July 25, 1999
Sunning and Stinging

The rest of my Friday thoughts and Saturday’s entry are coming tonight or tomorrow morning. Our whole trip was interesting and rather crazy. Please come back to read about the whole thing.

Meghan and I went to the beach this morning at 9 AM. We didn’t put on any sunscreen, but we only planned to stay out for an hour because we still needed to shower and check out by 11 AM. The beach was pretty quiet so we took to the water first. After about 20 minutes of swimming, which was wonderful early in the morning, the craziest thing happened – I had a run-in with a jellyfish.

The incident with the jellyfish was pretty strange. Meghan and I were swimming in a semi-deep part of the water and since it was so murky we couldn’t see anything. Suddenly I felt something that was like seaweed wrap around my left leg and sting me! Needless to say I was scared to death and we both started quickly swimming to shore. An area near my knee started to look like I had a rash when we were getting out of the water. There were several streaks in the area that I guess came from the tentacles. After I spread wet sand over the area (this is what I did the last time I got stung and it worked) it began to swell along the tentacle lines and it hurt a lot. We decided to go back inside when I saw the rash travelling down my leg and I realized something needed to be done about it. A guy selling sunscreen told me to put ammonia or meat tenderizer on the sting, but of course neither Meghan or I had that kind of stuff. After my shower I put my prescription cortisone cream on it and it started to get better. The marks are still very prominent today. I wish they would last until this weekend so I could show Stuart, but I am sure they will be gone by then. I won’t have any proof that it actually happened! Anyone who doesn’t see the battle scars will just have to take my word for it. When I think back on the jellyfish incident it really scares me. I never saw the sucker and I wonder how big it was and how I came into contact with it. That’s creepy.

So we didn’t get much sun this morning (or this whole weekend, come to think of it). I will have to make another date with the self-tanner before I go to visit Stuart this weekend. My farmer’s tan is still really bad, but I think I am destined to not be able to fix it. Well, I am fulfilling my destiny perfectly so far.

After we checked out of the hotel we headed for the St. Augustine outlet mall in search of great deals. I guess we only went into a few of the many stores there, but I didn’t buy a single thing. Meghan had so much luck she needed to go to the ATM so she could pay for all of it! I was disappointed that the J. Crew outlet had mostly winter clothes and the summer clothes that were there only came in sizes larger than I could wear. At least I saved some money since I didn’t get any clothes.