Africa Hot Solstice

It's hot here. "Africa Hot" as Matthew Broderick said in Biloxi Blues.

I'm usually very stingy about the air conditioner. Only if someone has a note from their doctor saying that they can't sweat profusely do I turn it on. I LIKE having the windows open -- hearing the birdsong, calling to passing neighbors, feeling the light breezes...

Yeah, screw that. It's HOT. I've had the AC on since 6am, I'm not screwing around.

Babycakes started to get pissy and impatient by 10am... "Is there no world OUTSIDE where I can roll around and eat bugs?"

So I braved the heat and took her to our next door neighbors' yard -- as this is her new favorite place to HANG. Our neighbor T. is a landscaper, and in the course of his landscaping work, he comes across abandoned and unwanted plastic play structures.

You know what I'm talking about -- those plastic molded doohickeys with ladders and slides. I always looked down upon them as a decorating statement, but when his kids were little, T. accumulated FOUR of these plastic play structures and set them up in his front yard.

The structures are old and faded, mostly abandoned by T's kids, but they have become the new love of Babycakes' life. T's infinitely kind family, upon noticing Babycakes' interest in the structures, scrubbed them down and swept away the myriad spider webs. Although this makes the structures about 50% less fun, without accumulations of dirt, dessicated flies and big hoary webs, Babycakes likes 'em anyway.

She walks up the slide, then scooches back down. I show her the ladder -- over and over -- the LADDER, you climb up the LADDER, then you go down the slide! And she just gives me that sidelong "whatever" expression and heads right back up the slide.

She plays peekaboo in the big plastic holes of the "crow's nest" and gnaws on every ridge she can get her miniscule two teeth on. It is Babycakes Fantasyland over there -- and our three cats like to come over and hang out under their big tree. T's mother-in-law gives the cats treats and makes us all feel welcome while my child slowly, slowly dismantles her front lawn.

So since it's hot, and no one wants to go anywhere in the microwaved CAR, it is there we will find ourselves, probably throughout the summer, climbing on slides and begging treats from Grandma.

Happy Solstice!