This weekend we bought a rather large above-ground pool and set it up directly beneath the basketball hoop on the back patio. Which isn’t a problem for me or Jon because a basketball hoop is as useful to us as a third nipple. It does, however, sort of handicap our ability to host my family for meals or holidays because the only reason any of them ever want to come over is that basketball hoop, and now when they visit they may be forced to talk to us. And we don’t have a lot in common with my family, except maybe none of us are covered in scales? We all breathe air? Our cells divide by mitosis?

The pool was mostly GEORGE!’s idea, although I had been thinking about getting one for the last few weeks. We just cannot get the temperature right in this house, and that is entirely Jon’s fault as his body is made from the paper-thin teardrops of baby doves, and if you happen to blink too closely to his skin he might die from the resulting drop in temperature. It cannot be too hot for Jon, and that is unfortunate because it is always too hot for both me and GEORGE!, and since we outnumber him we automatically win. Those are the rules.

But GEORGE! and I are not totally heartless bastards, and when Jon complains about how it is so cold that he has to wear pants! in his own house! we only make fun of him a little bit. You might be wondering where Leta is in all of this, what her temperature preference is, but it doesn’t matter. She refuses to wear pants in the house regardless of how cold she is, and I’m pretty sure that if she were in danger of losing both legs to frost bite she’d refuse any help. And someone so obviously insane can’t make an informed decision about temperature anyway.

So we got this cheap pool that I thought would help me cool off when Jon cannot resist making the temperature inside the house hotter than outside the house, and he and GEORGE! spent all day Sunday setting it up. And then as they started to fill it with water Jon noticed at least three separate leaks, in a brand new pool, which okay, we got what we paid for, and what we paid for was a petrified turd that has been carved out so that you can fill it with water.

Plus, I guess I’ve never really noticed because I haven’t done a lot of swimming in Utah, but water here does not heat up in the sunshine, and the water in that pool is so cold that when Jon got in the water yesterday morning to patch the holes he said his testicles escaped up through his groin and hid inside his lungs.

And let’s just say that he is not the exaggerator in this relationship.

And I know that the whole point was to have cold water with which to cool myself, but this type of cold is just ridiculous, and I cannot even bring myself to hold my foot in that water for more than a few seconds. Jon is thinking that I now have a tiny understanding of what it feels like to be him, to live in the freezer that is our house, but I think the real reason I understand what it feels like to be him is because I have a pussy, and he is one.