It is a summer early morning. I tiptoe out of the house. The sun has just rise past the horizon, still tinted\u00a0with a little orange hue. The flowers and grass are\u00a0still wet with\u00a0the morning dew. Birds, worms even the humans are still\u00a0dormant. The streets are vacant. Even the famous Parking Lot of America, the\u00a0Long Island Expressway (the part of\u00a0Interstate\u00a0highway\u00a0495 from East River to Riverhead is called LIE.)\u00a0is empty. During the\u00a0 12 minutes commute, my heart is longing, my body is inching, my eyes are so looking forward to the blue courts.\u00a0After turning off the igniter in the park’s parking lot, I gather up my gears, the bag, water, balls and towel.\u00a0I always feel the little path from the parking lot\u00a0to the courts are too long, because I just wanted to hop onto it as soon as I parked my car.<\/p>\n
The weekend morning tennis begins.<\/p>\n
First come the greeting from my buddies. Yes, someone is always arriving\u00a0there earlier than I do. I lace up my sneakers, apply suntan lotion\u00a0and\u00a0do a\u00a0few passable stretches (knowing well that a good stretches help provide injury .. )\u00a0I am ready to work.<\/p>\n
The first 10 to 20 minutes is\u00a0always for warm\u00a0up. The courts are usually filled. But it is still very quiet. The park goers are still\u00a0resting at home. All we have are\u00a0few tennis bums, blue courts and white\u00a0clouds under the blue skies.<\/p>\n
Sweats soon engulf me, drenching me and washing off my suntan lotion.\u00a0The sun climbs higher and begins to heat this part of the earth up\u00a0like a steam pot. A few seconds under the stingy shade feels so good but after retrieving the ball, I immediately return to the\u00a0burning\u00a0 court.\u00a0Because I love tennis, love to play it no matter what.<\/p>\n
Two or three\u00a0hours and few sets later, all the water\u00a0bottles are emptied. The scorching sun seems could fry an egg on my back. My\u00a0body begins to fall apart and my legs are no longer listen to me (mine). But I feel good, I feel great, I feel I could take on the world.<\/p>\n
When I get back home, after a quick shower, it is just the right time to see my children begin to open their eyes, doing a few lazy stretches in bed.<\/p>\n
“Good morning Mom!”<\/p>\n
A big hug and round of kisses. My weekend has just officially start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is a summer early morning. I tiptoe out of the house. The sun has just rise past the horizon, still tinted\u00a0with a little orange hue. The flowers and grass are\u00a0still wet with\u00a0the morning dew. Birds, worms even the humans are still\u00a0dormant. The streets are vacant. Even the famous Parking Lot of America, the\u00a0Long Island […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tennis-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39791\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}