monday 06.06.2000
just burning
i managed to get sunburned yesterday. i didn't even realize what was going on until almost 6 hours later when i looked in the mirror and no longer saw my nice perma-tan but rather a pinky red glow on the exposed portions of my upper body. i woke up this morning with shoulders stinging. the red glow has faded into the perma-tan, but the sting is still there. it is just a bit depressing.
when i was younger i NEVER burned, just got a nice toasty brown, occasionally with an interesting blondish streak in my hair (just one, naturally created by the sun). of course when i was younger i spent more time in the sun too. i lived across the street from a public pool at the time and was there almost everyday in the summer. when i wasn't there, i was running around in halter tops and shorts in the 3 block long park the pool was attached to.
now days i wouldn't be caught dead in shorts, much less a halter top.
i can't remember when the changes started, but one summer everything turned toasty brown as usual (no streak that year) except my nose. my nose became a rather bright red. i was astonished. i was even more startled when it peeled. i had NEVER experienced this before. i figured it was just a fluke and didn't think about it. at least not until the following year when my shoulders also burned. not as bad as my nose but enough to make me realize that i was in trouble.
still, other than my nose, it had never been that bad, so i figured i was ok. no serious harm done. until i got married to my first husband. our honeymoon was a sunburn disaster. our hotel was across the street from seaworld, so that's where we went our first day. sun + water reflecting sun + shorts + halter top = one BAD burn. he had to make an emergency run to the store for aloe vera and couldn't touch me for a day or two. and i was wonderfully red for at least two or three days. miserable was not the word.
at that point i began to finally be more cautious about the sun. not that i used sunscreen. as long as i didn't stay out too long i still turned a nice toasty brown without burning. not being an overly physical person anyway, i could manage to not go out for extended lengths of time in the sun. no more burning for several years. of course, as i am sure you can imagine, this lack of activity had other side effects, but that is a whole different story. no more burning, so i have been fairly content with that.
however, when you do not own a vehicle there are days when you have to spend time in the sun. for me, yesterday was one of those days. it was rent day and the ex was working during the hours that the rental office is open. no help there. so, i had to walk to the bank, from the bank to the post office, from the post office to a bus stop, from the bus drop off to the rental office, back to the bus stop and from that drop off home. it took four hours. four hours in the hottest part of the day in a state that is already hitting 100 degrees. the only shade i managed to enjoy was at one bus stop and when i walked through the local mall. i figure the burn is that fault of the local transportation system. on any given route there are maybe two covered bus stops to keep riders out of the sun and rain. i just didn't happen to be lucky enough to be at any but one of them.
now that this gradual move towards being burnable rather than tanable has finally caught up with me, i have only one question i would really like answered. whatever happened to that really cool streak i used to get?
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