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It's lovely weather outside my door. Out on the deck on the second floor. The sun is shining brightly, and yet there is a cool northern breeze such that if I stand or lay out in the sun and get overly warm, then when I step into the shadows I can cool off quick. It won't be long before the temperature gets up to 95° Fahrenheit and the humidity gets up to 95% it won't make the slightest difference if I step into the shade or not.
An old man's shins are good indicators of the state of his health. At least my shins and feet, my lower extremities, perfectly reflect the condition my condition is in. For sure, my shins are where the side-effects of methotrexate display the fact that this powerful drug is taking an active part in my physical system. Sores and scabs. Not a sexy sight. There's hardly any part of my body that radiates sexuality currently. I could care less. I've always been a bit more of a voyeur than a participant.
My shins and feet felt cold when I got up this morning. I opened the outside door to the second floor deck to let the morning sun inside to warm up the house a little. By nine o'clock or so the floor when the sunshine shone was warm to the the touch of my old feet. The warmth felt wonderful, so I scooted my computer chair around so that the sun light coming through the doorway was directly on my knees, shins, and feet. Ahhhh....
It wasn't enough. It felt good where the sunshine hit the front part, but my calves and the back of my knees were still cool in the shadow. I got my air mattress from my camping gear, and a foam yoga mat and put them down on the deck in the sunshine. Then, I got my old blanket and all the pillows off my bed and arrange all this stuff to allow me to sunbath from head to toe in comfort.
I know exactly how long to stay in the sun before I get burned. Why would I not? I've gotten completely tan every summer when it was possible forever. In the deep south, and probably a lot of other places too, before the invention of home air-conditioning, taking off all the clothes you could was the only solution for cooling down other than jumping in the creek.
The way I know how to get out of the sun is a burning sensation that's like a pre-burn to actually getting red. This pre-burn tells me when enough is enow. Like, get out of the sun, right now. There are some families whose skin is so white they can't stay out in the direct sun for more than a few moments before it's too late. I'm not that white. I'm red. A real "redskin".
It showed up on my military ID card in the little box labeled "Complexion". Ruddy. That's what the Navy classified my color as. Ruddy. Red. Not white, not brown, not black, not yellow, but red. When I get a tan, my skin turns purplish first, and then a beautiful golden color that i used to get a lot of compliments for.
Not any more. Getting compliments for the golden tone of my tanned skin. I get compliments instead on how the skin on my head hasn't wrinkled. That's totally genetic. Both my mother and my father got those same kinds of compliments about the smoothness of the skin on their face. My mother was fair-skinned. The ruddiness came from my father's side.
My father's siblings were some strange looking people. Some of them seemed short and a tendency to be dumpy, and some of them, including my father's only brother and the oldest child, were tall and rangy. The kind who could eat all they wanted and would never get fat.
I got some of the height, but I gain weight real easy. I'm about twenty pounds heavier than what I weighed when I joined the Navy, but my waistline makes it look like more. I do care about that a bit. Some of my concern is cosmetic, but mostly it has to do with having comfortable clothes to wear, and the sheer discomfort of the fat getting in my way like when I'm tying my shoes.
I'd really like to go back out on the deck and lay in the sun some more. If cold weather shows up in my arthritis, laying in the sun has the opposite affect. It will take a few more days of sunning before I can stay out any appreciable amount of time. In a couple of weeks I ought to be able to lay out for an hour at a time. Maybe more.
Even today I had to be really careful not to drift off to sleep during the time I was stretched out in the sun almost nakid. The relief from the arthritis is so lovely I could just drown in it. My skin is making so much vitamin D I can practically envision it happening in my mind's eye. This is why old people move to Florida. To be able to stay out in the sunshine all year long.
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I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
