If you haven’t realized it by now, I work on the rewards system.  When I finished my first draft and picked myself up off the floor, I gave myself the gift of a facial.  I have a wonderful salon run by my good Korean friends Jade and Heather (their American names), members of the church who have been blessed with the gift of gentle, cosseting hands.  For one hour, Jade has me lean back in a chair, turns on beautiful new age music, and does all kinds of wonderful things to my old skin, cleaning it, massaging it, treating it, and moisturizing it.  It is beyond heaven.

On the particular occasion, however Jade forgot the head wrap and was actually massaging hydrating products into my hair.  That wouldn’t have mattered, except I had a date with Rachel to go listen to her enrichment presentation in Salt Lake.  Jade told me not to touch my skin for 24 hours, so that let makeup out!  But when I saw what had happened to my hair, I almost cried.  I looked like I had just emerged from doing baptisms for the dead (make that the very dead).  And speaking of the dead, I was sincerely glad my mother missed this little adventure.  She would have shot me cold.

Rachel was seriously concerned.  I looked so different she could hardly recognize me.  We spent the drive to SLC wondering what we were going to do.,  Fortunately, we arrived 20 minutes early.  Picture Rachel running into the 7-11 to buy a comb, and then trying to tease my hair into some kind of style in the ladies’ room.  It probably wouldn’t have been so bad, except that Rachel looked like a goddess (as usual) and she had to introduce me as her friend!

As big-hearted Rachel said, “We’ll be laughing about this for years!”