I'M JUST A LITTLE EMBARRASSED

By my appearance. Oh maybe I should be more so.

But the recent valley rains have left me doing a reverse kind of molting. I'm turning into Algae Man or Mold Man. And, yes, that's me under all that growth.

I actually learned something by our more than a week long rains. I grow other colors than gray (hair and beard). And flesh (for body fat literally everywhere). I grow several shades of green when I'm not exposed to the sun.

I once had a dermatologist ask what I wanted to get so tanned. I simply answered that everything I like to do is outside. In the Summer sun in SoIL, I didn't even mind, well all that much, mowing the yard (we didn't have a lawn, because I never ever fertilized. I preferred our neighbors didn't either because some of the stuff that makes grasses grow might just blow over my way. I preferred dead or yellow grass) when the sun was blazing. To illustrate my point, I would mow at noon for three hours or more with a push rather than riding mower, partly, ok, largely because I could never keep a rider from breaking down. Shirtless, almost shortless; that is, I wore the skimpiest jogging shorts I owned. We lived at the end of a cul-de-sac or more accurately a dead end street, so there weren't many who viewed or would want to view me anatomically.

But these days of whines and doses of rain, I'm an inside guy. Turning green. Not with envy.