We have one car that’s a champion in the snow but mice have crawled up inside the dashboard and nested in the airbag system. My warning light has been illuminated as reminder that when I fishtail and throw a 360 on slick, icy roads, I’m SOL save for a rodent family that might shoot out the steering wheel to cushion the impact. Considering the size, weight and non-absorbent make-up of the average mouse, I’ve decided to mostly stay home even though the lack of cleaning apparatus and chill of strained relations makes me want to crawl out of my itchy, winter-dry skin and flee to Florida where I hear it’s 80 and humid and there’s no such thing as chapped lips.

I suppose in this confinement, I should continue the job search I began a few days before the X-mas break wherein I write and re-write cover letters and resumes in order to send on-line responses to job listings in which I am only vaguely interested, those that appear on Monster and Craig’s List, knowing all the while that my ten years as a Landscape Designer don’t translate into value as a paralegal or administrative assistant or pharmaceutical representative but there’s always hope that some firm will see that the individual who ran her own company, wrote for a newspaper and also did time in the accounts department in an advertising firm, can and will learn this office stuff quickly and, in the interim, can probably manage the phones and tend to the ailing tropical plants suffering for light beneath the fluorescents.

I make it sound sort of optional, this employment thing but really it’s dire. In the last days of ‘08 we learned that MBH’s company would no longer be covering health insurance for dependents. So we have the expense of three on our plate in the New Year which makes for leaner times in our already skinny lives. And then there’s the latest confession – that neither of us can take one more day in the house together as a couple; working, sleeping, eating, pretending. And so we’re trying to find a way to swing rent. Some way to give ourselves some breathing room. It may, in the end, save us. Or it just may allow us to sever things in a civil manner. Either way, we see the expense as non-optional.

In order to clear the way for this added financial hit, I cancel newspaper subscriptions, I dial back the minutes on the cell phone, I cancel cable and stare meaningfully at the high-speed internet access bill wondering if we can survive on a dial-up. Wondering if the dial-up option still exists? We are wearing long underwear and turning down the thermostats. The dog shivers in her dog bed. The kids play hours of Wii and we let them, because school’s out and the wind blows negative temperatures and it’s free and we ignore their computer game dependence because their bug eyed attention to Madden ‘09 somehow assuages our guilt.

We have yet to break the news to the kids, this separation, which will confuse and disturb them even more than it does us (if that’s possible). And then there is the news to share that we are taking a leave of absence from the Country Club which really doesn’t affect their Winter lives but will completely rock their summer-time existence. I keep reminding myself that there are worse things to suffer than no swim team or tennis or golf but I feel really, really badly about this one. Possibly because we gaveth and now we taketh away. It’s one thing not to know what your missing, it’s another to miss something you once really, really enjoyed. They have friends there. They have known the sweet laze of sultry afternoons spent licking watermelon drips from their sticky arms and jumping in the chill pool to rinse their skin clean. They have known the smell of fresh mown grass on the fairway. They have known the distinct sound of tennis balls bouncing on a clay court. They have learned how to drag the brush and groom the court after play without filling their tennis shoes with clay granules. They have dressed in a sun dress and sandals and little boy khakis with a starched button-down to attend the awards ceremony at summer’s end where they receive recognition for sportsmanship and effort and achievement. They have known what it feels like to belong to this safe place, a place of well-to-do families and blue skies and a snack bar. I feel sad about a lot of things, but mostly I feel sad that I can’t continue to give them the things they have come to know as normal.

So here’s hoping that somehow, some of the next 364 days will find a way to be truly better than this one. Less uncertain and bleak and fearful and nostalgic. And here’s hoping your ‘09 is a good one, better than the last, even if your last wasn’t all that bad, because who doesn’t deserve even better?

As evidenced by all the leaves in this picture, I have tried a different approach this year. The close your eyes and pretend there’s not a thing wrong with the lawn approach, the hold your breath and hope someone else finds this leaf mess intolerable and eventually borrows the neighbor’s gas blower. The Who, Me? approach seems to be working so far and every other weekend the yard is restored to temporary tidiness by My Better Half who has thankfully settled in to his role as temporary but constant gardener.

And to be perfectly honest this laissez-faire attitude I have adopted is not entirely due to a new and more laid back me but more to the fact that I have serious wrist and forearm problems stewing and can proudly declare myself a winner of several fine diagnosis – De Quervian’s Syndrome, Wortenberg’s Syndrome, the beginnings of tennis elbow – all of which are orthopedic euphemism for, “Wow, your hand-wrist-arm apparatus is really fucked up. Let me give you a Cortisone shot and hope for the best because if that doesn’t work we’ll have to consider amputation.”

Simple tasks like raking, flipping pancakes, vacuuming, scrubbing the tub and folding laundry have all become excruciating antagonists to the things already gone wrong in this skinny arm of mine. And so I’ve been sidelined from some of the more banal but necessary tasks in life and, like anyone riding the pine, I’m anxious to participate. But I’m also enjoying the imposed break, nothing like a little doctor’s note to help a person settle in to a sabbatical from household chores. There is something liberating about letting things go just a little longer than I would usually. It’s so unlike me. I could get used to this slovenliness.

But then there’s the difficulty and attendant pain associated with tennis. And we all know how unlikely I am to give up the game. So I’m icing and pumping the NSAID’s and fully committed to getting this thing healed up so that I can continue to work on my court skills. And if amputation is necessary then I will be forced to play left handed. It worked for Nadal. No reason it can’t work me, right?

I soothe myself with Ron’s suggestion that, really, only the bare minimum is required at this stage in the game. After all, he has reminded me, my readership is non-existent now that I’ve been off the grid for so long. It doesn’t matter what the hell I write today or, ya know, EVER, because my following, while once an impressive 12 readers deep, is now down to 1 or 2 rubber-neckers who check in every now and again looking for an obituary notice. I think what he’s trying to say is that I’ve forced the bar on this blog thing very, very low. So here I am, back from the grave, at least today, can’t promise I’ll be here everyday, or the day after that, but today is a start.

So first a bit of business…Many of you have been kind enough to stop by and inquire about my return to life as a landscape designer. As my last post indicated I returned to design in May and, since then, have knocked out three design projects. It’s a bit like riding a bike, this design thing. Once you’re up and speeding down the hill, that hill could be in Zone 6 or Zone 11. It turns out that there’s not much difference once a person gets a handle on the twelve most important plants in the local landscape while cruising, break neck speed toward career-oriented disappointment.

After a few short weeks of careening down the hill of my new enterprise, feeling the surge of hope, the satisfaction of accomplishment, like wind in my hair, practically singing into the breeze of my own projected success, Weeeee, I can do this because I am good at this and people like me, I hit a rather imposing wall that I’ll refer to as the faltering economy but may, in fact, be more the stuff of bad luck intermingled with a few bad characters.

One project went smoothly, the design was well received, the contractor paid me for my time but the earth remains barren, not a plant has been installed. I’m thinking the homeowner is hoping that Spring will usher in the resurrection of his mutual fund but I’m just guessing. Another project, the one I did for free while hoping my generosity would lead the back door neighbor to cover up the chain link fence that went up around the enormous hole in the ground that they call a pool, well, that design and attendant plant list was completed in mid-June and I’m still looking at bare dirt and a long stretch of metal fencing along the western property line. I’m thinking it’s another garden laid victim to the volatility of the NYSE, but I’m just guessing.

And the third project has officially lurched off the tracks into train-wreck territory. The plans have long been finalized and delivered but I still haven’t been able to track down a check for the remaining design fee, a check which represents 50% of the design costs, my entire month of September, not to mention a few tense weeks in October. So small claims court here I come.

There’s no bit of comfort I can take away from this triptych of disappointment, no successful project or happy homeowner waiting to be my first success story as a landscape designer in the Northeast. There is only a long, ominous stretch of nothingness, a total void of landscape design jobs now that it’s almost November and the snow will soon begin to fall and most people are intensely focused on continuing to pay the mortgage and the heating bill while watching their stock portfolio bottom out a few weeks before Christmas.

Enough with the bleak landscapes and the obscured horizons, I’ll sign off wishing a Happy Day to all who have ventured over to Madmarriage after such a pregnant pause. And if any of y’all happen across a landscape contractor who calls himself Jim and speaks with a lisp and fancies himself a black belt in karate and apparently signs contracts without reading them, do me a favor and swerve in his direction. Just once, this once, I think the Gods might forgive a hit-and-run. I know, I know, this Jim character will get his, someday, somewhere, but I’d just like to be close-by in order to to bear witness.

This is my first landscape design project since leaving Florida. I have enjoyed an almost three year sabbatical and now it is time to put on the big girl panties and get back to work despite the fact that there are chinks in the armor, holes in the lingerie. Because I have studied and practiced in a subtropical climate, I am, decidedly, no expert on Zone 6. I am faking my way through this first endeavor and so far it proves to be no different than the barely managed chaos of the projects I’ve been used to.

Today the excavation crew hit the water main and took out service to my house and the neighbor’s to the South of us. After service was restored we had chunks of copper and mud clogging our hot water tank and our toilets and the water ran brown from the taps and into the washer. We spent the entire day clearing lines and blowing out faucets after which we have clean running water again and I have that “Oh yeah, that’s why I quit landscape design and installation back in 2005″ feeling. Same shit. Different state. ‘Tis the nature of the beast and all those other platitudes I could throw at the thing. I have, in hand, large format reproductions of the property next door and I am tired already.

It is a scream in a quiet room, a berry stain on a white dress shirt. This house, that is the focal point of our historic district, stands as a sort of example, a warning to potential home buyers against buying beyond their means, against allowing idealism and romanticism to influence a real estate transaction, against stretching the family budget to accommodate the fixer-upper only to find yourself pushing a reel mower through the small patch of grass at the foot of the porch stairs, the one bit of maintenance you can still manage without paying a third party, the one thing that you can control while the rest of the property folds and begins to fall in upon itself.

And perhaps there is an element of empathy that sustains our interest in this house, as My Better Half and I feel a sort of kinship with the poor people obviously waging this hopeless war against time and money and wood rot. We have intimate experience with just such a battle as we struggle to prop up our own crumbling home. We are just thankful that OUR humiliation is safely set back from the street, sinking into its degradation behind the privacy screen of scrub maples and poison ivy. There is no public witness to the state of our neglect and only those we invite to experience our folly are privy to our leaking sink and faulty toilets and the bats roosting in the attic.

We can understand these strangers strapped to the weakening joists of their centuries old home, keenly, intimately, as we too watched one too many episodes of This Old House and convinced ourselves that it was possible. We can imagine the arguments sustained over how to spend the last dollars in the bank account, he insisting that he is up to the task of demolishing and rebuilding that listing front porch, she remembering the basement drainage project that ultimately involved hydraulic drill rentals, forty eight hours of rattle and roar and the choking drifts of fine concrete particulate floating up from the cellar to settle on upholstery and counter tops and, remarkably, on all food items in the refrigerator.

And we secretly consider adopting the very public surrender that seems to have earned this desperate couple some sense of connubial balance. As the weather warms and the swarms of black flies begin to dissipate, the residents of 12 Elm have pitched a large, accommodating tent on their small patch of grass just to the right of the porch stairs, assuming the attitude of squatters on their own front lawn while the whole monstrous mess behind them crumbles and disintegrates, unsalvageable at last.

Now that they have declared defeat, they are free to focus on manageable tasks like keeping the tent flaps closed to the clouds of mosquitoes moving through at dusk, repairing rips and rends with a needle and thread, stringing up a sort of clothes line between two tall pines they once considered removing and have now come to think of as just two more residents on this piece of property that has finally bested them.

The hushed quiet of the private therapy room, free of the canned sounds of reception, is breathless and cool. Though it is dark, it is not dreary and there is some comfort in the fact that there is a Kleenex box and asian art work and a bowl of hard candies, butterscotch or peppermint, sickly sweet confections in a bowl, an oral diversion meant to ease the complexity of discussions about “relationship hygene” and the purpose of sexual encounters “to engage feelings of vulnerability and aggression which we have come to think of as taboo emotions and regularly suppress such frailties in most non-sexual human interactions.”

One can tell that much thought has been given to the arrangement of furniture in these therapy spaces. My personal therapist likes to sit in a straight backed chair pulled up to her desk while inviting me to take the seat that is directly adjacent to that desk. She can swivel to face me and put her feet up on the file cabinet. There is a window behind her and the filtered light illuminates the wisps of her short hair, glowing gold in the darkness of the room. Her visage is cast in shadow, completing the effect of deliberate anonymity. She is faceless, haloed even, playing the angel of benevolence whose expression I cannot read for the corona that surrounds her.

And our marriage therapist has his own contrived arrangement. He prefers a deep arm chair that faces a wide leather couch. There are two other arm chairs beside this couch. To sit one of these chairs would be to face the wall rather than the professionally dressed man who has greeted us gently, quiet but stern, paternally ushering us through the door. So we both sink into opposite corners of the long couch. We prefer to meet his gaze than that of one another, having shared a chilly car ride, a week of reserved hostility and patient withholding.

I get the feeling that he is making note of our seat selection. That our choice to sit together on the couch, however far apart, my habit of holding the throw pillow in my lap, hugging it to my chest as if for protection, tells him something about us as a couple, about the state of the connubial union. I only wish I could see the note he’s made next to “seat selection” – hopeless, helpless, hopeful, fucked. He must play a little game with himself. Upon first meeting a troubled couple, he must try to predict the outcome ahead of time, tagging the duo with some sort of premature prediction. He is, perhaps, keeping score of his ability to predetermine a couple’s destiny based solely on the place they choose to sit when first entering the inner sanctum.

But I have to believe we are learning things beyond where to place our fannies. Conversely, I fear that the learning, the progress, is supposed to be more efficient in its development, neatly packaged within the 50 minute therapy window, reaching its weekly conclusion by the end of each billable hour, when, in fact, we’ve both just managed to open a vein and are in the midst of a full soulful bleed on the oriental carpet when our fifty minutes have elapsed.

Almost as if there is an audible chime, a programmed alarm bell, we are ejected into the harsh glare of day, into the parking lot of our lives without the benefit of soft sounds and cushioned chairs and hard candies. We bleed and ooze a collective flow of unhappiness upon the pavement. And all the way home we wish for the mediator, the third party to help us frame and present our individual view points in a more palatable and digestible manner. I have thought to ask him how much it would cost to take him home with us for the week where he might spend some real time dissecting our likenesses, our differences, where he might really get a feel for the state of the union and can say, after seven short days, hopeless, helpless, hopeful, fucked with some measure of authority. That would be easier somehow than this slow burn that is perhaps progress and perhaps not and only time and countless seating arrangements will tell.

And the responses, the comments, the e-mails and the willingness of those who I’ve known in this space for a few years now to offer me their personal time, to offer a phone call, an objective ear and the symbolic shoulder of quiet support, has been an overwhelming boost to me. I know that like minded people gravitate toward one another, like kindred souls who end up in the same book stores, who frequent the same restaurants because they both adore the french onion soup, the blogosphere acts as a much more infectious and effective facilitator. We end up at each others’ blogs nodding our heads in sympathetic recognition, laughing, sharing, weeping through the complexities of this collective life.

It’s a humbling experience to be able to emote in this forum and to have that emotional outlay met with infinite understanding and little bits of wisdom. It’s as if a dear friend hears your call, your plea, even your quiet little whimpers and comes rushing over with a pint of ice cream and The English Patient on DVD and you sit side by side watching one of the greatest love stories of all time while eating Chunky Monkey from carton and wiping your noses on your shirt sleeves – that’s what this blogging thing is for me – comfort and acceptance and the knowledge that others, others with wisdom and intellect and darn good stories to tell, have also endured all manner of shit and lived to tell about it (unless of course your the husband in the English Patient who decided to fly his plane into a sand dune instead of doing the hard work which is required to achieve “lived to tell about it” status).

And while no one can say a damn thing that makes it all better, there is something very powerful in your verbal acuity, your willingness to recognize and acknowledge my situation as familiar or acceptable and to even share your personal anecdotes about your own marital difficulties. I am forever grateful for your cyber-companionship. I see people on a daily basis who do not know me anywhere near as well as you all know me because they do not know my mind.

This blogging thing makes for odd and unorthodox friendships but they are real and important connections that deserve to be acknowledged.

And so I leave you with some wise words I found in my in-box earlier this week as an example of the very thing that gets me through the day,

CCE, Your situation has been brewing for some time and has had a million tiny moments and choices to get you here. It is going to take time to deconstruct the myriad rudders to find which one, or which combination, will turn things again. I still maintain that you’ll inevitably find yourself doing the slow work of constructing a narrative for your life that’s going to put everything else in perspective. I don’t know what that is but I know it’s bigger than you and more than now. And I still say that faith that things will work out may well be the thing that, in the end, makes things work out.

Tiny moments, choices, slow construction, perspective, faith, bigger than you, more than now…all good things to ponder at this juncture. Thank you.

And, as an aside, I told you the peonies were primed to bloom. The picture included here is just a sample of what’s exploding in my garden this week. For that and for all of you, I am thankful.

So there is the state of things…one big hassled frenzy, a breath taking whirlwind before the pause and linger of summer which should be spent poolside, sipping lemonade and reading mindless fiction but somehow, these next few months don’t seem to hold the promise of that quiet languor.

First there is the fact that, with nowhere left to go but up, My Better Half and I are attempting to make some changes. I wish I could call this team work but it feels more like each of us embarking on an individual and private effort to find some stable ground. It’s been shifting and tilting away from us for awhile and this is the moment, the crucial point at which we find ourselves searching for a way back to center.

While I’d like to think that people change, people who really, really want to change can find it in themselves to fight complacency, can recognize the tiny but significant ways they have failed each other and make the minute adjustments necessary for recovery and the sustained health of the marriage, I can’t quite shake the emphatic claim that MBH has made throughout the eleven years of our marriage. Until very, very recently he has been determined and resolute in his opinion that people don’t change, can’t change, won’t change. It was take it or leave it for so long and now, somehow, when leave it became a distinct possibility, he is no longer quite so certain that change is an impossibility.

And while no one sets out to find themselves here, staring at one another over a cup of coffee at a the Heartbreak Cafe, deciding whether or not to split the bill, share the tip and take separate ways at the fork in the road, I think it’s sadly common, almost banal. We aren’t the first people sipping at this bitter brew and we won’t be the last.

There is one jaded but clever waitress here, with her netted hair and her faded work uniform, who tells tales of the few who have decided to endure, who held hands awkwardly while on the way out to the parking lot, who climbed back into the very same beat-up, work horse of a marriage they arrived in and rode off together in some inexplicable state of stubborn devotion.

She says she never hears from these folks again. She tells it like it’s a good thing, this silence. She claims that only the lonely and the sorry send her postcards. The others, the few, that made it out together have each other. And that makes her glad.

But quick update…we did win the tennis finals. Wednesday afternoon was spent working off an abundance of champagne. Last night was the Cake Walk and all went well despite the fact that the play list I had so carefully developed was on the lap top that was not working for lack of a power cord. So it’s a big sigh of relief and on to the next slough of spring time commitments. One step at a time.

Happy Mother’s Day to everyone who can claim the title. I’ll be back when I’ve got the lap top up and running.

The opposing team was twenty deep and they made up for their lack of talent by having the most over-wrought parents in the history of six year old soccer squads. There is supposed to be one coach per team on the field orchestrating play, acting as casual referees. There are no whistles. There are multiple water breaks. We are supposed to stop and wait for shoes to be tied and shin guards adjusted and every once in awhile someone cries and we stop for that too. But this squad (I’ll call them the Collies in interest of anonymity), took the field with a shockingly aggressive attitude. They had three parents on the field at all times yelling, I mean yelling at their players, not cheering or making hopeful suggestions but physically moving the girls around, harping on them when their attention wandered, herding them up and back, barking orders. The Collies didn’t stop for our four girls when we needed a cleat tied or a water break or when little Samantha got hit in the nose and needed to have a good sob.

They were fixated on the win (the Collie parents), driving their progeny towards the goal. the children responded with the energy and purpose of kids accustomed to an afternoon of parental reprisal should they lose the game. As soon as I heard one parent say, “Just throw it in, it doesn’t matter if the other team’s ready,” I knew it was time to dig in ’cause that’s what we Greyhounds do. We take the challenge and chase the bait and run our little fannies off just to deny the families of privilege their expected victory. And the Greyhounds, all four of them, took on the twenty-deep Collie squad and kicked their well groomed asses. I’ve been cruising on that sweet victory for three days now.

After the soccer game, there was a baseball game attended by normal and well balanced parents wearing layers of fleece under rain gear all of which have developed the indisputable signs of ensuing head colds, the Derby party, (which was fun and festive save for the dead horse at the finish line which cast the momentary shadow of gloom (death is good like that) and made the party guest claiming second place in the betting pool feel somehow dishonest. We polled the group as to how important it was that your horse actually trot off the race track and came to unanimous decision that Eight Belles won second place fair and square despite the fact that her life ended minutes later and therefore second place prize money should be paid out. Then we all indulged in another round of mint juleps, desperate to shake off the grim reality of that scene with the equine ambulances on the racetrack). By the time Sunday rolled around, a tennis-related conflict was merely the cherry on the cake of a strange and surreal 48 hours.

It’s a big week in tennis for me and my team mates. We have cruised through the semi-finals after winning our division and now play for the banner and cheesy little plastic trophies on Wednesday. A few of us thought it’d be a good idea to get together Sunday morning and bat the ball around. When we made these tennis plans earlier in the week, 8 a.m. didn’t sound as early as it felt the morning after a bourbon-centric dinner party. Needless to say, my goals for the morning were simple: stay upright; don’t throw up on the service line. To quote W’s hackneyed phrase – mission accomplished.

While we weren’t out there breaking records with serve speed or the velocity of our over heads, we all played decently and got some important touch on the ball before the big match. Since I was concentrating on the basics, like breathing and holding down breakfast, I wasn’t really focused on the score of the games we were playing nor was I really paying a whole lot of attention to the play strategy on the other side of the court. But after receiving a Sunday afternoon e-mail comprised of a bulleted dissection of my play that morning complete with tight analysis of my partner and I’s failure to talk on the court and the observation that we forgot to bring our power serves that morning, I was left feeling that I had missed the memo on the purpose of Sunday morning play which, I had always thought was for extra practice, but had apparently, somewhere along the way, turned into an opportunity for team mates to play professional coach and develop laundry lists of observed errors and oversights to deliver to each other’s in-boxes later in the day.

It may have been a well intentioned attempt to help us be successful in Wednesday’s match but it came off as a pedantic, scolding and obviously flawed analysis of our tennis game by someone who usually plays a lower court than we do and has no claim to professional prospective. Timing, delivery and personal claim to authority on the topic at hand are important factors to consider when playing critic.

I probably should have let it slide, let it simmer in my in-box for awhile. But then I wouldn’t be me. So I promptly fired off a passive aggressive retort designed to signify my displeasure while pointing out that until this team mate develops her own version of a pace serve instead of that marshmallow she’s currently putting in the service box, she will never understand the difficulty of firing off a ninety mile an hour missive while swallowing your own stomach bile.

I also couldn’t pass up the opportunity to point out that her greatest strength on the court is her partner, who is a lefty and therefore causes all manner of trouble for those of us who have been trained to target backhands down the middle. I congratulated her on the success they’ve enjoyed as team this year and pointed out that she should be very thankful for her alliance with someone who makes her opponents have to stop, think and completely alter all instinctual play.

Here’s how some of my reply e-mail went:

Truth be told, I took the court this morning after a long night of mint juleps and about three hours sleep – so the point for me was to have fun and get some touch on the ball before Wednesday. I was in no way expecting a dissertation on our play nor am I prepared to give a dissertation on your game…I was really just trying to stay upright and didn’t have the mental equilibrium to be taking notes.

What I will say is that I think we all have strengths and weaknesses as tennis players. One of the great advantages that you and your partner have is her left-handedness. She’ll always be an asset on the court b/c all the text book rules on where to put the ball are reversed for your opponents. A lot of thinking often leads to errors on the part of the team who has to change their instinctual play. It will always take your opponents some time to adjust to the awkwardness of the set up. That’s a huge boon for you guys.

As for my partner and I not using our big serves until late in the game – Anyone with a power serve will tell you that doubles is a difficult forum in which to rush the hard, fast serve. It takes awhile to warm up and since, in doubles, a player only serves every four games rather than every other, the pace serve is usually the weapon that doesn’t turn fully fire up until the second set. It’s just a matter of needing to be loose, relaxed and warm when going for the big serve.

The spin serve is the safety serve that players often need to use at the beginning of play, when they are feeling pressure or when they haven’t yet found their groove. Even tournament tennis players have to fight out of early match jitters and find the muscle fluidity to begin putting in ace serves (This obviously takes the ranked professional player less time than it takes those of us who play recreationally. There have been whole matches that I haven’t found my big serve. But a spin serve is better than a double fault. I suspect that as you develop the pace on your serve, you will see what I’m talking about.)

Wednesday’s a big day, but I think our entire team can be satisfied that we’ve all played a great season, no matter what happens. I won’t be presumptuous and tell you that you should change things in the last week of a thirty week season right before a final. Obviously, whatever you’ve been doing has been working for you thus far.

As with everything, some days on the tennis court are better than others. We can all hope for a good day on Wednesday but most importantly we can congratulate ourselves on a season well played, regardless of the outcome of Wednesday’s match.

It’s uber-important that we all trust ourselves, trust our partners and just go out there and play tennis this week without getting caught up in the import of the playoff moment, without trying to change our game or the dynamics we’ve established on the court already with our partners, at the last minute, in the nervous rush of pre-match jitters.

I plan to do what I do. I hope to do it well and with confidence. I plan to take it one point at a time. My partner and and I have a little mantra now…watch the seams of the ball, concentrate on breathing between points, be in the moment.

All I can hope for is that she and I leave the court feeling like we played well – win, lose or draw. I wish that for you too. Keep it light, keep it fun, don’t think too hard.

Okay, so it wasn’t quite the bitch slap I really wanted to deliver. I do have some self restraint, knowing when to avoid being un-salvageably vituperative. Even I could see that it was not a good idea to start my reply with,

Dear Team Mate And Average Tennis Player Who I Used to Call Friend But Now, After Today’s E-mail and Last Week’s Odd Decision to Begin Serving While Your Opponent Was Standing At the Sideline Having A Drink of Water, May Be More of an Acquaintance,

Who died and made you coach?

Like sands through the hour glass, those are the days of our lives and so the world turns here on Wisteria Lane where shiny happy people take their psycho-pharmaceuticals and play tennis while ignoring ethnic cleansing in Africa, the slow ravages of cancer, the high price of gasoline, the war in Iraq and the debacle which is the Democratic Primary.

To quote the Talking Heads, again, “You may ask yourself – well, how did I get here?