The sun whose rays are all ablaze

I have a love/hate relationship with the sun. Love lying by the pool, hate sunburn. Love the dusting of freckles on my nose and cheeks, hate getting sweaty on the short trip from the door to the car. And while every summer I have trouble relinquishing the dream of becoming a bronzed goddess, unless I get so many freckles that they merge into a tan, it's never gonna happen. I have too little pigment in my skin for the real kind and too little patience and skill for the fake kind. Instead, I have to comfort myself with SPF 50 and photos of Nicole Kidman. Yeah, yeah, pale is beautiful. Skin cancer is not. I get it.

This morning I woke up still aching from moving all my stuff out of my apartment on Sunday. I figured it was a good idea to push through the soreness by going for a quick jog outside. I ran for a bit and then switched to walking. When I was almost home I started feeling dizzy and faint. I laughed it off, but ended up having to sit down on the nearest curb to keep myself from blacking out. I finally stumbled up the stairs to the apartment where I'm staying and collapsed on the couch with a bottle of Gatorade. When the nausea eventually subsided, I fell into a deep sleep and didn't wake up again until about 11:30.

Sun, 1. Little Ms. Bossy, 0.

In the late morning I showered and got ready to go out. I parted my wet hair on the left side like I always do, only to discover that my sunburned part (courtesy of the Art Car Parade) had moved to its next stage: peeling. Ummm...gross.

Mess with my exercise regimen? No problem, I can take it. But mess with my hair? Them's fightin' words.

I haven't devised an adequate payback method yet, but I do know one thing.

This means war.