sunny.

[dragonlady7]

I'd say Spring has Sprung.

I got me a tiny bit of a tan yesterday. I'm excited. I always mean to do this, every year-- start out early in spring and spend a little bit of time outside every day to gradually build up at least a reasonable resistance to the sun, and every year I don't manage to do it. This isn't tanning-- I don't particularly want to be darker-- but trying to ease myself out of the pastywhite shock that is me. Because what inevitably happens is that one day during the Not Cold season, I will either forget myself or be stranded somewhere, exposed to the sun, without sunblock or adequate clothing, and then I become my very own Lobsterfest and it is bad and painful and sucks and increases my risk of skin cancer by like fifteen percent every time. (Sunburns that blister are like a huge risk thing. Little tans where you get some freckles? Not so much.)
My reasoning is that if I just get a little bit sun-kissed the inevitable I Am An Idiot annual sunburn won't be quite as bad. So I'm doing gardening, and am taking carefully-timed 20-minute naps in the hammock, and am wearing lotion with a very mild sunblock in it, etc. Except that I have no attention span and can't form a routine to save myself, so it's only being pursued on a when-I-remember basis.

So yesterday was a success from that standpoint, as I now have pale-golden forearms. It's a start. YES, I have been badly sunburnt on my forearms before, as if the damn things had never seen the sun. It was ridiculous.

Y'all who are sniggering at me, you have not seen the full extent of my PastyWhiteness. I am an exceedingly pale person. I don't even think I am capable of tanning. It fades to freckles in a matter of days. And I can get a burn bad enough to peel in about an hour. Through a window. You'd think I'm kidding, only I'm not, because if I were kidding, it would be funny.

I sort of miss the British Isles because there, the sun wasn't strong enough to hurt me, and it was oddly empowering. California? Was beautiful but OMG the sun fried me in TWENTY MINUTES and I hurt for days. I am too frightened to ever want to go back there. All that blue sky and the sun is the size of a goddamn Volkswagen RIGHT OVER YOUR HEAD and there's nowhere to go to escape because everyone else there thinks that's a GOOD thing. Scary.


So yes, I have my own host of issues about the sunshine. Why else would I live where I do? But I love springtime, and really, I do love summer, but I love summer in leafy green Upstate New York where it'll rain for days on end and there are trees there to save you from the big scary fiery ball in the sky. I need my summer in manageable doses.

So, chance of thunderstorms. (I wub thunderstorms. Did I mention.)

I finished turning over the last bit of dirt for the garden. Now we can plant cucumbers, beans, and the pepper plants we're going to buy from a nursery, perhaps today. The frost-free date is the 17th; the forecast through the 14th at least shows no temperature below 50, so I'm gambling (with Aunt Ruta's support) that spring's come early and we won't have a frost again. (A frost that late is rare, it's just that the 17th is the date after which there has never been a frost, not even the year it snowed in August. And I've lived through some wretched WNY Mays, including my snowy graduation-- but the air was warmer than freezing. Just.)

I have to open All-Stars this morning, which sucks, and if I get a ride from Dave I'll get there at 9 (I have to be there at 9:30) but if I took the bus it'd be even worse. So. Am charging up the Newton. I took it outside with me yesterday on my quest for Moderate Sun Exposure, and I thought at the time that I wished I could get a picture of myself. I was sprawled in the hammock, feet bare, legs bare, Newton on my stomach, my hair spread out, and wearing one of Dad's old Army hats (the camoflage sort-of-baseball-caps they got rid of when they went to the berets which don't keep the sun out of your eyes, so that's totally fucking pointless) way down over my eyes to protect my sun-damaged-enough-thanks face. (I need a hat. That's the only brimmed hat I own. I need me a cowboy hat or something. I don't know where to find one, though.)

In the meantime I have written probably more about Egalmoth than anyone should, but it was fun, and if I get the plotbunny out of my head I can go back to something more interesting and who knows, learn something about narrators in the process. I am such a shameless justificator.

Comments

[hathy-col.livejournal.com]

I burn horribly in the English sun. It absolutely sucks to be blonde/red-headed and naturally as white as a ghost. I have come to the conclusion that factor 30 suncream is the BESTEST THING EVER.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

But I hate what it does to my skin. i.e. zits. Zits at 25 are just beyond the normal ick and are right into Narsty.

I didn't know it was possible to burn in the British sun!! Well. I mean. I suppose one could. But it would involve effort. I mean, how to find a whole day of it??

I just remember coming home to New York after 10 months in Scotland, it being mid-July, and having my family laugh at me because every time I left the house I would bring a sweatshirt, out of habit, it never being warm enough in St. Andrews to forego the overshirt entirely. (You might not have to wear it, but the sun will go behind a cloud and you'll wish you had it if you don't.)

My Norwegian cousins burn themselves horribly every visit. In Norway it's possible to get burnt, but you have to pretty much be out there with your shirt off at dawn, and not go inside until sundown, and then maybe you'll be burnt. (It helps that the day is 20 hours long by that point.) So they get off the plane, whip off their shirts, and in about 45 minutes have sun poisoning. It's sort of a ritual by now.

[hathy-col.livejournal.com]

Oh god, yes. We had the warmest summer EVER two years ago when I was staying in Switzerland. Every day the temperature was about 40 degrees C (seriously) and I still hauled a jumper around every day. That's cultural training at its best.

How do you burn in England? Well, have one of the warmest summers - that helps. That's probably the last time I got really badly burnt, but I've learnt my lesson from then and I slap on the suncream as a matter of course. I can burn in the Easter, though - just the mention of sun makes me go all pink and warm. In the bad way. I think this summer will be bad for me again, though. I hate burning.

[mother2012.livejournal.com]

"So yes, I have my own host of issues about the sunshine. Why else would I live where I do? But I love springtime, and really, I do love summer, but I love summer in leafy green Upstate New York where it'll rain for days on end and there are trees there to save you from the big scary fiery ball in the sky. I need my summer in manageable doses."

That's one of my main reasons for staying here. Our summers are bad enough - don't need California or Florida, thanks. Then there's the fact that we don't have earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis ...


"I burn horribly in the English sun. It absolutely sucks to be blonde/red-headed and naturally as white as a ghost. I have come to the conclusion that factor 30 suncream is the BESTEST THING EVER."

45 is even BETTER!

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

This winter during the worst of the weather, Dave and I kept saying to one another, "No matter how bad this gets this is better than an earthquake!"
Even the awful killer blizzards with ice storms and power outages are endurable: when they're done, your house is still there.

So yes. Give me a blizzard any day over a hurricane or tsunami or earthquake.

[tehta.livejournal.com]

I always, always were lotion with sun protection in it. Even in winter. It's the only skincare thing I really do, and I attribute my unwizened appearance to it.

But at the same time I am lucky--generations of Polish peasants and (probably) Mongol invasions have left me with tan-friendly skin, so I rarely get burnt.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

I used to always wear sunscreen lotion. It's a habit I plan to get back into. I don't need the sun's help on my face, that's for darn sure. It's the worst culprit with the freckling and all, and then I look silly.
But the rest of me needs some innate sun-resistance, because there will always come a time when I will forget the lotion and be outside, and I'd rather do what I can while the sun's still relatively weak. (That whole bike ride with Dave didn't sunburn me and I was a total twit and didn't bring so much as a hat, so I can only credit the spring sun with gentleness.)

> generations

I am sorely disappointed in my own genealogy. I thought, when I looked through that notebook of Grandma's, there'd be something interesting in there. I mean, historical stuff, sure; and heroes from all the early Indian wars, the Rev war, the Civil war, what-have-you, but even the ones with really interesting names were all white!! Bah. (I had hopes for Bartolomeo Denison: apparently his father had been to Brazil and brought back the name, but just the name, not a wife.) Even the famous Indian translator, Thos. Stanton, who travelled all down the East Coast during the 1640s and learned all their languages, married himself an Englishwoman.
Fie! Fie! Fie on my boring people with no sun-resistance!!

I just lay outside for precisely half an hour and the backs of my knees are blushing. How ridiculous.