I don’t know where you live, but it has been H-O-T (cue Nelly’s summertime classic) here this summer. To help us beat the summer heat, my brother (his sweet girlfriend) bought our son one of those inflatable pools. Because sleeping in doesn’t exist for me anymore, I got up at 6:30 one Sunday morning and assembled it (I’d woken up at about 5:30, but thought that was too early to break out the air compressor to get the whole thing blown up).

Once all was said and done, my husband went outside to play with the boy in the pool while I got lunch ready. It was sweet, and I got some good pictures. Of course, by the time I was done cooking, the little guy had exhausted himself so much that he was finally ready for a nap.

With all my Sunday prep work done and my boys (hubby and son) napping, I decided to enjoy the pool by myself. I took out half a bottle of wine we had left over from the night before (a blood orange rosé – didn’t love it, didn’t hate) and lay in the pool. I video chatted with a girlfriend, got some writing done, and finished the bottle of wine. After a while, I realized I should probably go in and get dinner started.

I walked into the house with a towel wrapped around my waist and the empty wine bottle in my hand. My husband asked the obvious question (apparently he’d been looking for me), but there was no…there was mild judgment. Listen, there is no escaping with my friends to the beach all day anymore. I gotta take my kicks where I can get ’em, and on this day, it just happened to be in my son’s inflatable pool in our backyard.