Don't Shine Red

Oregon is known for it's lush forests and for having lots of greenery, scenic hiking trails and other outdoorsy stuff. Oregon=Rain. Rain is practically synonymous with Oregon. There are all of the jokes about Oregonians having webbed feet and rusting rather than tanning. We understand rain and wet. We know how to handle it, to cope with it throughout most of the seasons. We don't do well with sun.

We have had a wet winter. We had unseasonably cold weather in April, even snow - which is not at all common for us. In fact, I have lived here all of my life and I don't ever remember an April snow. Now, suddenly, we find ourselves in a heat wave. We had a couple days over 90 degrees in the middle of May! Also uncommon. Wasn't it just snowing a few weeks ago?

There is something about us, apparently, that makes us not quite believe it really is sun. We probably assume there is always enough cloud cover to protect us. Or maybe we believe that, because of all of the rain, and the many days of dashing from protected buildings and diving into our cars, touting around umbrellas (or forgetting them), tolerating wet or frizzy hair, mud and puddles wherever we go and the cooooonstaaaaant drizzle, somehow it is owed to us to not have any worries associated with sun? Maybe we use sunscreen so rarely that we let it expire and it loses it's effectiveness?

Why else would there be SO MANY sunburned Oregonians already, when we have only had 4 days of sunshine? Everywhere I look, there are burned shoulders, chests and faces. Maybe we just want to be able to prove we got some sun.

Rise and shine Oregon. The sun has. Just don't shine red.

(Oh, and I may as well tell you that my husband has had skin cancer multiple times. Don't be fooled by this tricky Oregon sun. Lather sunscreen on.)