Thankful Thursday

I tend to zone out in the shower.  In a previous post I mentioned that a lot of the time I get great ideas for blog posts while I'm in the shower.

Today I did both -- zoned out and came up with an idea for a post.

When I take a shower, the first thing I do is shampoo and condition my hair.  Today after I shampooed my hair, I moved on to washing my face.  Normally I would use a tiny little dab of conditioner on the ends of my super-fine hair, but today I decided to skip the conditioner.  Since I wasn't going to blow dry or flat iron my hair, I thought "why bother."

I proceeded to squirt some face wash into the palm of my left hand.  Without thinking, I almost rubbed my palms together in preparation to work the liquid into my hair.  Yikes!  That would have been a mess, especially since I use a face wash that has tiny exfoliating beads -- not that they do all that good of a job of exfoliating; I would probably need to use sandpaper to effectively exfoliate my bad skin.  : /

As I contemplated my near-miss, I was reminded of another time I experienced a similar brush with disaster.  It was December of 2006 and I was preparing to meet my daughter's future in-laws for the first time.  I had checked into my hotel room and had a few hours to kill before dinner at the D's home.  My hair looked a little flat and oily, so I decided to wash it.  Not wanting to bother with a full shower, I figured I could easily wash my hair in the sink. 

Everything was going great until it was time to use the conditioner.  The hotel had provided complimentary toiletries and I thought I grabbed the bottle of conditioner.  As I poured it out into the palm of my hand, the white color and creamy consistency of the liquid looked and smelled like conditioner.  But when I worked the stuff into my hair, it just didn't feel right.  Trying to not drip water and conditioner (?) all over the floor, I squinted at the tiny print on the tiny bottle.  Without my glasses, I couldn't make out much, but I could see that instead of one long word on the bottle -- Conditioner -- there were two words.  Body Lotion?  Hand Lotion?  I wasn't sure, but one thing I did know: my hair was not coated in conditioner.

Crap.  Here I wanted to make a good impression and instead I had lubed up my hair with body lotion!  I ended up washing my hair several times in a mostly unsuccessful attempt to get rid of the heavy lotion.  On the way to meet N's family I told E, N, and K what I had done and we all had a good laugh.  N's parents are polite people and, even if they noticed something odd about my hair, they were nice enough to not mention it.

At this point you're probably wondering what I'm thankful for on this Thankful Thursday . . . spaciness or maybe poor eyesight?  Actually I am thankful for E's in-laws/N's parents, Dr. D and P.

Dr. D and P have been great in-laws to E.  They genuinely love her as if she were their own daughter.  Having had a awkward relationship with my in-laws, I am thrilled that E has such a comfortable relationship with hers.  I think E is a remarkable young woman and I am glad that Dr. D and P see the same outstanding qualities in her that I do; I'm glad that they truly like her for who she is and not just because she is N's wife.

Marriage is more than just the union of one man and one woman in the covenant of holy matrimony.  It is also the union of two families.  I am thankful that E has been so warmly welcomed into her new family by her in-laws.