A Wimbledon to call our own

When Scott and I bought our home, it was a quick gut-feeling blur of signing papers. We were at the realtor within half an hour of our first --and only-- tour. Said tour only lasted 15 minutes, too.

We spent months trying to remember the different rooms and built-ins and trying to imagine the amount of work that laid ahead of us.

One thing we noticed but didn't quite check out thoroughly was the tennis court -- yes, I'm so serious -- in our backyard. We knew it was there, thought it was cool, and totally disregarded the 80 years of ivy, weeds, dirt, mud and a bunch of what-is-this crap.

We were just thrilled that we had this cool "bonus" on our property. We took up tennis two summers ago on a whim and while we are not quite Venus and Serena, we enjoy it and know enough about the rules to keep score.

We set out in April to clear it out, thinking we would have it done within a week, the summer becoming our personal tennis grand slam.
We just finished this weekend. And it's really only a semi-finish. We still need to paint lines, pull some more weeds and patch up some rough spots.

BUT! It has a net! And there are no major tree limbs or other obstructions to start a catastrophe of emergency room possibilities.

We have to thank our friend Ben, because honestly without hours upon hours of his own sweaty time, it would be a long way from semi-finished.

We played in the dusk the other day; the three of us struggling to even see the yellow ball between the impending darkness and our exhaustion from hours of sweeping and ghetto-rigging the net (hint: empty beer bottles are being used).

So today, once Scott got home and I finished some stories for work, we went frolicking up our back sidewalk, rackets in hand to play our first official game as significant others on our super-awesome-in-our-backyard-cant-believe-its-(semi)done tennis court.

And yes, I actually have serious-looking tennis outfits. I like to pretend my tennis racket-embroidered Nike apparel will distract my opponents from my un-awesome skills.

We had a couple of minor interruptions -- well, namely a fire call I had to listen to for about 20 minutes before returning -- and without a full fence around the entire perimeter we chase quite a few stray balls -- but we got through one match.

And for the record, I won. 6-2.