Move Slowly and Eat Popsicles

It has been a hot summer.  The kind of summer where you pinch the steering wheel gingerly with two fingers and drive that way until the air conditioner cools it.  Most days we have towels drying off on the patio furniture from an afternoon of swimming.  At night the kids lay splayed on their beds, covers thrown off, fan swirling what little cool air it can into their room.

We keep our windows open at night, trying to get the bit of crisp air that comes through the mountains.  In years past it’s been enough, every once in a while needing to turn on the fan but usually the breeze sweeping through our room keeping us under covers.  This year the blankets stay mostly at the foot of the bed or tangled up between us so that we’re always pushing them off one and onto the other.

The heat keeps us indoors when we’re not planning a trip to the pool or when we don’t absolutely have to go out.  The kids have been making lots of pillow forts this summer and have discovered the joy of secret hiding places, taking lanterns and flashlights into their tiny nooks and whispering that mommy can’t see them.  Apparently mommy can’t hear them either.

It’s been that kind of summer, so hot and languid that we alternate between sitting inside playing clue on the living room floor to sitting sitting outside drawing chalk figures on the patio cement.  The kids keep saying lets not go anywhere today.  We are having fun doing simpler things.  We move slowly.  We eat popsicles.