A Spotty Story

My favourite sunscreen for as long as I can remember has been the Coppertone Sport stuff.

With the fair skin of my Irish ancestors, I need real protection when I'm out there, and every time I've used this stuff, it's been an absolute dream. No sweat off, no stickiness, and -- best of all -- no burns.

When I went to Shoppers before this vacation, I went on my hunt for this beloved protector, only to find that they didn't have any of the lotion in stock. Faced with the option of the same brand in gel or spray format, I went with the gel. I mean, everyone knows the spray never goes on right anyway, right?

Mmhmm.

The first day I put the gel on, I was overwhelmed with the intense fragrance of pure alcohol. The stuff started evaporating within seconds as I frantically tried to rub it into my skin. Somewhat startled, I felt a sneaking suspicion about its potency. Nonetheless, I ignored my gut due to my conviction that Coppertone Sport would never let me down. Silly girl.

As of last night, I have about fifteen little red spots. (Will post a picture later today.) No, I don't have the allover sunburn that ruins a vacation -- so that's something. But I now proudly feature red marks on both shoulder, a rectangle at the top of my back, a streak across my right arm, a big oval at the bottom of my back, speckles all over my belly, thin lines across the top of each thigh, and a thumbprint at my ankle.

Coppertone Sport, how could you?

So what's a girl to do? I emailed Ange and begged her to become my Coppertone Sport lotion mule. I am so irritated by my leopard look -- while I don't mind getting only freckles, I was hoping for a little bit of sunniness to my look on this vacation. But the spotted thing? Not as hot as what I'd imagined.

(Yes, I know that if this is all I have to complain about, life is pretty good. I just didn't want anyone else to make the mistake of buying this junk.)

In other news, the vacation has been pretty continually dreamy.

We're playing 3-4 hours of tennis every day, which means I'm surely getting somewhat better, right? I love the running around, I love the hitting (every time the ball comes to me, I do an internal B-E-AGRESSIVE chant), and I love the sweat. We're also doing lots of floaty ocean swimming, and enjoying the local brew as much as one should when there's not much else to have to do. I would be uploading more pictures but, erm, they're kind of all the same. Me on balcony! Me on beach! Me at tennis court! Me on balcony! I'm nothing if not predictable. To calm your evident need for new photos, I bring you feet.

Mine:

Dave's:

Oh yeah! I almost forgot to share the weirdest thing that's happened since our arrival. So we were at the beach yesterday and this older lady was in an inappropriately skimpy swimsuit, but I thought my usual "Hell, if you're okay with it, I am too, lady." Anyway, we were set up near her and she was sunbathing her little heart out. Fine. A while later, this young (teenaged?) girl in a very skimpy bikini came by and said hi to her -- they appeared to know each other, but the connection was unknown. Anyway, they started chatting, then the young girl suggested she take some pictures of the older lady, so she's posing away and all is normal and fine. Then! The young girl asks the older lady to take pictures of her. Next thing I know, I'm witnessing the cheap digi-cam version of a photo shoot for the next flipping Sports Illustrated Teen. Seriously! This kid was posing on the water's edge in the most provocative positions, making far more than come-hither eyes, and the older lady was instructing her. This results similar to this, but with water everywhere.

What the hell was that about? Who was that lady? Who was that kid? What were the photos for? It was totally surreal and bizarre and I still can't figure out what the hell happened. Anyway.

Ange and Jason arrive tomorrow (!!!) and we can't flipping wait. We have plans to make nachos, enjoy numerous and varied mixed drinks, discuss Anna Nicole's death to death, and crash the Wednesday night party at the resort down the beach. There will be plenty of new pictures then, as Ange and I find ourselves altogether irresistible. Hah.

In that joyful spirit, I'm off to enjoy my 8AM coffee, overlooking the marina while catching up on the day's news. Yep, this is the life.

Oh, and PS: Blogger has recently introduced the custom domain option, that allows those quick easy updates they now do (no more loading page!) instead of your standard FTP. So this baby now has its own domain. I've been obsessed with buying domains for as long as I can remember. So rarely are .com domains still available that when I saw this one was, um. Yeah. I got it.