I said to David over drinks on Saturday, I had a red drink with a flower on the top, Lately I feel that I am able to connect with a work of art at about the same rate I am able to make friends. He said, That’s a very low percentage!

Good news and bad news, darlings. Take the good news first. If you take the good news first you get a moment of pure happiness. When you take it second you have the taste of the bad news still in your mouth.

Did I just ruin the good news? Anyway: We’re moving into the kitchen today! It doesn’t sound exciting to you? But it is exciting. I’m excited. I’m happy. I want to dance like James Brown. I want to stand on a Chinatown rooftop and Hula for an hour. I want to sing the entire cast recording of South Pacific, except “Happy Talk”. I will almost certainly get drunk. Here’s your pashta, kids. Enjoy.

Bad news: I don’t know that Tyler, our fish, will ever really be able to enjoy the kitchen the way he wanted to. Oh, Tyler. Born somewhere to some other Betta fish by whatever method Betta fish give birth, then ripped from his parents’ loving embrace, stolen away and sold in a pet store to our babysitter, Jennifer, as a gift for Henry’s birthday. Nothing good happened after that, either. First the bowl was too small, then too cold. It pains me to say it, but young Tyler was the subject of verbal abuse each night when he was too stupid to find his food.

The bowl situation stabilized. He was warmer, and less sluggish. David became adept at feeding him. Then, a fateful day when Henry vigorously stirred the bamboo sticks in Tyler’s bowl, damaging his back fin. Or did he? Because where the fin used to be continues to degrade, and Tyler’s looking all eaten up, somehow, and stays basically at the bottom of his bowl. He’s been in our bedroom for this last part of the construction, and David becomes sad seeing him at night. I offered to flush him, but David said No. Still, I don’t think Tyler is long for this world. Tyler will never enjoy our new kitchen, that he dreamed so long about. But I will.

It’s not that I’m not doing things, I am doing things, I am doing a lot of things, I’m taking trains into the city and ripping my skirt on the arm rest so that my underwear shows and I have to run into a store and buy a new skirt, I’m meeting my youngest sister for dinner and getting schmackled on a bubbly red, I’m walking home from the train station at 11 under a full moon, I’m reading the entire New Yorker in bed in the morning while the men hammer and bang things somewhere else on my house. The house! I’m driving to Stamford to look for wood flooring, I’m agreeing to expensive additional procedures for the renovation, I’m calling the tree man in for a consultation, I’m talking to our contractor about our progress and handing him an enormous check, I am in pursuit of the perfect front door.

I'm reserving a room at a midtown hotel, where I'm planning to meet my husband tonight, I'm holding an appointment for a haircut on Wednesday, before I head to the Open with my father. I’m slowly making my way through Saturday, although it’s overdue, I’m going through the children’s papers for the first day of school, I’m following Gonzales’ resignation, and the arrest of Larry Craig. I'm eating breakfast, and I'm even doing the dishes.

The children are gone, is the dramatic way of saying that they are at their grandparents’, and happy, and that they slept through the night. I had so many things to do in their absence, but I didn’t understand how I would feel, doing them.

I’ve been thinking a little about things that are perfect, as a category of things. The library I used to work in, and certain hotels, and Leonard Sciascia’s book To Each His Own. Train stations, and some pop songs: closed systems that achieve every goal that is set for them.

But then I think about Anna Karenina, which is imperfect, and better than most other things.

Which should I go for? Being perfect, or being great?

I gave blood on Friday and then went to see the Bourne Ultimatum. I should have something substantive to say about the movie, but I don’t; watching it by myself on a summer afternoon was like getting a shot of something: instantaneous, icy. I hadn’t thought about that aspect of pleasure, which is that it numbs. On Saturday David said I smelled like chlorine and gin, and I said, Isn’t the point of gin that it doesn’t smell? and he said, Then tonic. He meant it as a compliment. We drove into and out of the city with the windows down and the music up and I said, We are a Pleasuremobile.

I’m trying to get over losing in the semi-finals three weeks ago. I thought I had. I thought I didn’t care. But now I realize that I do care, and that it’s bothering me. Yes, Joyce, my opponent, was a very good player. She was undefeated for the season. Whenever anyone heard (and everyone seems to have heard) that I lost to Joyce, they all said, “Oh, she’s a very good player.” Someone said that to me at the supermarket.

There were other external conditions that contributed to my defeat, like that fact that she was left-handed and was able to neutralize my inside-out forehand that fades to the ad side. And it was incredibly humid and I put suntan lotion on someone else's back and thereafter couldn’t keep my racquet in my grip. I didn’t play very horribly. I had my serve. Still, I’m pissed I didn’t step it up and win. For the first four games I was in a fog. And for the last four games, also. The courts were in the middle of fields of dandelions and their fuzz blew across us with a kind of Feminine Product effect and I drifted off as well. Now I’m pissed about it. I’m so pissed I think about doing things like taking lessons and training. Running, and eating right. Ha ha ha ha ha.

2-6, 2-6. It’s depressing.

Anyway, did I report back on the team party? It was very nice. I received pink socks as a parting gift from my captains. Thank you. I wrote notes on pictures of the captains that were then framed. My notes were banal, unfortunately. Or fortunately. Because if they’re not banal, they’re inappropriate. The person who was going to bring sangria was told not to, because they made peach punch instead. I had a glass of it. I was careful to eat snackies, so I wouldn’t get drunk and start free-associating or overeating.

Or anything. Lately I've been wondering how I would know that I was no longer free. Because, with an eye to the neighbors, I control my own behavior so effectively.

Maybe I'm overstating things.

I know you’re all excited, wondering, What is going to happen at the tennis luncheon today? Will Carey’s salade niçoise be the success that it should be? How much sangria will everyone drink? I want to know the answers to these questions, myself. And I will, soon.

Meanwhile, I thought I would tell you the menu for the luncheon as if it were one word:

CruditewithhummusBacon-wrappedfigsVegetablespringrolls-SpicytunarollsSpanikopitaandtiropitesSpinachpistachio-andstrawberrysaladSaladeNicoiseFruitsaladPoachedsalmon-MarinatedsteakChickenandvegetableshiskabobsGrilled-shrimpwithpineapplesalsaRoastedcornsouffleBuffalomozza-rellaandtomatoeswithfreshbasilCouscousLemonLulucakeCoff-eeblondebrowniesChocolatemousseAssortedrugelachorminitarts

I wonder if there is a tune I can set this to. I always want to set everything to “If I Were a Rich Man.” Although this morning a mother at Johnny’s school told me she was working at “Safety Town” this week and I immediately thought, “Let me take you to [beat beat] Safety Town!” It’s a place where children learn not to kill themselves with electricity or drown or be run over or abducted. It’s run by the Junior League.

Where was I? Borges. I’m reading a collection of short stories by Borges called Doctor Brodie’s Report. If Borges stories were jokes they would all have the same punch line: Then he was killed by a knife. That’s life as an Argentine gaucho for you. So what’s the punch line around here supposed to be? Then she protected herself and her children from accidents for the rest of their lives and they were killed in old age by disease.

My tennis team, which calls itself The Pinks, is having a party next week, to which you are not invited. Everyone has to offer to bring something, or their contribution will be assigned to them. So far people have offered to bring:

Fruit Salad
Roasted Corn Soufflé
Spinach, Pistachio and Strawberry Salad
Salade Niçoise
Sangria

I am the salade Niçoise. I will let you know as more dishes are added. I think the series of events that made up the season, beginning with try-outs, including matches and emails, and concluding with us assembling this food, bringing it to our captain's house, eating it, and taking the leftovers home, is a work of art of some sort. I am not making little of this or joking about this. And I am not this kind of an artist.