No I didn't dye myself red, that is a lobster level sunburn.

The other day I sunburned myself. I was such a beautiful shade of red, I could have disguised myself as a lobster. For two days clothing was excruciatingly painful. Forget that, wiggling my nose was excruciatingly painful. Walking was a joy, stiff movements intended to allow as little contact as possible to clothes or other parts of the body. I wasn't burned enough to blister, but I think I was close.


I should know better than to create opportunities for burning, as a teenager I would sometimes burn on the 15 minute walk home from school. I don't know how I thought a couple hours sitting on the beach would be safe. I suppose I arrogantly assumed I would be OK since I had yet to burn this summer and we are on the beach every day. The last few days, I have had ample opportunity to realize I spent most of that time in the shade and late in the afternoon, so had yet to be exposed to direct sunlight: I was reminded every time I had to turn over in the middle of the night from pain on my front to pain on my back.


But the real cruelty came the evening after the burn. We went to see Harry Potter and, true to our impulsive reputation, decided to go to the hottest ticket of the summer the day after it opened and with enough time to get there 5 minutes after the movie was set to start. There were still tickets available, but we were bunched together in the front of the theater. Which meant I had a near five year old on my lap for most of the time.


So I sat through the extra long movie, with highly sunburned legs, wearing jeans, and letting a five year old (who is not exactly light) wiggle all over my lap. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch!! I expected my skin to be rubbed off by the time the movie ended. I would have been willing to scrape off my skin and replace it with frozen popsicles, if only I wasn't too wimpy to withstand the scraping part.


Anyway, the burn is finally easing up, and can let the aloe vera have a break. All that is left is to wait for my entire outer layer of skin to peal off my body and I will be back to normal. Unfortunately I can't just slide out of my old skin like a snake, it will be more of a flaky process (although if I could slide out, that would be awesome- can you imagine all the things I could do with a Charlotte shaped skin?).


I have definitely learned my lesson. I will be using my sunblock on our daily playtime on the beach, even though it is expensive and greasy and smelly. I will even put it on the kids, who all burned, but not as badly as their translucent skinned mother. Or maybe I will skip the sunblock and only enjoy the beach by the light of the moon: