The First-Ever Hump-Day Hump Award Goes To...

I would like to give a heartfelt thank-you-and-God-bless to Paul Walker for perma-sticking a smile on my face today. As I casually browsed the entertainment section of MSN in between editing papers on hip replacement, I saw his picture, and even though it is still Wednesday, it instantly was Friday night inside my head. And perhaps other parts of my anatomy as well.



Come see his new movie with me: pilarrrgh@gmail.com

Game, Set, Match, Ice Pack

At five years old, my parents bought me my first tennis racquet. It was a tiny-person-sized Prince with a soft caramely brown leather grip and bright yellow strings and from the minute I first shook hands with it (the way they teach you to do it when you learn to grip a racquet), it felt like an extension of my arm.

With tennis, as with most other things in my life (I learned to read when I was still in my twos and it was pretty much an even keel from then, on), I peaked early. My dad really thought he had a prodigy on his hands. She can read 500-page books, she can paint lines with her groundstrokes, she's a genius! If he'd only remembered I thought spiders lived in my panties, he might have stopped to think otherwise.

The first lesson my dad ever gave me aimed to focus on me getting a ball over the net. I did much better than that. In fact, I think I aced him by the end of it. This led to tennis consuming me for the remainder of my life as a minor.

I took private lessons from pros at every tennis club in the greater Philadelphia area. I played in after-school clinics. I played with my parents at the local high school. I got up early for Breakfast at Wimbledon and had posters of Andre Agassi plastering my bedroom walls. I lived through the teen heartache of the cutest player there ever was, Stefan Edberg, getting married.

And, not to toot my own horn (and I could actually toot if I wanted because I play french horn; ask my BFF [best friend forever] Kelli), but I was pretty good. Throughout middle school and high school I played on the team, and I always did well. I wasn't ever among the best of the best, but I was among the best of the pretty good.

But then I went to college. At a D-1 school. And we all know that the best of the pretty good don't get to play D-1. And we also all know that all you do in college is drink, smoke pot, and eat pizza. So I literally never played tennis again. OK, twice. In the past 10 years.

This past weekend my ol' tennis team buddy Kate and I decided to go back to our high school courts and try to relive our glory days by hitting around a little. Kate has managed to keep up with tennis, playing in college and then regularly thereafter, so I was a little nervous to play with her 'cause she's so good.

And how did it go? Is the suspense killing you? I sucked. I couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. I said "good shot" more times than I got the ball over the net. What's worse is that by the end, my suckiness had even enveloped Kate. People six courts down started netting backands right and left, I was stinking the place up so bad.

Ten years had aged me 40 in tennis time. My reflexes are those of a 106-year-old woman with an afghan on her knees, rocking back and forth and talking to herself. I knew I always had that little old lady inside of me, but I didn't think she'd choose to make her debut on Court One on Saturday afternoon.

I woke up the morning after the tennis debacle unable to move my right arm, aching from trapezoid to hip flexor and back again. I had to pack myself in ice and sit still for 5 hours watching the OC on DVD until I was numb enough to hobble around.

And I work out, too! I swear. Apparently not enough. I was horrified. How did this happen!?!

So what have I decided to do about this display of pathetic-ness? Give up, you say? Heck no! I convinced Kate to play once a week with me and joined a tennis club, of course! And I am determined to, if not whip my ass into shape, at least meet a hot, unmarried, age-appropriate tennis-playing man who will notice the shape of my ass.

I figure either way I come out on top.

I could use some new balls, please: pilarrrgh@gmail.com

The Scream Heard 'Round the Office

An albino spider about the size of an American dime just fell from the air vent above my head as I sat at my desk editing my 26th consecutive paper on hip replacement. It landed on my keyboard.

What did I do? I screamed; what do you think I did?

So the gig is up. The co-workers all know I have my voice back. Margaret rushed in to help me. An experienced camper from a young age, she is able to pick up spiders with superheroine strength and crush them beneath a single paper towel.

I now blame my parents for not taking me camping as a child, therefore enabling the cultivation of my paralyzing fear of anything with more than four legs, which now has cost me the two extra weeks of not speaking at work that I was going to win that Oscar for.

Briefly, I shall explain my fear of spiders. As a kindergartener at Gwynedd Mercy Academy (the name itself just it just stinks of snobbishness, doesn't it?) I came home from school one afternoon and went into the yellow bathroom on the first floor of Marge and Tom's (Mom and Dad's) house. I pulled down my tights and panties, hiked up my plaid uniform dress, and commenced peeing. Mid-tinkle, a spider "ran out of my underpants," which were resting around my ankles. Too terrified to think clearly and horrified that spiders lived in my panties, I jumped off the toilet and fled the bathroom screaming a scream that can only come from the belly of a six-year-old, still peeing as I ran.

It was not my finest moment. And my mom never did find the underwear-dwelling spider and thought I might finally have lost my young mind, succumbing to the perils of my overactive imagination and penchant for embellishment, as she had always suspected I would at some point.

But there really was a spider living in my underpants and if I'd gone camping more (or at all) as a kid like Margaret did, maybe I'd have been able to handle things a little better then and today.

Share spider-killing techniques with me: pilarrrgh@gmail.com

Silent Musings

Now that I've decided to do this, I realize I am terribly unprepared and in need of something to say. If you knew me, you'd know that is unusual.

I'm quite garrulous, chatty, talkative. Or, I don't know when (or how?) to shut up. On my recent return from my annual vacation to visit Laura in Houston (if a woman wearing an all-the-way-buttoned-up cardigan at one of those country clubs you see on TV ever asked, "Where do you vacation?" I'd say, "Houston, and you?"), I was diagnosed with acute bronchitis, laryngitis, and the inability to cope with either of these illnesses, by my doctor.

I went back to the apartment above the garage with three prescriptions (liquid codeine, anyone?), a persistent wheeze, and no way to produce sounds from my voicebox. Apparently all this was at least in part brought on by the extreme amounts of unholy partying my too-old-for-that-sort-of-thing ass should not have been doing while on vacation. My now suburban self was no longer prepared for the rigors of city partying. I hadn't trained properly. Nights spent with a lowfat ice-cream bar and Arrested Development on DVD should have been replaced with two-day benders, the bench press of the party fitness plan. I did not know this. Next year I will be prepared.

Not a squeak could I utter for six days. That is 144 hours, or approximately 143 hours and 59 minutes longer than I have ever gone without talking. I would try to call people on the phone. They'd answer, "Hello?" and I'd say "________ ." They'd hang up on me. My NSLP (nonsexual life partner) Ariel, resident of the first floor of 23 Broad Street, would call me because (bless her) she is the only person who genuinely missed talking to me. "Hey," she'd say, followed by me huffing as loud as I could into the phone to signify hello. "I know you can't talk, but I'm going to watch TV. Huff once if you want to watch with me or twice if you don't..."

Luckily for everyone, and Kenny my nail guy in particular, I got my voice back on the seventh day. God rested on the seventh day; I spoke. Kenny didn't file my left index fingernail quite round enough and I croaked, "Rounder, please, Kenny?" to which he replied, disappointed, "I thought you couldn't talk."

After the nail appointment I proceeded to call the whole of my Sim card. No one answered. Maybe it was because it was Friday night and they were doing bench presses. I can't say for sure. But it was a dark hour in my life. I had a voice (albeit one that sounded painful to use) and no one to talk to. What a sad story. Let me pass you a Kleenex.

I made up for it by speaking continuously for the next five days. If you don't believe me, ask Brian and my aforementioned NSLP who were lucky enough to listen to me talk for approximately four hours on Tuesday night in a bout of verbal diarrhea previously unequalled by any loudmouth in history.

The only place I am still milking the laryngitis is at work, where I have found it to be my most useful professional asset since my college diploma. People knock on my office door bearing phone messages and file folders with Post-It notes that have a big "?" written in red on them, queries poised on their tongues. But they all stop when they realize I cannot answer them. "Oh, sorry! I'll figure it out myself," and "I'll call Dr. Bigshot back for you," they say. I smile sympathetically at them and thank them only with my sad, still slightly glassy eyes.

My boss, who is a doctor himself and quite possibly not the owner of a soul, has even started to inquire about my well-being. "I hope your voice is better soon," he said on his way out to a business trip. "It could take a couple weeks yet, but it'll come back."

And I know he ony wants my voice back so he can make me do more work--or maybe he misses the one-word answers I usually offer him when he insists on speaking to me--but any concern offered my way is nice just the same. And he doesn't realize it, but he accidentally let it slip that I have up to two more weeks of not speaking at work to look forward to faking.

And the Academy Award for best nonvocal performance in the workplace goes to......me!

Look at that; silence really is golden.

Talk to me without making a sound: pilarrrgh@gmail.com

PS: I love the Houston and the people in the Houston and I go to the Houston at least once every year because it is my third-favorite American city. There are good people there. Friendly people. That city has opened its heart to the Katrina victims like you could not even imagine and now it looks like Rita has her eye (no pun intended) on Houston. I'm praying for you, Houston (and the rest of the Texas/Louisiana coast), and hope you make it safe and sound.