I am SO special....

We went to the Hawks baseball games today, and I managed to get sunburned. Yes, in November. And I don't mean a light sunburn either. I mean lobster red. Oh, and the bonus?? It's only on the left side of my face, and my left arm, because the sun was to my left. Uh-huh. Let's hear it for the red-heads with pathetically pale skin. *everyone groans*

And sadly, it was the championship weekend, and the Hawks lost their second game and were eliminated. So that's the end of our fall baseball season.

Now begins basketball! I'm excited, since I enjoyed Hawks basketball last year, but this year my own little brothers are on the middle school team! Of course, according to Kara, that just makes the games more stressful. But I'm still looking forward to it.

What I'm not looking forward to is the conflicts with theatre rehearsals. We're going to have at least 4 middle school games on Tuesdays.. the same days as theatre rehearsals. And we're missing several awesome JV/Varsity games because of theatre. I'm already wishing I didn't do theatre this year. It's always a gamble. I mean, I couldn't possibly have known we were going to get stuck with "Oklahoma!" one of my least favorite plays ever. *sigh* But we also might have gotten a good play. It's just frustrating.

Hopefully I'll manage to enjoy "Oklahoma!" but I haven't managed it so far. I am really enjoying voice lessons though! They are absolutely awesome! I've always wanted to do voice, and I finally got to do it this year. It's been fantastic!

And now I'm off to nurse my sunburn.

~Lizzie

Annual stupidity

It's that wonderful time of year again.... warm weather, breezes, green grass, flowers, bright sun.... and sunburn. Every year I live in perpetual trepidation, anticipating this traumatic injury in every lovely sunny day. And then I get so used to the anxiety that I just forget about it, and that's when the problems begin.

I held on to my fear of sunshine for a commendable amount of time this year. And then one day, our neighbors called and asked to borrow our lawn mower and it became necessary for our grass to be cut as soon as possible so that our mower would be available for our neighbors. So I foolishly decided to cut all of our almost 3 acres of grass.... between the hours of 11am and 2pm. It was a lovely day, not too hot, with a cool breeze and I'd been wanting to attempt whatever pathetic sort of tan a red head can possibly get. I even decided to wear a sleeveless t-shirt since I've gotten slightly sunburned already this year in a farmer's tan pattern.

By the time I got inside, my shoulders were already a frightening shade of pink. And they got worse. By about 5 o'clock that afternoon, every single little movement caused my baked skin to burst into fiery tingles. I couldn't even lift my arms to put my hair in a ponytail.. and my hair brushing against my arm made my skin sting.

You would think that I would have learned my lesson after one such occurrence, but the sad truth is that this happens every single year. Sometimes more than once. It's pretty ridiculous for me to think after nearly 17 years of having the same skin that it will suddenly be able to just sit out in the sun for 3 hours in the middle of the day without frying into a crisp. But every year, that's what I think. "Oh, it'll be fine this time. Maybe I'll just get a little burned." *sigh*

Ever as stupid, but now mostly recovered,

~Lizzie