News Flash

I am WHITE. Not just caucasian, or fair-skinned, or a little bit honky. Full on Northern European, never meant to see the light of day white.

One would think I would be aware of this. And most of the time, I am. I don't inflict my bare midsection on anyone but my spouse, lest someone be blinded. I own many lightweight long-sleeve shirts for days when I would like to go sleeveless but I will be outdoors for more than, say, 10 minutes. I own no fewer than 6 different kinds of sunscreen.

And yet, every spring, my incurable whiteness escapes me in the form of small mistakes in the application of SPF 1,000,000 and UV-blocking clothing. There are chinks in my armor, if you will. And that, dear readers, leads only to misery and stripey red patterns across the neglected body part. Let's survey the damage:

There is a 1-inch stripe across each thigh where my shorts rode up after sunscreen application. I have matching crescent-moons on my shoulder blades and my chest where my jersey pulled down. This reminds me that I usually put on sunscreen before putting on my clothes, and again after. Yes, I have to slather up nekkid, plus put on more once I get where I'm going.

I also think I burned my scalp. This is interesting because I was wearing a helmet for most of my time outside today.

My face, there's nothing more to do. I'm not interested in adopting the (probably very smart from a skincare perspective) face-covering customs of desert-dwelling women in the Middle-East and North Africa. So it's just sort of pink all summer long.

The rest of me (or at least the parts that were exposed to the sun) is a pretty shade of pink, which hopefully will fade soon lest my father see it and give me a lecture on how some kid in Australia sunburned his whole face off.

I guess I should stop whining, though. I rode my bike 20 miles today, including one big-ass hill, and the worst injury I have is stripey legs. :)