We’re still out here in the sticks and still enjoying summer, even if it is 100 degrees in the shade. Rapunzel drug out the slip-and-slide I bought for her about a thousand years ago. That’s the great thing about my mom’s messy house, you can find anything. She never throws anything out. The slip-and-slide only had one gigantic tear down the side but it still works splendidly.

She’ll never admit it but Rapunzel has a crush on a neighborhood boy down the street. He’s actually a really nice kid but she’s only nine! So it’s kind of cute/funny when she constantly is asking if he can come over for this reason or that. She tries to play it off as if she really doesn’t care but you can tell.

She kinda reminds me of myself when I was in college (I was a late bloomer) and I had this crush on my best friend’s boyfriend’s friend who was sort of interested in me but not really. The one who I pined after for way longer than I ever should ever admit. I still feel sorry for my old self who used to sit by the phone and make up all kinds of elaborate reasons why he didn’t call. At one point I actually convinced myself he couldn’t call me because he was dying in the hospital. I was so pathetic. The part that reminds me of Rapunzel was how I would come up with all kinds of creative ways to work this boy into any conversation I had with my friend hoping she’d talk to her boyfriend and get some clue as to why he was blowing me off. Of course it never worked out between us and last I heard he was dating a girl with the same name as me.

Anyway, I felt sorry for Rapunzel (and also she was driving me bananas with her constant “Auntieeeeee I’m bored. Can I carry Baby Bug around all over the place and drop her on her soft cantaloupe head?”) so I told her she should invite the neighborhood boy over to play on the slip-and-slide.

You should have seen the glee in her eyes. She tore out of my Mom’s yard so fast I had to yell after her to put her flip flops on before she burned her feet off on the hot asphalt road. The boy seems to like her too because next thing I knew he and his brother and three friends came over to play in the slip and slide.

It was a big muddy splashy mess. They had so much fun. I should have taken a picture. My mom’s yard is toast but you can’t put a price on fun like this. I know she’ll always remember these summers just like I remember my summers from that age.

It all reminded me of being a kid and how fun it was to wear a swimsuit all day long and eat peaches right off the tree, fuzz and all.