Weekends and Happiness

I think we might actually get to play volleyball this weekend! I miss volleyball, we haven't had the chance to play in so very long... before USC JB and I used to go to the beach every weekend from May through September and play with friends. There is something so freeing about being able to play out in the sun every week.

Did I mention I'm allergic to the sun? I've been allergic to the sun since I was a kid (T$ - can your fella explain this?) but we didn't know what caused it until I started playing volleyball. Why? Because it only used to happen when I would hang out on the beach which - as a kid - means getting WET or if I played all day in the grass. So we thought maybe I was allergic to something in the water, or to grass.

The "allergy" has a very specific course of action. I'd reach whatever critical mass of sun exposure my skin needed to go to DEFCON 5. Then I'd ITCH NON-STOP FOR THREE DAYS AND THREE NIGHTS. This is annoying for the first 6 hours or so, but when you cannot SLEEP because you are itching for three days and three nights, it becomes more of a serious problem. I went to the emergency room twice as a kid because we couldn't figure it out and I'd freak out and scratchy my legs bloody (Oh, did I mention that it was only my legs that itched?) I was on useless pills for a while and had some useless creams. There was only one cream I ever encountered that worked. It was called Rhuli cream and they no longer make it, possibly because it turned your skin pasty pink-white. I was already pasty pink-white and therefore did not care, but even if I had been a lovely olive-skinned child, I would have welcomed the blessed pastiness of the Rhuli cream because it killed the pain. You weren't supposed to used this magical concoction more than 2 or 3 times a day. Yeah, I'd blast through a tube at a time. They make a mostly-useless Rhuli gel now.

But I have gotten smarter. When I went to the beach (with great trepidation, I might add) when JB and I first moved out here I thought "Well, I won't get wet, and there's no grass, so I should be okay." Hah. BUT, during the resulting three days and three nights of tortured sleeplessness, I had some time to think, and I figured out that the common denominator in all these various situations was... the sun.

Then, the following weekend (or maybe it was a few weeks later, letting enough time pass to let the gouges on my legs heal up a bit) I went back to the beach with the highest SPF sun block on the market and liberally applied it several times over our 4 hour stint on the beach.

And behold, I am free at long last of the itchies.