June, June, June, June!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: June is busting out all over! My mother always sang that song from the musical Carousel on this day, and as a June baby, I always felt it was meant for me. (When the puberty fairy arrived with her bike pump, it took on a new meaning, sigh.)

 

 June always feels like a month of infinite possibilities and celebrations. Weddings, graduations, school letting out, the start of summer vacation, everything in the garden bursting to life. (So much life, it becomes hard to keep up with the mowing!) 

 

I know if you’re living in the southwest, like Jenn and Debs, it’s a bit different weather-wise. My high on Monday is predicted to be 64°/18°    and Jenn’s is 103°/ 39° !!!!!! But the rhythms of the season remain the same no matter where you live.

 

The baseball season is in full swing. Your friends are talking about where they’re going this summer (my prediction is a revival of the staycation, as the price of gas reaches eleventy hundred per gallon.) The local grocery store has a towering display of everything you need for a cookout, and you buy hot dog and hamburger bund for the first time in nine months. (Don’t forget to toss the two buns you put in the freezer last October, optimistically thinking you would use them at some point.) It’s your last chance to find bathing suits in the stores, so Debs, get moving!

 

Since my June includes two weeks with Youngest and the Very Tall Dutchman (whom I will now abbreviate VOC, and the commenter who tells my why gets a virtual guilder,) and a concurrent visit from The Sailor, it’s kicking off in grand style. We’re going to a Sea Dogs game, taking VOC hiking in a wilderness area, and, if the weather cooperates, swimming in Celia’s lake. (The lake does not actually belong to Celia.)  VOC also wants to see a super Walmart, but I may not tag along for that glorious excursion. Toward the end of the month, it’s a five-day oceanside writing retreat. Do I plan to go down to the boardwalk and buy 5,000 calories of greasy, salty beach fries? Yes. Yes, I do.

 

How about you, Reds? What does June mean to you, and what are your plans for the month?

 

HALLIE EPHRON: Spring makes me think of that song too… With special meaning because my dad was the director of the movie Carousel and he used to talk about the changeable Maine spring weather… They began filming that number dancing on a pier in Bar Harbor and had to relocate to the sound stage in Los Angeles to finish the scene because of the weather. If you know it’s coming, you can see the difference. So yeah, changeable.

 

JULIA: Every once in a while we have a discussion and I'm suddenly reminded our Hallie's family were genuine Hollywood royalty! 

 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: And now I am singing!  June used to mean freedom, and that whole long long long summer where we could do  anything we wanted. Including slathering on iodine mixed into baby oil and sitting out in the sun with aluminum foil to get tan. I do NOT miss that! And still have the  freckles to show for it.

 

Now it means three months until the book is due, and the whole month will fly by. It’s all good, I’m delighted, but also here in Boston is it FREEZING so it does not feel like summer yet.

 

I have actively scaled back on events this June–although I am interviewing some fabulous authors in person, and speaking at a big Girl Scout convention, adorably–but have to keep my days and nights open  since I am gearing up for a fall book launch, and also, see above, my book is due. So June is a writing month. And you will find me at the computer for most of the time!

 

JENN McKINLAY: June is not the happy occasion in Arizona that it is elsewhere. We’re checking the AC unit and making sure the pool is ready for the dogs to shift from walking to swimming (with me, of course). It’s more of a girding the loins until September month for us.

 

 

That being said, I’ll be in Colchester, CT on June 12th at 6 PM at the Cragin Memorial Library to give a talk and a signing. Click HERE for details. After time with the fam, I’ll be flying down to Myrtle Beach, SC to visit my college bestie and get in some beach time! Woo hoo!

 

RHYS BOWEN:  I’m glad it’s June because May was not an easy month for me, as you can imagine. Planning a funeral, wading through endless paperwork, seeing bank, attorney etc etc. So I’m hopefully moving on to a time when I can enjoy summer. At this moment it’s cool and cloudy but it should warm up and then pool time. 

 

My family has been so wonderful and supportive that I’ve hardly been alone, and this month I have good things to look forward to: granddaughter graduates from Santa Clara University and I’m hosting a big party here. Clare and Tim will be here for a couple of weeks and we’ll do fun things and then at the end of the month I’m flying to Canada with Dominic and Meredith. We’ve an AirBandB on Vancouver Island, on a secluded beach and then a few days in Victoria. They have been several times before and know the best bakeries, oyster farms, blueberry farms etc. So that is definitely something to look forward to.

 

DEBORAH CROMBIE: It is truly summer here. We’re easing into the low nineties, but we’ve had a lot of rain and the garden is glorious. I’ll be doing lots of grilling and hopefully a bit of lying in the hammock with a book, before it gets too hot to stick a nose outside. Other than that, I suspect it will be edits, edits, edits, and I’m looking forward to that.

 

Oh, and some birthday celebrating, too. Kayti and I are going to see Matt Haig (on tour for his new book, THE MIDNIGHT TRAIN) at the Dallas Museum of Art on Friday, with dinner at one of my fave restaurants beforehand. And I’m hoping that Rick will take me out for a movie date to see THE TUNER, as I’m a huge Leo Woodall fan. (And Hoffman fan, of course!)

 

LUCY BURDETTE: I’ll be in the writing cave with Hank–hoping to finish the Paris book this month! John is going on a Grand Canyon adventure for 9 days so it will be quiet here, no need to cook big meals either. So I don’t have a good excuse not to buckle down. I’ll also be playing golf, and some pickleball, and taking another quick trip into New York to hear Sting’s opera with two of my good pals. 

 

JULIA: How about you, dear readers? What's on your calendar for June? 

In A Pickle over the Game

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I am about to write about something about which I know nothing.

Which is exactly the point. And here I go.

Pickleball.

If you showed me three rackets, and asked: which of these is the pickleball racket? I might be able to choose, but only by process of elimination.

Same with pickleball balls. I have no idea what they look like. (Well, now I've seen the photos. Okay, wiffleballs.)

Reds and readers, many of my friends are enthralled with pickleball. Enthralled! Two, at least, cannot stop talking about it. How much fun it is, how competitive, or not competitive, and how easy it is, and how congenial, and all the cute, cute clothes you must have.

In fact, Pickleball is such a phenomenon that shopping malls are now being converted into Pickleball courts.

Neighbors are turning against neighbors, because the Pickleball players are swarming over the tennis courts.

I don’t know about this, Reds and Readers. I just don’t know. I know I am so behind the curve on this. 

I am tennis impaired, you all are aware of that, since you’ve known near-sighted contact-lens-losing lack-of depth-perception me for so long, but perhaps the rest of you could add more light to this.

I hesitate to say I am in a pickle about it, but I am. Looking up now why it’s called pickleball.

Okay, here’s the scoop.

One website says that some people believe the game was named after the inventor's family dog Pickles. But apparently the truth is that the inventor’s wife named it after the pickle boats in crew. The pickle boat would be the least competitive one in the race, with a crew that was thrown together at random.

Oh, now I get it. Sure.

So. I just served the question. Who wants to hit it back? (But don’t ask me to keep score.)

JENN McKINLAY: Hub and I have tried pickleball and it is fun but there seems to be a lot of rules. We play in a rec volleyball league every week (which I’ve mentioned before) and I fear we are just volleyballers at heart. Falling in sand is just a softer landing for my fifty-something bones. Also, I have discovered a certain oppositional defiance about myself. I generally dislike things that “everyone” else likes or that I’m told I “must love”. It makes me think of Groucho Marx’s quote “I do not care to belong to a club that accepts members like me” (paraphrasing). LOL.

I did recently read a romcom entitled Pickleballers by Ilana Long and it was an fun read and definitely explained the game. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in learning more while enjoying a romcom at the same time!

RHYS BOWEN: I’ve tried pickleball and it’s fun, although noisy in an indoor court as the ball is hard plastic, bat is solid. I know various neighborhoods have complained about the loud thwack, clunk noise of the courts.

I went to a beginners class at my gym. I started hitting with the instructor. He said “you’ve played this before “

“ I really haven’t” I replied. Just played tennis and ping pong my whole life. So it’s really easy to pick up. I watch professional games on TV and think I could do that!

The problem is that it’s so popular the courts are always full.

LUCY BURDETTE: I took a set of pickleball lessons last fall. Everyone else was probably 30 years younger than me. Still, I picked it up pretty well and enjoyed playing. There are a lot of rules, and Rhys is right, it’s too popular for its own good. In CT the former Walmart has been converted to a pickleball center. I may go over and check it out… But ps I did not wear special clothes:)

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I claim total pickleball ignorance! I’ve never been able to hit a moving object. No tennis, and playing baseball with cousins as a kid I got hit full-on in the eye with a hardball. (I couldn’t even hit stationary objects, like a golf ball on a tee…sigh.) But I love the pickle boat explanation, and pickleball is all the rage here, too. The defunct Bed, Bath and Beyond by my Trader Joe’s is being converted to a pickleball court as we speak!

And now I have to look up pickleball clothes. I had no idea.

HALLIE EPHRON: I claim complete AND TOTAL pickleball ignorance. Though I’ve read about malls being converted (along with climbing walls which I also prefer to remain ignorant of) for playing it and neighbors up in arms because of the noise. I’m a lousy tennis player and MEH at ping pong, so I think I have to pass even though my eyesight is aces.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I'm also in the non-pickleball side of the court. 1) My knees snap, crackle and pop more than a bowl of Rice Krispies, 2) my peculiar blend of one eye nearsighted, one eye farsighted gives me terrible depth perception, as the many, many scratches on my front bumper can attest and 3) as far as I can tell, it hasn't reached my town yet, and if I'm going to drive a half hour to enjoy a sport and socialize, the "sport" is going to be Scrabble.

I'm not sure the appeal isn't just from the fact the word "pickleball" is fun to say. Pickleball, pickleball, pickleball.

HANK: So how about you, Reds and Readers? can you enlighten us, guide us, explain it all to us?