If you have any rental suggestions for me, let me know. They can't be totally depressing -- I don't need "A Thousand Acres" or anything like that -- but if there's a scene where two siblings are wrapped in blankets on the front porch drinking coffee at sunrise and musing about why they let a misunderstanding about who was supposed to leave the tip keep them from talking for the last four years, I'd like to see it.

Speaking of being wrapped in blankets on the front porch drinking coffee, I'd like to live my life in a catalog. People in L.L. Bean and Land's End and Eddie Bauer are always having such a good time, and they usually look pretty good, too. I think most people would like to live a catalog life, which is why they spend $125 that they don't have to buy clothes (and perhaps even, in a moment of insanity, a hat, for God's sake), even though they know that wearing the clothes and the hat will not make them look anything like the people in the catalog and will probably not even make them feel like the people in the catalog, but they never give up hope.

I had a really nice weekend, full of picnicking and tennis. I foolishly signed up to help out at a school-wide picnic on Saturday, not realizing that it would be the same day as the men's semi-finals and women's final at the U.S. Open. But it turned out that the professor hosting the picnic loved tennis too, so she had it playing on a couple of television sets. I got to see bits and pieces of the semi-finals and left in time to make it home to watch the end of the women's.

Yesterday morning I went to church and breakfast with Katherine, her husband Mark, and our friend Jan. Then I headed to my parents' for dinner and the men's final (how could anyone ever doubt my darling Andre? He just wanted to give those people their money's worth.) Of course, I had to shop along the way. I went to Bath and Body Works for a new sponge (the ones you get at the drugstore just don't measure up) and ended up getting some Sagittarius-scented lotion (which I just happen to love, which is cool since I am, obviously, a Sagittarian).

Church was really good yesterday. Father Mark's sermon was about forgiveness (and perhaps there was something special about yesterday, because my mother went to a Methodist service and Lynne went to a Catholic service and it seems everyone was talking about forgiveness). Anyway, he told a story about "Dead Man Walking," about the father of the boy that that guy killed. When he went to identify the body of his son, he prayed the Lord's Prayer, and when he got to the part about forgiving our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, he paused, and decided right there to forgive whoever had done this. Just like that, he let go and let God, as the saying goes.

I think forgiveness is a lost value today, on both sides of the transaction. Asking to be forgiven for a wrong we've done is seen as weak, and we resist it with everything we are. Likewise, forgiving someone who's wronged us is also considered weak, as though by forgiving, we are somehow retroactively permitting someone to treat us badly. So we refuse to forgive, and the party seeking our forgiveness becomes defiant, and everybody lives their lives a little worse off than otherwise necessary.

And if we are not asked for our forgiveness, what then? The Matt Hales and John Kings of the world, the ones who are defiant from the beginning, the ones who don't believe they've wronged us? We don't have to forgive them, right?

Well, that boy's father forgave the man who killed his son without knowing who he was or whether he was sorry. Think about the alternative. Is that better? Is it better to hold on to the anger and hatred just because Matt Hale isn't sorry that his follower killed all those people, and John King isn't sorry he dragged a man to his death behind his truck?

I say all this now like I know what I'm talking about, and I don't. No one has killed my child or my mother or anyone in my family, and no one hates me based solely on the fact that they think I'm the wrong color or I sleep with the wrong people or I worship the wrong God. I don't know what that's like, and I suppose that unless I do, I can't really know what it means to forgive unconditionally. I still have my own lessons to learn.

Holy cow, nothing like a little early-morning introspection to get the week started off with a bang. Hold on while I shake that off.

Whew, much better. Hope everyone had a good weekend, and I'm going to pick a nice cheery background color for tomorrow, when I will dish about the Emmy's for a while.