Neighborhood Geographic

I am posting this from somewhere deep in the Amazon. My back yard is a jungle (except for the 4-foot strip of grass that my husband was able to cut this morning before the lawnmower died). The crickets are buzzing uncontrollably in the 100-degree heat, and the air is so thick with humidity I can barely breathe. Princess, our dog, was swinging from a vine earlier before the sun zapped her energy and she melted into a puddle under the tree. My children (Leila with a frizzed-out Tina Turner 'do, and Mia with a 'fro straight out of the Jackson 5) are sweaty savages running wild through the house in their undies. In the faint distance I can hear the ice cream truck lurking. It's playing its high-pitched mating call, patiently waiting to lure the innocent neighborhood children in so it can blind them with its colorful decals and strike by pumping them full of high fructose venom and then drive away, leaving the poor young ones to suffer their sugar attacks, running around blindly, foaming at the mouth, speaking in tongues and destroying everything in sight before they wind down into a comatose state and fall asleep. The jack-in-the-box music is getting louder! Must...protect...children...