Clean Tennis Balls

To celebrate Olga's clean bill of health, I washed her tennis ball collection.

I realize this is slightly insane, particularly in a world where many people don't have easy access to clean laundry.

But some of those balls were really filthy. She has a tendency to find them lying around in parks and on the heath, where they've been mouthed by countless other dogs, and somehow the cumulative grossness just became obvious to me yesterday morning.

I wish I'd taken a "before" shot, but I didn't. As you can see from the "after" shot above, running them through the washing machine worked really well! (I put it on the delicate synthetics cycle, which is the shortest wash cycle we have. And I guess tennis balls are pretty darn synthetic.)

I cleaned the rest of the house, too, top to bottom -- at least everything I could think of that needed cleaning. It's turning out to be a very rainy weekend, so opportunities for getting out and about are few. It seems like ages since I've taken a real photography walk, but I don't think it's happening this weekend!

In the afternoon I watched "Gone With the Wind," which I hadn't seen in ages. I've always loved that movie, even though so many aspects seem wrong now -- the romanticization (is that a word?) of slavery and Southern culture, Rhett's infantilizing treatment of Scarlett, the depiction of black characters as willing helpers rather than subjugated servants. It's still a great film, beautifully made, and it's amazing to think Olivia de Havilland is still alive! (She's 102.) She and the boy who played Beau are the only living cast members, from what I can tell.