The most fun I've ever had

Yesterday, when Aisling was at her two-hour piano lesson, Meelyn and I had some errands to run. We went to Office Depot and we went to Hobby Lobby and by the time we'd climbed into and out of the van a few times, we were sweltering.

"It's too hot," said Meelyn, lifting her very cute bangs off her forehead to allow a sullen puff of 90 degree air to momentarily provide the illusion of "coolness."

"I know," I sighed, taking in a sorrowful glimpse of the enormous, clownish frizz of hair on my head in the rearview mirror.

"Can we go to the pool? When Aisling's done with her lesson?"

We haven't been to the pool in three weeks or so. During June and July, we go about four times a week, staying for at least three hours every time. When August hits, we're all a bit sick of it. Plus, there are some fun things happening that we'd rather go to and there's volleyball practice, so the pool gets shoved onto the back burner. But yesterday, it sounded like heaven. Heaven.

So we went. The snack bar was closed for everything except soft drinks, chips, ice cream and candy, so we went and got a turkey sandwich from our favorite little deli shop downtown and carried them there, laying out our belongings and sitting down to eat in the sunshine. By the time I'd taken my second bite, I thought I was going to melt, just like the Wicked Witch of the West, only in my own sweat instead of a bucket of mop water.

An new idea suddenly came to me. "Girls," I said, struck by inspiration, "I'm going to take my book to the edge of the pool and read there."

Normally, you can't do this at the pool because there are just a lot of other people around. It would be impossible to stand poolside with a library book and have it remain unsplashed. But yesterday, all the public and private school kids were all sitting in hot classrooms longing for the water. We, the fancy-free homeschoolers, practically had the whole place to ourselves.

So I found a nice stretch of poolside to stand at and went in up to my neck with my book propped up in front of me. It was the perfect height to just be able to look straight ahead, no sun on the pages, no sun in my face.

I've done a LOT of reading in my life, but never any reading as pleasant as that was. It was blissful.

We stayed for just over three hours before I sighed and realized that we had to get home to take the dogs for their afternoon walk.

I hope we can find some time tomorrow to go back and do it again. Volleyball practice starts at 4:00, so maybe if we get to the pool right at 11:00, we can do it.