A day playing tennis is a GOOD day. You get to take out your frustrations by whacking the crap out of an innocent yellow ball. The exercise is great too, but it's the social element of the game that I like best.

As a working artist and a writer I spend most of my time alone - that is unless I'm teaching art and/or writing in order to be a working artist and writer. So that means a great deal of my days are spent having ONE face to face conversation with an actual human being before my husband gets home from work - and that conversation is usually with a checker at the grocery store or the person at the post office. Hence, I make a LOT of trips to the grocery store and to the post office.

And if I'm teaching, that means I can have hundreds of conversations a day, but since I'm usually teaching elementary school, that means I converse a lot about who fell down at recess, what disgusting thing someone's baby brother did with a booger, or television shows I've never even heard of. It's like visiting another planet sometimes - Planet Booger.

So, I treasure Tuesdays when I can get out on the court with my tennis teammates, whack some balls hopefully over the net, and have some real conversation. And today, as usual, I wasn't disappointed. At one point, my doubles partner Sue went wide to snag a forehand return, but whiffed it instead. She stopped, looked accusingly at her racket, shrugged her shoulders at me and said, "Sorry, I'm just discord-inated today."

I know what she meant. She meant to say, "I'm not coordinated today." But really, I thought her remark was pure genius.

When we're writing or working on a painting, sometimes we can get so concerned about what the final product's supposed to be we can lose sight of just getting into the groove that's found in the process of creating. We forget that we're actually supposed to be having, I don't know, fun.

Children know how to do this very well. How many times have you seen some little kid at the grocery store wearing a ballerina tutu, a cowboy hat, and a Batman cape? They don't care one bit whether it all matches. They're expressing themselves - they're embracing the heart and and soul of discord-ination.

Now I'm not saying you should go out on the town wearing plaid slacks and an Aloha shirt, but if that's your thing, then be my guest. But I am saying maybe you should try to shake things up a little. Throw a little creative discord into your life. That little edge of tension might be just the ticket to inject a little zip into your work. You never know what new ideas you'll be juggling.

Are there any books out there about baby brothers and boogers?

Maybe there should be.