P365 Day 60: In which I try to overcome my fear of jellyfish

Paul had to teach on Labor Day, so we spent this afternoon at the beach. As you can see, we were the only ones there!

Unfortunately, after my run-in with a jellyfish a few weeks ago, I had a little trepidation about going in the water. For the record, my stings are still quite visible — I'm resisting the urge to post pictures of my lovely legs — but we followed all the anti-jellyfish rules: We went at low tide, after August ("jellyfish season"), when the water was cold and no hurricanes were nearby.

But here's the thing: In doing my research about how to avoid jellyfish — look, this was a real mental block for me — I came across this Surfline page about the South Carolina coast. Of course, the site was about all of South Carolina, but I immediately jumped to the conclusion that it was only about my part of South Carolina. The scary parts:

• "You will find sharks up and down this coast year-round. Mostly, there are smaller black tips and sand sharks, but also found out here are thresher, mako, hammerhead and tiger sharks."
• "Skates and stingrays also live here, and both have nasty poisonous barbs on their tails. Skates like to bury themselves in the sand and wait for someone to step on them."
• "Peak season for stinging jellyfish happens to be August, which, unfortunately, coincides with hurricane season. Strong swells can push hapless jellyfish into shore, where they make contact with your face as you duck-dive under that juicy peak."

(All of that is courtesy of Surfline, and it's only part of the story, so if you happen to stumble on my blog, go read the rest of it here.)

Well, it was enough for me to be sure I was going to run into a jellyfish with my face and sure I was going to step on something barbed. Paul made it worse by stepping on "something sharp" as soon as we got in the water and screaming like a little girl. I refused to go back in the water until I put my flip-flops on. For the record, it's hard to tread water while wearing flip-flops.

Anyway, we swam around for 45 minutes or so and I emerged unscathed. Looks like we'll get in about four more weekends before it gets too cold to go out.