A week in the heat

Katie came home from Boston Thursday to find me in the garden pulling weeds. I was bent over, dripping sweat, scratching bug bites.

"You look miserable," she said. "Go in and take a shower and I'll finish up." I guess I needed her to come from Boston to state the obvious. At this point I'm not any good at gardening. I trample flowers, and once I even fell on them.

As everyone in these parts knows, the rain was good for the flowers – and weeds. And now the heat just saps your energy. I think I am going to have to break down and call the young woman who weeded for me in the beginning of the season. She did a god job, but I don't feel like spending the money, especially in light of the humongous college tuition bill I have to pay." Really?" You might ask. "You'll splurge on a Broadway show but you won't make life a little easier by paying a small amount for help in the garden?" (Joe is not a candidate because he has been busy mowing the hayfield that was the lawn and also working and umping to earn extra money.)

I once read a newspaper story saying that if you tallied up the amount you spent on buying coffee over the course of a year, you would see that it's a large amount, and therefore you shouldn't do it.

"Really?" my friend Chip said as we got a coffee at one of our favorite spots. "We can't even buy ourselves a cup of coffee?"

Also, I won't turn on the downstairs air-conditioning until I am really really hot. This is partially because of environmental reasons and partly because of the electric bill. I do, however, turn it on in my room, where Maddie and I sleep comfortably. The other day Joe came down to find me lying on the couch, reading a little but mostly dozing off and staring at the ceiling. He went and turned the AC on. Meanwhile, my friend Carolyn, Chip's wife, motivated me to get up by inviting me to drink iced tea on their porch.

Yesterday I was glued to the longest semi-final in Wimbledon history, between Juan Martin del Potro and Novac Djokovic, which Djokovic won in a nail-biter.  Then I wisely packed up my computer and went down to the air-conditioned Thirsty Mind, where I had a cup of coffee and focused on writing my next blog post for Newsmax Health.

Next it was down to Longmeadow to play doubles on the clay courts. At 6 p.m., it was still 91 degrees, but we got a court in the shade, so it wasn't that bad. I am playing pretty well. I hit a searing (for me!) backhand, and my friend Deb asked, "Where did that come from?"

"From watching Wimbledon," I said.

Watching the top players reminds you of things that are valuable not only in tennis but also in life.

Eye on the ball. Follow through. Keep moving your feet.

The magic of tennis

John Isner Thursday at Wimbledon after defeating Nicolas

Mahut in a record-breaking, 11-hour, five-minute match.

The score in the fifth set was 70-68.

When Dr. Alyea walks into the exam room and asks if I've been watching the tennis, I usually relax, because I figure if he had dire news to deliver, he wouldn't enter asking about tennis. Of course I never know if he's seen my numbers yet or not, unless he enters with a print-out.

It's magical thinking, rather than anything based in fact. I'm sure other people have their own versions: If he rubs his nose twice, if he wears the blue tie, if I wear the same earrings, etc. This of course extends beyond doctor appointments.

In any case, it helps calm my nerves if we talk about tennis while he's pulling up my numbers on the computer. Tennis usually comes up during a Grand Slam tournament, and sure enough, on Monday, Day One of Wimbledon, he came into the exam room and asked, "You watching any tennis?"

I felt like a bad tennis fan when I answered that I don't usually watch the early rounds.

But for once I did watch the first round. Joe was out and called me Wednesday to tell me that there was a long match going on at Wimbledon, with the fifth-set score around 32-32. I went to turn the TV on and took several minutes to find the station. I sometimes have trouble with our newfangled system with all the wires and options. It was a challenge finding ESPN-U, and I despaired that by the time I found it, the match would be over. Ha.

I did find it, and I ended up watching until the match was called due to darkness at 59-59. (It had also been called for darkness on Tuesday.) Joe came in, and we watched together in the den. Ben called to make sure we were watching. My friend Mary came over, and I practically threw her on the couch and told her we were watching TV. Mary, along with the two of us and people all over the world, got hooked.

The match resumed again Thursday at 10:30 a.m. and lasted another hour and five minutes when Isner finally won at 70-68.

Wimbledon has no fifth-set tie-breaker, so players must win by two games. It never has, and likely never will, last this long.

It was amazing to watch this historic event. I'm glad I popped into a first-round match.

As for the exhausted John Isner, he lost swiftly yesterday to Dutchman Thiemo De Bakker, 6-0, 6-3, 6-2.

Maybe watching all that good tennis made my counts go up.

Lured out of bed for a good cause

The sound of the phone ringing woke me in the middle of the night.

Well, it wasn't actually the middle of the night. It was a little after 8 a.m, and it was my friend Joe Smith telling me that he and our friend Ken Ross were coming over soon for "breakfast at Wimbledon."

I groaned. I had gone to bed at my customary time – around 12:30 a.m. – and so it really felt like the middle of the night. I've been setting my alarm for 10 a.m. just so that I don't continue to lie in bed until 11 or sometimes noon. But 8 a.m.? Ken had said the other day that they might come over, but since he never confirmed, I figured it wasn't happening.

I said to come on over. I put on my traditional outfit, starting with my running pants. Then I lay back in bed – always a bad choice – and of course fell quickly back asleep. I woke up to the sound of their cheerful voices at the door. So I ran down, still wearing the T-shirt I wore to bed, and looking as disheveled as a person with nearly no hair can. I let them in and ran back upstairs to put on a better T-shirt and splash water in my face.

Ken had brought strawberries, one of the ingredients for "breakfast at Wimbledon." (The other is cream, which we didn't have.) Joe brought coffee, and I supplied banana bread and zucchini bread. 

We watched the better of the two women's semifinals – Serena Williams defeating Elena Dementieva of Russia 6-7, 7-5, 8-6. As you can see from the scores, it was a close match, and it had a lot of great points. Serena will play her sister Venus in the women's final. It was a good morning.

I got my taste for coffee back, which makes me feel closer to my normal self. Joe's strong coffee really hit the spot. Still, I'm trying to not get re-hooked on caffeine, so I'm drinking decaf or half-decaf.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, I learned that I was among the latest group of people being laid off from the newspaper. There were about 12, including reporters, copy editors and photographers. It doesn't affect my income, because they weren't paying me any money, but of course it does affect my insurance. I will have to pay into COBRA for 18 months, and then I will be cut off and will have to find my own insurance. I think they are trying to deal unfairly with me, because the human resources director, who called me, said the company was cutting me off from insurance the next day.

I said that's impossible because I go to the clinic every week and I haven't even received the COBRA paperwork. They said OK, July 13. Later I learned that it's illegal to cut you off abruptly and that they need to give you 30 days. They gave everyone else 30 days, and me half that.

Unfortunately, they are treating me differently, and unfairly, in a range of other ways. These are things that I am working on. 

I wish people would read newspapers. It is so sad that such a wonderful industry seems to be dying. All I can say is we had a good run. As for me, I'll deal with the job thing later. It's not really at the top of my list right now.