I'm Italy Mone and this is The Slowdown.

I love spring and I love summer.

And as a child, I'd prefer long hot days in the valley over the crisp cool days of the fall.

My husband finds this confusing.

But all I want is sprinklers and popsicles and napping all day long.

I want that feeling when school is finally out and graduation is over and suddenly there

are full, free days ahead of you.

I loved that feeling.

I loved the idea of nothing.

I still love it.

What am I doing today, you ask?

Oh, nothing.

Nothing at all.

Still, there were days when I was growing up where summer felt endless.

And I'd languish on the couch whining about not having any plans that my best friend

Sarah was out of town on a family trip, no one to beg to come to the local pool with

me.

I'd had this fear of just how long summer and this hot expanse of nothing might last.

My brother and I would lie on the floor and watch movies or play Frisbee on the lawn

or turn the sprinklers on and run through them until we were too sunburned to move.

And then came the summer of my 16th year when my boyfriend moved away to Germany with

his family and it felt like all of summer would be ruined forever.

...