Me at My Less-Than-Best

Who knew that a hair dryer could produce curls? Certainly not I. And since you asked, and only because I love you, here is an extremely frumpy picture of me with my Bunny curls.




I feel that neither that shirt nor the camera were doing me any favors, and the curls were a bit more glamorous in person, but you get the idea, right? And you know I am not that plump or matronly, right?

So the trip was fine, Phoenix was hot, and tennis was, well, as expected. I wore my cute shirt and shorts, and had my curls in a ponytail, and that is where the fun ended. I had drenched myself in sunscreen, so I was greasier than bacon, but unburnable. We actually got a bit of a clinic, with a tennis pro out there throwing balls at a group of six of us to practice hitting. Well, that’s what the other five did, anyway. I reverted to my normal approach to any kind of sports and began to duck and cover, which was not really what the tennis pro wanted me to do, apparently.

Then the memories of middle school gym class came back to attack me like a pack of rabid dogs. Read: unpleasant. I would watch as everyone would swing at the ball, and with a satisfactory *thwack* it would land on the other side of the court or beyond, and there’d be “Aw man's” and a bit of swearing when it didn’t do exactly what they wanted it to. And then they would stroke their egos and try not to grin too broadly when it was my turn and I could not even make contact with the fucking ball. At least NO ONE ELSE IN THE WORLD IS THAT BAD.

I think I’ve said enough about that.

While I did not run into any javelina, I did come across a stray cat in the middle of a late-evening stroll, whom I worried about, what with the rattlesnakes and LIZARDS about, everywhere. But the cat was kind of mangy and extremely uninterested in me picking it up and carrying it the half mile back to the front desk of the fancy pants hotel, so I left it there amongst the cacti. I still mentioned it to the front desk and asked if they could call the Humane Society or someone (surely they must have volunteers working at 11:30 PM on a Saturday night?) and the lady looked at me and said, “We have feral cats around here, and some people here at the hotel feed them,” in the way you might say “Some people here eat poop.”

I didn’t hold out much hope for a rescue from the S.P.C.A. anytime soon, but it relieved me, somehow, to know that there were other feral kitties out there to keep him company. He was sweet, if filthy. And he had six toes, which was awesome.

So I got home and life returned to normal. I called my grandmother, as I am apt to do about once a week, because I miss her. And so I was telling her about Phoenix and I happened to mention the tennis clinic and my normally dignified, quiet grandmother busts out laughing and goes, “Ho ho, that’s rich!” (She’s allowed to use such antiquated terminology because she’s antiquated. She’s 96. ) I’m not even sorry for calling her antiquated, because she didn’t stop at laughing at me, she proceed to say, “You? Tennis? Seriously? I don’t recall you being any good at sports.”

!

At least I’m back in Colorado now, safe and sound, surrounded by my chardonnay and delicate kitties who don’t like it when the temperature dips below 72. I wonder how long they’d have lasted if I had brought home a wild cousin from Arizona. I can already see Sugar’s disdain. It’d be like that cousin from the National Lampoon vacations, except more hard-core.