I don't want to be dramatic, but damn, y'all. Our beach club opened last Monday and already we are seeing lots of jellyfish washed up on the sand. And they are not small, the jellyfish. They are honking big jellyfish.

Fabio says, "Oh, the little ones sting much worse." This is not comforting. 

So we go, Jonathan and I, to the beach and Jonathan studies for his next law school exam that is happening on Tuesday and I lie in the sun and believe that the warmth is healing all of my ills and purifying me. We take walks every now and then along the strand and watch the surfers, who are braver than we are, and look at the jellyfish that have been beached. The jellyfish used to not show up until August, when the water had gotten warm enough for them.

Global climate change has meant that the seas are getting warmer and more hospitable to jellyfish while being less hospitable to, for example, coral reefs, among other lovely and non-stinging things. Someday, we will tell our grandchildren about the old days when you could swim in the sea and it was cool and lovely and you didn't emerge from it covered in painful welts. They will look at the seething mass of ten billion jellyfish swarming the beaches of the Mediterranean and not believe us.