Best Plan For A Hot Muggy Sunday

When the kids were small these days would be spent totally outdoors; early mornings at the neighbourhood park playgrounds or swimming if public pools were open, (usually NOT) so the next best thing would be those plastic blow-up things, the eyesores of urban backyards everywhere but oh so lovely to ward off the heat. After the cool off it would be back to the park and if the day was truly the stuff of summer, an evening backyard meal or barbecue (only charcoal) at the de rigeur picnic table. Only after dinner would we give ourselves permission to reenter the cooled haven of our home having fulfilled our parenting resposibilities. Bathed children trotted willingly off to bed and adults collapsed in the cool too tired for any movement that required more energy than a channel change by remote control. The kids are now grown and gone. They are adults with no children of their own but still reluctant to spend any daytime hours on a hot day at home, so if you want to see them you too must be outside but thankfully not in the same way. Early morning at the local patisserie extends to walks along the main thoroughfare with coffee in hand but only on the shady side of the street. Then it's off to the oh so air-conditioned supermarket for a lengthy shop followed by a visit to the local mall equally as cool. Several hours later you are home, unloading your wares in the cooled stone dwelling where the A/C need not be at full tilt. Another coffee, (iced) feet up on the ottoman and a brilliant game of Scrabble. So fine a day that no one missed the plastic pool or barbecue!