Wednesday Mom and I took my kids and quasi-nephew to Silver Lake, a water park fairly close to home. We had a blast. The kids splashed around in the water, climbed on the various floats and rafts, rode the paddleboats, and went down a gigantic water slide called “The Beast.” We stayed about five hours altogether.
I did put sunscreen on all of us. I really did. But I forgot to re-apply it after a few hours.
My youngest kid doesn’t swim at all, and the nephew swims just well enough to get himself in over his head before he tires out and needs something to grab onto. At one point I told them not to both start drowning at the same time, because then I’d have to decide which one I loved more that day.
The point being, between keeping an eye on both of them to make sure nobody drowned—when my nephew insisted he could swim out to the raft by himself I told him to humor me because “your mother would never forgive me if you drowned on my watch”—it didn’t even cross my mind to put on more sunscreen around lunchtime.
By Wednesday night my kids and I were bright pink. The line of demarcation was quite distinct; we looked like someone had spray-painted us. My spouse said I looked like a carrot. We’ve spent the last couple of days smearing aloe gel on ourselves and trying not to move any more than necessary. If the kids hadn’t been home I would have just gone shirtless; as it is I’m wearing a sheet toga-style so I don’t have to put anything on my shoulders. I expect over the weekend we’ll start peeling in sheets.
Haven’t seen the nephew. He’s got more melanin than we do (there are a lot of redheads on both sides of our family tree) so I’m hopeful he didn’t get burned as badly.
And carrots aren’t pink, dammit.
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