The pool isn't the only inflated thing on that box.

As I may have mentioned before, we have no yard. We have lots of mulch and tons of weedy stuff and a downright precipitous rock cliff in the back, but zip for grass. I doubt this would bother me in the least except for Aura, who is a child and is having a childhood and therefore needs Outdoor Childhood Memories. Given this, I am easily suckered into buying any outside toy that can be used on non-grassy surfaces. We have a closetful of bubble toys, a virtual hamper of bouncy balls, the world’s most annoying ring-toss kit…the list goes on. But I still feel guilty.

I tell you this because all that guilt is my excuse for purchasing the following:

Yet I am still scrambling for an excuse to explain why the woman on the pool box infuriates me so. I suspect it might have something to do with the fact that I find myself reluctantly subsisting almost entirely on cucumbers and Fiber One bars (Oats ‘n’ Chocolate!). Whatever the impetus, this Mother Who Swims with Her Kids in a Silver Lamé Bikini is really annoying the hell out of me.

A closer look.

As I spent 20 sweaty minutes pumping up the pool today, I kept casting looks over my shoulder, unable to stop glaring at the Mother Who Swims with Her Kids in a Silver Lamé Bikini’s smarmy grin. Or, for that matter, the Mother Who Swims with Her Kids in a Silver Lamé Bikini’s abs, which I am fairly certain are approximately 273% more defined than my own. Also, those fake kids of hers might very well be better behaved than mine. Though I doubt that last one, since the boy looks a bit like a Kennedy and, well, we all know how THAT goes.

Twenty minutes is a long time to glare at one hussy, so I eventually let my gaze wander over the rest of the box. And I started to feel a little better.

The above? That’s information about the pool. In Finnish. Maybe’s it me, but trying to sell an inflatable pool to consumers in Finland seems a little…optimistic. As I pumped and then pumped some more, it occurred to me that selling pools in Finland is kind of like selling snowman-building kits in Ecuador. “Snowmen in Ecuador!” I chuckled to myself, enlightened by my own genius. I tell you, I may not have abs of steel, but I am positively AWASH in marketing savvy.

Then there was this:

Maybe this is also targeted to Finns. Perhaps the Splash and Play! marketing folks believe the Finnish people to be not only a hearty people, eager to thumb their noses at a naturally frosty climate, but also a people equipped with ginormous mouths. A race of humans who could actually manage the attempted swallowing of a six-foot-long piece of plastic, which is the only possible way the Splash and Play! pool could be a choking hazard.

And that right there really put it into perspective for me. I may not have a sculpted stomach, and my closet may indeed be woefully empty of  lamé bikinis. But at least no one has ever believed me capable of trying to swallow a pool. In my book, this counts for a lot.

This one, though, I’ll have to watch out for:

If you could see what she does to Hershey’s Kisses…well. Let’s just say you’d be worried, too.