THIS IS WHAT I WANTED TO AVOID...

on my cruise. A bad sunburn. So I had started going to the tanning salon. I have only been one other time before and was not looking forward to needing to do this, but my fair skin does not handle intense sun very well, and being a snowbird on top of that added up to a potential problem.

So I've gone 6 times over 2 weeks, as recommended, increasing the tanning time over the course of the 6 visits. I'm using one of those stand-up booths where you are in and out in 7 minutes or less. That appealed to me! The first visit, I spent 3 minutes in there and was mildly pink, but it went away after a day. The next few I stayed at 3 minutes and then went to 5 for the fifth and sixth visits, and was developing a nice tan, nothing dark, just a nice contrast from my usual snow white skin. Last night was number 7, out of 10. I decided to be bold and went for 6 minutes. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary until sometime in the night I woke up, uncomfortable, but didn't know why. I woke up it seemed every hour all night long, but didn't think much of my discomfort until I got up and looked in the mirror!

OMG! I was beet red from my hairline to my waiste. Even my eyelids were sweating, and my eyes looked puffy. How could adding just 1 minute make that much of a difference?? And to top it off, I have lines where those little eye protectors are, so I've got that racoon look, and it is quite obvious I went tanning, or in my case, frying.

I have 3 more visits left. I'm a little worried now about getting burned again. Yikes! I guess I need to go back down to 5 or less minutes for the next 3 visits. Hopefully, this will avoid any burning on the cruise.