enjoying Pride and Prejudice, although I assumed that I might because I was already familiar with the story. But actually preferred Mansfield Park, at least up until the end. While I really enjoy Elizabeth Bennet as a character, Fanny Price is pretty impossible not to like or at very least respect. I was all but cheering for Mr. Crawford, though, when that blew up in my face. I couldn't ever tell where the book would go, a happy point to me, though not uncommon. I'm a lovely audience, almost always unsuspecting and then afterward quick to forget and therefore likely to read/watch/listen again. But I don't care for the way Austen wraps up a story. So brief and indifferent. What's striking to me though, is to consider the stories rewritten for our time. It's almost impossible and would never work for a good story, I think. It's incredible what changes we've undergone as society as a whole. Really just bizarre to think about. I could get all anthropological here but no one wants that.
So back to the classics...I'm also reading Kipling right now. A Kipling Pageant, and currently Rikki Tikki Tavi, for which I've named a cat. And on the list are, well, the classics. The stuff we're all meant to read at some time or other. 20,000 Leagues, 1984, Animal Farm, Dickens, Shakespeare, Moby Dick, etc. Any suggestions welcome, and of course any suggestions that aren't necessarily considered to be "classic" literature.
I also have something to say on a few children's books. Sam and the Tigers by Julius Lester is undoubtedly one of my all time favourite kids' stories. It's apparently a retelling of another story, Little Black Sambo, which was thought racist. I read Little Black Sambo too, online, but Sam and the Tigers is so lovely and perfect to me. It's imaginative beyond the story itself, witty, with some fantastic similes and written in a great voice. Plus the illustrations, by Jerry Pinkney, are well done and you've got to love the tigers' expressions. We also checked out a cute little book of haikus about a Japanese garden with a little girl. Colson kept calling it the princess book because, to her, all little girls in books or stories are princesses. I love haikus.
So, I've been worrying about our water play. See, we have fountains for kids to play in at the park we frequent, and also at the zoo. Now, at the zoo, we don't have control over whether or not the fountains are turned on, so on one hand I feel less guilty about letting the girls play in it. At the park, we turn them on ourselves and they spout for an amount of time and then shut off until turned on again. So, at the park we're intentionally bringing about the water wasteage and at the zoo only condoning it. What am I to do? It's such a highlight of fun for the kids...Does it drain into a pool and reuse itself? I wonder if that's not the case at the zoo because of the strong smell of chlorine to the water...at the park I'm less sure. Thoughts?
And to conclude, while we're on the subject of zoos. I'm often wondering how the animals feel. I know that a lot of the time zoo animals, for some reason or another, can't live in the wild. But I can't help but wonder about the quality of life of a wild animal kept caged. Heck, I even worry about my house cats being too much confined.
"Oh, restless are we all, until true freedom is realized." -Jupiter Sunrise, "Master Susuki"
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