Our swim club is actually a swim and racquet club.  In addition to swim team and swimming lessons, this summer everybody at Casa WRH is signed up for tennis as well. 

Including me.

Pee Wee tennis for la Princessa, who couldn’t possibly have been much cuter as she sashayed onto the court Monday in her little skirt and sleeveless shirt and ponytail and pink racquet, which she insists we add an “-ss” to in Sharpie so that the brand name reads “PRINCEss” rather than PRINCE.   The boy is old hand at this, and when he wasn’t having light saber battles with his buddy from first grade, he was getting along nicely in his Juniors class.  My husband, is of course, in Tennis for Grownups and will do ladders and things that involve keeping score and are way beyond my comprehension and ability.

I have played tennis before, but never well.  My husband’s family is tennis-y.  In a big way;  they are all great.  My response to this has been to avoid anything that looks like a tennis court in the nine years that we’ve been married except for the foray into paddle tennis this winter which involves booze and hot chocolate in thermoses, so hey, what’s not to like?

Yesterday, however, and bolstered by the knowledge that I have friends who signed up also, I began my adult beginner’s tennis clinic. 

In case any of the three people reading today my legions of readers is in television production, let me give you a hot tip.  You’re going to want to get a crew down to the tennis courts on Tuesdays and Thursdays because I’ve got the new breakout summer reality blockbuster for you.

Six women, all 39, 40, or 41, and one poor unwitting sucker man about the same age make up the group.  Plus Timmy and Jimmy I am not making this up the tennis pros.  I would guess that Timmy is maybe 24, tops, and if Jimmy is a day over 20, I’m a monkey’s uncle.  Timmy and Jimmy, individually, could not be much more adorable.  Together, they are a Gap commercial. 

Did I mention that all of the women know each other?  Three went to high school together, all of us are connected by book clubs, the neighborhood, and kids in daycare, preschool, elementary school, or soccer.

Did I mention that this is beginner’s tennis?

Jimmy almost fell over when one of our group announced that she’d titled this decade of her life the “floppy forties.”  Timmy looked bewildered when we completely lost it laughing about his explanation of how we needed to learn “today’s” forehand stroke because we were all doing “yesterday’s” forehand stroke, and it took us about five minutes to figure out that he meant “today” as in “current” and “yesterday” as in “damn, you chicks are old” and not “yesterday” as in “this is what you should have learned yesterday” and we were all, “Yesterday?  There was a class yesterday?”  And class had to stop for a full four minutes while the two of them, Timmy and Jimmy the adorable Gap boys, stood, mouths agape, staring at the duct tape that one of us had used as a replacement for a grip and had to explain that a “grip” is supposed to be something one can “grip,” not slippery duct tape.  Timmy and Jimmy were not nearly as amused as we were when one of us happened to launch a tennis ball over the fence and into the woods or into the pool, although we all erupted in cheers every time it happened every seventeen seconds.  It was too much for Timmy and Jimmy to translate for left-handers, so my neighbor and I pretty much didn’t do anything we were supposed to the entire class.  This is OK for her, since she’s actually coordinated.  Not so much for me, although this in no way diminished how much fun I had.

Next week we’re bringing cocktails for after, and I believe some shopping is in order, because if we’re going to be out there looking like Lucy and Ethel twice a week we’re damn sure going to be wearing cute tennis outfits instead of the faded ratty white t-shirts and Old Navy sweats.

I can hardly move today.


                              

So…

I finished the grading and marking and the scoring and the recording and the checking and the double checking.

My big job now is to deal with the mountains of paper that I’ve generated, used, and abused over the past ten months;  everything needs to be sorted and filed.  Yes, I know.  The obvious solution here is that I manage all of this electronically, but the thought of figuring out how to do this makes my eyeballs quiver and sweat accumulate behind my knees. 

Every year I promise myself that I’ll file as I go, and every year I continue to stockpile papers and folders like I’m building a fortress out of old handouts and tests behind my desk.  I do this at home, also.  Stack, stack, pile, pile.  Pages torn out of magazines, recipes, addresses on scraps of paper, half-formed ideas scrawled on coffee-stained napkins, newspaper clippings, kids’ report cards, thank you notes from friends, co-pay receipts to have been submitted so flipping long ago for reimbursement, articles about hotels I’d like to visit, and on and on.  If I could train myself to do that thing that organizing experts always say to do:  touch a piece of paper only one time, I’d save myself such agony when I actually do force myself to get around to it. 

Instead.

I need to go from this:




to this:



I’m going to need some of these:




and most likely one of these:




I’m probably going to wish I had some of these:



with a side of this:




Because what I’d really like to do with all this paper is this: