Chiggers versus Sunburn

How is a sunburn like a chigger? Let me explain.

Recently I received a large-scale sunburn over, well, an unfortunate amount of skin. Really any amount of sunburn is unfortunate,  however this one was particularly unfortunate as it involved all of my limbs with special concentration on my shoulderblades and upper legs. Really it just made it so I couldn't lay down with any sort of comfort. I either had to lie on my stomach and endure burning from my legs, or on my back and endure pain radiating from my shoulders. Fast forward one week, and all that crispy skin is peeling off nicely...and itching like Fred and George spread itching powder over every item of clothing I own. I seriously don't remember ever itching this badly in my life except for the one summer I was 9...

Do you know what a chigger is? I sure do. It's this microscopic little red devil of itchiness. It bites you and burrows into the skin, creating a Mt. Kilimanjaro of discomfort. The only way to get rid of the itching is to kill the suckers while they sleep (as they are related to the tick family, they stay in the skin, itching and itching and itching and itching...for at least two weeks). The only way to do that is to paint your skin with nail polish. Clear is the best, mostly because you look the least weird wearing it. You can use any color, simply paint all your welts with the polish of your choice and that will cease the itching...eventually...takes a day or two.

So, one summer I was 9 years old. Most of us had a summer like that. I mean, you can read now, and are reading this, so you obviously were 9 at one point in your life.

Anyway, I was 9, and for some reason I decided to sit in the tall grass outside my Nebraska home while wearing calf-high socks, elastic waist-banded pants, and several hair-ties around one wrist. Did I mention that chiggers love to bite underneath tight-fitting clothing? Especially sock and underwear lines?

That evening I couldn't rest for the amount of itching. The only nail polish my mother could find was blue, all the clear had been depleted on my several younger siblings and the unfortunate neighbors. She painted me up so I looked like an unfortunate half-smurf, then I laid in bed trying desperately not to gouge chunks of skin from my calves.

That's what this summer reminds me of. A tingling under the skin that begins as a slight tickle. You think that if you ignore it, it'll go away. It's only the vaguest of feelings after all. However, it starts to increase. It gets worse until the tickle has become practically a fester. Your skin is jumping with effort to keep still. You can't think about anything else but how much you itch. All you want to do is drag your fingernails deeply through the pestilence that has now set your skin aflame. Nothing else will satisfy this strange itching and jumping coursing through your skin. The itching is there, it has always been there, and you will always itch.

So, chiggers versus sunburn. I think chiggers win, but sunburn comes in at a close second. You can avoid sunburn after all, and chiggers...well. Let's just say chiggers are the spawn of Satan sent to destroy your sanity through itching.

And now, how many of you itch after reading this? You're welcome.

Sunburn

Three weeks ago I began a job. It's pretty much just that, a job that will help me survive until I get another job that hopefully pays better and requires less energy. No one told me that being an adult came with such difficulties as CAR PAYMENTS and BILLS. If someone had told me that when I was a teenager, I'm pretty sure I would have refused to become an adult and retreated back to the land of high school for the rest of my life.

Alas, such information was not forthcoming, I think that's part of the trick played on you by parents in order to get you out of the house... Jokes on them though, I just moved in with my grandparents instead!!!! (If anyone knows of some cheap housing and would like to be roommates, please send me the information, I will love you forever!)

Back to the job, as part of this job, actually, the entirety of this job consists of me being outside, in the sun, for 2-8 hours a day. However long it takes me to give up from exhaustion and heatstroke. Because it's summer. And we seem to keep having a streak of 100 degree + days.

Me being the brilliant person that I am, decided two weeks ago that since I was outside all day anyway, I might as well get a nice tan from it. So I decided to start wearing one of those light runner-type shirts that lets your shoulders get exposed to the glorious sunlight.

The day started off well, nice and cool, a few rays of sunlight trickling through the trees and me outside enjoying it as best I knew how. Alright! I thought, Now I'm going to get a cool tan and look so great at my brother's wedding!! Such happy thoughts, too bad I forgot that most of my ancestors are from England and France and Switzerland and other places that don't get a lot of sunlight...

Three hours later....I believe I'm getting a bit sunburned, why yes, I do believe that I'm a little redder than I should be....You can probably guess where this is going. By the time I got back to the car, I was fried. Redder than a lobster and a lot more tender too. Needless to say, I wore normal shirts the rest of the week, had to keep those sunburned shoulders covered.

You know what happens when you get sunburnt? Tan lines. Lots of tan lines. Know what happens when you put sunscreen on your face and neck but not your shoulders and then you start to sweat a lot? More tan lines in weird rivers down your shoulders, it literally looks like a river of white decided to run down my arms. It's quite embarrassing, but still fun to show people.

One day later I went to an improv workshop and decided to randomly trustfall at someone. I think I hurt all the way out to the car and walked like a weird hunchback trying to take the pressure off my shoulders. Kids, don't get sunburned. It causes cancer, just like the entire state of California.

We probably shouldn't go into a week later when I was FINALLY starting to heal, and I came in from work one day to find the entire burned area of my shoulders and upper back was blistered. Like, gross bubbly blisters that were barely under the epidermis. Probably the best part of the entire sunburn was when I decided to slap my hand down on the blisters and they splatted. Everywhere.

Now it's just really peely and itchy and peely some more. I'll survive, but I've got some wicked tan lines to show for it. However, my brother's wedding is coming up in 9 days soooo....there's only one way that I know of to really get rid of tan lines...