Summertime?
Jennifer Flaten

I track the watery footprints from the backdoor to the refrigerator. At the fridge, I find the door hanging open spilling precious coldness into the kitchen.

As I shut the fridge door and consider installing a padlock or at the very least an alarm on the fridge, I look down and see small droplets of red mixing with the footprints.

The now bright pink trail leads towards the front door-do I even need to tell you that the door was hanging open. Huh, maybe the creature from the Black Lagoon stopped by for a cold one.

I pretend I don't see that line of ants marching along the red line.

Meanwhile I spy what at first glance appears to be an assortment of sand crusted toys, but on further inspection proves to be several of my favorite kitchen gadgets (the blender!) discarded.

I would scrub the sand off the "toys" but as I reach for the dish soap, I see that the bottle is empty. A line of blue runs from the counter to Barbie's hot tub. Barbie lounges in neck deep in foamy blue goo. Well, that's a new one.

As I head to the supply closet for another industrial size container of soap a cat dressed in diapers and a bonnet barrels past me for the safety of the basement.

Welcome to summer! Is it back to school time yet? It's not. Are you sure, because it feels like three months have passed-oh wait, I'm on Mom time, that's the problem. To the kids summer goes by in the blink of an eye, to a mom summer crawls by at the speed of an arthritic snail.

So far, we've went on a long (long, long can't say long enough) car trip, went on another car trip-I am considering never ever riding in a car again and we've even went to a parade.

Hey, we like parades; we replenish our candy supply by going to parades. I figure putting up with incredibly loud sirens and clowns is a small price to pay for three bulging sacks of candy.

This year the parade contained many fire trucks-what did you say something I can't hear you! Every town within fifty miles sent a fleet of fire trucks; one can only hope that no one's house burned down during the parade.

The parade also included only two real clowns, yeah, but there were still plenty of politicians handing out stuff. This year instead of just a football schedule printed alongside their smiling faces, they included a hunting schedule and a NASCAR schedule; hmmm, is this bi-partisanship?

Oh yeah, there was a plethora of motorized vehicles including farm tractors, four wheelers, a cement truck, hot rods, and motorcycles.

After watching sixteen tractors chug by I wasn't sure if I was at a parade or if I'd inadvertently wandered into a John Deere Dealership.

My confusion cleared up when the floats and I use that term loosely, started throwing candy.

Immediately hordes of children swarmed the hot asphalt, racing to scoop up more Tootsie Roll then the kid next to them, or in our case the old woman with the ice cream bucket who was literally taking candy from babies.

Trust me that moms don't like candy poachers.

In an interesting twist on parade swag, several floats were tossing out ice pops. Now everyone loves ice pops; not everyone loves trying to convince small children that they cannot possibly eat five ice pops at one time.

Although the logic is sound, it might prevent them from melting into a huge puddle the execution results in brain freeze.