We have, in our yard, one of those big inflatable pools. It’s hideous. It sits there, a big, lumpen water-patty, a bright blue squatting round thing, looking like the effluent of a giant Michelin Man after too many blueberries. I was not supportive of the idea of installing it, but my husband had dragged it home after it was used in the production of a commercial he worked on and insisted that we should put it to use. It’s free, he said. Why not?

Why not, indeed. Because it’s ugly, I said.

We’ll want to cool off in the summer. We can just put it up right in the yard.

Can we put it up at the back of the yard? Where no one can see it? Can we hide it?

We tried to hide it, by putting it as far back in the yard as it would fit, but really: it’s a giant blue inflatable round mass of plastic. You can practically see it from space. There’s no hiding it. And once it was filled with water – about seventy trillion gallons of water – there was no turning back. There it was. There it still is.

The thing is, now that it’s, like, over a hundred degrees outside, that big blue mass of plastic doesn’t look so bad. It looks pretty good, in fact; so good, that if someone offered to remove it from our yard I’d throw my body in front of it and threaten to do violence to them or myself, heat permitting.

And then I’d fill the damn thing up with ice cubes and plunk myself on top and stay there until September. I might just do that, anyway.