terribly disappointed

I thought it was
"you thin mission"

Apparently, it's
"youth in mission"

Sigh.

too much skin, bossy beyond belief and how could you download songs on an I-Pod???

Pop Quiz

My precious husband sent his mother some recent pics of us. Quote from my mother-in-law: "Robyn looks nice. It's nice to see her not showing so much skin. After all, you are a Pastor!"
a. We'll be crossing her off the list of people who will be receiving copies of my boudior prints. We thought those would be nice to tuck into our Christmas cards, you know - instead of the dreaded Christmas letter.
b. Thank goodness she doesn't know about all of our nudist activities (now you know what we're really doing on all those "spiritual retreats"!).
c. Guess I know what the in-laws will be sending me for Christmas/Birthday. Appropriate Nazarene pastor wife-ish clothes. Something from the Missionary line at Sears? Maybe a one-piece swimsuit?
d. Showing so much skin? How much skin do I have to show? Am I getting horribly fat?
e. Thank goodness they don't know about all of the tattoos and piercings!!!

My husband, continuing along the lines of repeating things to me he really shouldn't, tells me that younger daughter said "Robyn is bossy!!!"
a. What? How could she say that to me after I bought her those boots snuck her chocolate covered raisins took her swimming bought her a stinkin' cute dress took her to get frappucinos even though I am not even drinking coffee???!!!???
b. Yeah, well so what! Someone's gotta be bossy!
c. What? How could she say that?
d. I DO have a "bossy beyond belief" shirt. OK, the Pastor actually decided that t-shirt should be my official uniform and bought me TWO of them.

My husband tells me that my mother-in-law thinks I show too much skin and younger daughter thinks I'm bossy and and and and continues to repeat things to me he really shouldn't.
a. Gee Robyn, why is it that you cry every single day?
b. Now that I'm not working, he's just giving me things to blog about.
c. When he comes to me and says "hey, you wanna hear something?", I should just say no.
d. Since I am so bossy, I make him tell me the stories.
e. He should just tell me that I am getting horribly fat too.

The children, ungrateful little things:
a. Total freak out and dramafest2005 when a certain gifted-n-talented child realizes you had 2,500 songs loaded on their I-Pod for them. How could you load songs on my I-Pod? I was perfectly content with the 59 songs I had on there! How could you? Really, how could you? Even though I really have no other way to download songs to my I-Pod. You are the worst mommy in the whole wide world! Thinking I would actually want songs on my I-Pod!
b. Seriously considering my mother's suggestion that I return all the kids I have and start over with new ones.
c. See above, younger daughter thinks I'm bossy no matter what I do. No more chocolate covered raisins for her!

I want Sarah Jessica Parker's new perfume, and I don't even know what it smells like.
a. Since I have not had coffee in ten days, I'm looking for something new to fixate on.
b. I figure it can't be worse than Britney Spears', and I've been wearing that hussey-like fragrance for months. (Must go back up to stuff above about mother-in-law and add "thank goodness she doesn't know that not only do I look like a hussey in the pictures, I smell like one too.)
c. I better make sure the Pastor understands that I want Sarah Jessica Parker's perfume. Not Camilla Parker Bowles.

My son, the honor's student, parts II and III and IV.
Part II
I picked him up from school. He has his "standardized test results". The kid is off the charts. Advanced in math of all things. He didn't get that from me. So I pick him up from school, drive him to the house to grab a change of clothes because he's spending the night at Grandma and Grandpa's house. Drive directly over to Grandma and Grandpa's house. Do you know what my little genius says to me? "Mom, have I had dinner yet?"

Part III
I drive him to school. It's early, because he has to get there for cello practice. Sweetie, you have just a few minutes, so you need to get in there and get set up. OK Mommy - Bye! So GNT (gifted-n-talented) gets out of the car and starts to walk in to school. I honk my horn. He turns back around, puzzled. I mouth "YOUR CELLO". Huh? Finally, he gets what I am saying and comes and gets his cello.

Part IV
Mommy, are we going to that potato thing? What potato thing? You know that church service? Oh, you mean Kaleo. The kid may be in the honor's program, but they aren't teaching him Greek.

And how dare I load songs on his I-Pod.

Me, at the spiritual retreat. Blogging on my Sidekick.  

Getting ready to nosh on some Indian food. Notice younger daughter is STILL wearing the boots, but do me and my shrug and satin cami really have any room to talk?  

Really bad food at spiritual retreat. But cute shrug!  

The family at church. Yes, "In Style" magazine IS a spirtual experience.  

Cooking meat, ugh. See, I utilize "slave labor".  

Trying to work on a "mini-me". This is younger daughter, in a "stinkin' cute dress" (her description). Oh, and she loves boots (and motorcycles, and tattoos, and dancing, and makeup...). 

In the beginning, God created the black pump

stuff
1. I would rather read my "Us" magazine than do my bible study.
2. I am more familiar with the layout of my "Us" magazine than I am with the layout of my bible.

I have now gone 8 days without coffee. I can't imagine what it would be like to give up something like crystal meth. Thank God I never started that.

Outfit of the day: black a-line skirt, robin's egg blue tank, black shrug, black lacey pumps, double strand of pearls. Let's also thank God I haven't forgotten how to dress. Oh, and I'm at Bible Study Fellowship, by the way.

and on the third day she did NOT rise again

It happened for the first time the other day. I was at church holding that baby girl and someone asked me if the Pastor and I are going to have babies. I responded that we mainly just look around at the kiddos we already have.

I've noticed when the Pastor tells people he knows that I quit my job (and now don't do anything but sit in the giant bean bag chair), people respond to him with things like "that's so great!!!". Even though I am not contributing to the gross domestic product and again just leave my large hiney imprint in the bean bag chair. It's a really comfortable place to sit. Anywho, when I tell people I know they say things like "I am really surprised you quit your job" or "I can't believe you did that". It's just an interesting contrast.

This is the third day I have gone without coffee. No biggie. I've just had a teensy headache. One blinding headache which has lasted THREE FRIGGIN' DAYS! I didn't intentionally give up coffee. It was just that the other day I was running late to bible study and didn't have time to
make any at home. I was going to stop on the way and get some, but bible study is very military-ish about starting at exactly on-time, so I skipped it. I thought I'd go after bible study, but I didn't get the chance. That afternoon I got a killer headache. The Pastor said gee if you are going to get a really bad headache and be throw-uppy if you skip your coffee, don't you think maybe it's time to stop??? No, not really, but then that day and the next the Pastor and I participated in a sleep study, and can you believe they didn't have any coffee at that either?

We are at a spiritual retreat this weekend. We are sleeping in a cabin with a bunch of other people, so I'm fairly certain that it's not going to be a romantic retreat. And I suppose it's probably good that people have time to reflect upon things, and it's not like there is much else
to do since there is no cell phone service here (uhhh, and no privacy).

Dinner was mainly meat. Oh well, since I am on a spiritual retreat I guess I might as well fast too.

We are going out to dinner with a friend tomorrow night. I asked the Pastor where we are going. Taco Cabana. Ick. So I said to the Pastor basically I am getting to eat crappy food all weekend. He didn't appreciate that comment very much.

Here at the retreat with college kids. College kids are so young and sharp. I feel so old and dumb. And fat. I do share a common ground with some of the college girls - our mutual love of lip gloss, the color pink, flat-ironed hair... the list goes on and on.

phone manners
The Pastor and I have really worked with the kids on phone manners. The girls were not with us this week, they were with their mother. Every night this week when the Pastor had his nightly phone call with his daughters, older daughter refused to talk to him and would say something like "I don't want to talk". The Pastor saw her at her school one day this week and told her "hey, that really hurts my feelings when you do that", but still she continued with the I don't want to talk stuff. Last night I was on the phone with younger daughter. She was having
total drama about her missing library book, the first one she had ever checked out. It's lost and when you lose a library book your mom can't help you, your dad can't help you, your sister can't help you! You have to pay for the library book yourself and she doesn't have any money!!!
Or a job!!!

Anyway, she takes the phone to her older sister and older daughter says "I don't want to talk to talk to Robyn"!!!!!

Today when the girls came home, they said hi to me. I said hi to the younger daughter, and to older daughter I said "hi, but I really don't want to talk to you" and she said "OK" and went about her merry way. Now she is just completely ignoring me. We will see how long the silent
treatment lasts.

The Pastor, a never-ending source of blog fodder, is sitting beside me at this praise and worship service. He says he doesn't get praise and worship. It's stupid. They have a 'band' leading the worship. The Pastor said it's just a bunch of people making 'guitar face' for Jesus. They have cheese puffs here to snack on, the Pastor said the real cheese puffs are the ones singing and raising their hands. I think he's just jealous because he doesn't know the words to the songs and it's finally an area where I am superior to him.

I'm surprising lucid for someone who's not had coffee, huh?

Hmmmm

Seems like 'Devil's Canyon' is an odd place to have a spiritual retreat.

my current location

greetings from a canyon

someone doesn't like me! : (

Someone left me the comment shown below. It was on a post from a few days ago, so I wanted to make sure everyone got the opportunity to read it, as well as my response to it.

Anonymous said...
maybe if you try to take a genuine interest in his life instead of your stupid nail color or your 80 million pairs of pretty, pretty princess panties and he’d share his bible thoughts with you. but maybe he knows the minute he starts explaining what he’s reading, you’ll glaze over with that deer-in-the-headlights look, thinking about what you’ll get at starbucks the next morning. i hope your mission trip in december opens your eyes to how blind you truly are…and if it doesn’t, i hope “the pastor” leaves you there.

**********

Hey! I can't let this one just go by with no reply. In the Pastor's defense, he is a Bible Professor too, lecturing to students on a daily basis. He works VERY HARD to get people to glaze over with the "deer-in-the-headlights" look.

big butts and girls who won't swallow

Friday night we had plans to go to the state fair. Not just ANY state fair, but the Great State Fair. So Friday afternoon, in anticipation of this event, the Pastor starts text messaging me to inform me that he is going shopping for state fair 'costumes' for us. The messaging went back and forth for a bit, with him insisting we would wear costumes and with me pleading if you are going to buy me clothes, you should buy me cute clothes I can wear all the time.

My outfit, you can see pictured below, was a Daisy Duke top and a cut-off denim skirt and cowboy boots. The Pastor would not let me flat iron my hair and made me leave it all messy.
The Pastor could not make up his mind on his own apparel and had purchased two outfits for himself. You can see below the one he ended up wearing, and trust me, the one that got left behind was much too profane for me to describe here. The Pastor will use any excuse to go on a shopping spree at Goodwill.

We went to the fair. Mind you, the people we went with 1. Did not dress up in costumes and 2. did not know that we were going to dress up in costumes and 3. have been friends with the Pastor but really don't know me well enough to know what to think of me, much less me dressed in Daisy Duke fashion. Oh, and not only did we go to the fair, the Pastor took me to a nice restaurant beforehand. People were staring, and not in a good way.

To make up for the dreadful outfit I wore to the fair, Saturday we went to a college football game and I thought I looked pretty cute. Except the picture-taking Pastor snapped a pic of me from BEHIND and let's just say it was less flattering than the Daisy Duke outfit. I look like a fat &%$ China-man.

Sunday church experiences
1. We went to the Church of the Jumbotron. We sat on the front row and the Pastor (not the pastor of the Jumbotron Church, but my Pastor) read his book on Rene' Girard the entire time. I could see one of the Associate Pastors of the Jumbotron Church giving my Pastor the evil-eye and a definite how-could-you-do-that in church sorta look. Then again it might have been a how-could-you-run-around-with-someone-with-such-a-fat-hiney sorta look.

2. Then we went to the inner-city church held outside in a park. The fun one, where we learn things like "my daddy is married to my mommy but he doesn't sleep with my mommy, he sleeps with his girlfriend" (from a four year old) and that little kids have had to worry about things like being evicted and not knowing where they would stay or having a dad in jail. I held a little girl for most of the time we were there. I fed her some pizza and she would not swallow all the food. When we were done with the pizza she kept a bite in her mouth which she would neither swallow nor spit out.

3. Then we went to the evening worship experience, the one with the Starbucks coffee and the cookies.

That's all. Three worship experiences on a Sunday. I'm sorry people, but that's all we managed to attend. Perhaps if we had gotten our lazy state fair attending big butts out of bed earlier, we could have squeezed in one more. Or maybe we could have gone to another one instead of taking a nap and watching a movie we rented from Blockbuster in the afternoon.

I'm very upset because I already wrote this blog entry once, and in a moment of blondeness I deleted it which didn't make me too happy, and so I had to re-write it and now I feel like I am forgetting all the cute and clever things I said. Plus I originally wrote it last night when I was sharp and lucid and now I am trying to re-write it after I just finished working out and haven't finished my coffee yet. Now I am just typing and I'm really not sure how to end this.

And I'm more than a bit concerned that I fit in so well at the state fair.

so happy to be married to the Pastor that I am completely oblivious to how much eyeshadow I have on 

I eat stuff like this, and then I wonder why I have so much junk in the trunk. The Pastor and I enjoyed a rare kid-free night at my favorite place to have dessert. 

The Pastor and I will go on 'Montel' next month... for some reason he is demanding a dna test to confirm he is my baby daddy! Actually me at the Pastor's-church-in-the-park. 

me, the Pastor and the pink satin cami at a worship service (the one with Starbucks coffee and cookies!) 

pick the correct answer

a. Jessica Simpson, when she is old, fat & sad
b. Britney and Kevin???
c. the secret life of a Nazarene pastor
d. just a stereotypical couple at the Great State Fair

one more of the great State Fair's cutest couple 

me, working undercover for PETA??? 

let us now bow for a moment for prayer, part II 

let us now bow our heads for a moment of prayer (actually we were showing the Pastor our Yoga moves, and what guy wouldn't dig a few chicks bowing in his presence???) 

zero errors

Me, being un-kind and un-gracious, part #7947
We live in a pretty diverse neighborhood. The daughters had some of their neighbor friends over the other night.

I felt sorta bad for the neighborhood kids, cuz let's just say they seem to live in a home environment much different than our's. They said their momma stays at home all day but gets checks in the mail. Also, their momma told them as long as they came home by 9 p.m. it was fine. I made chicken and rice. I don't like chicken. I don't eat chicken. But I can at least 1. prepare it and 2. keep my mouth shut about the nasty chicken during dinner. The neighbor boy said he didn't like rice and wasn't going to eat. Fine. Whatever. The neighbor girl sat down to
eat with us, tried a bite and decided she didn't like it and proceeded not to touch her food the rest of the meal.

After dinner, I told the Pastor I hoped the neighbor kids had enjoyed their dinner invitation because it would be THEIR LAST!!! Dun-ta-DUNNNNN!

The Pastor said I was not being very nice and it wasn't their fault, they don't know any better and their parent's are to blame. OK, true story, but I already have enough kids complaining at dinner.

I felt bad later. I knew I had disappointed the Pastor with my comments and I thought how am I going to go on a mission trip with this kind of attitude??? I guess the difference is that on a mission trip if someone verbally expresses an attitude of un-gratefulness at least I won't
understand the language they are speaking.

I went to visit a medical transcription/court reporting college this week as I am trying to pretend as though I am working on some sort of plan for what I want to do with the rest of my life (besides changing the color of my nail polish and cooking chicken unsuitable for small
children). And I like to type and find the field of medical transcription intriguing. The college made me take a typing test before they would talk to me. The moral of the story is not that maybe this was a teeny tiny step on the path of my future, but that I scored 86 words per minute, zero errors. That was after declining the opportunity to warm up first. That was 86 wpm, zero errors.

I also started a bible study this week, the Bible Study Fellowship (BSF). My first encounter at the bible study (that is, not including the nice friend who invited me and took me) was the lady chasing me down, telling me I could not take my iced coffee into the sanctuary. Also I was running a bit late and they apparently frown on that too. Oops! Anywho, back to the lady who about tackled me over my Starbucks beverage... Granted there were probably not a whole lotta unchurched ladies at the BSF, but for all she knew that very well could have been the very first experience I had ever had with church. But what right do I have to say anything when I am hateful about the impoverished youth who come to my own house?

Did I mention zero errors???

let he who is without sin cast the first catalog

Oh, by they way, the Pastor and I had to have an actual conversation about whether it was loaves and fishes or loaves and fish.

Tonight, the Pastor was commenting about the birthmark I have on my face. I had just taken a shower and removed my makeup. It's nice to know when you are wet and naked someone is focusing on your hideous skin discolorations. The Pastor commented about how we dated for a year and he hadn't noticed it. I said that's because I ALWAYS had on makeup around you. ALWAYS. Why, asked the Pastor? Well duh, so you wouldn't notice my birthmark and my ugly (at times) skin! He said so you were being deceptive eh???!!! No, I replied, I was being pretty!!!

And people who throw away White House Black Market catalogues shouldn't throw stones.

forget loaves and fish, there were cookies

Sunday morning worship experience:
I am trying to figure out for the life of me how this is church.
1. We are outside.
2. There are about eight kids. At least one is in a diaper. Parents just drop them off! There's about the same number of adults as there are children. Believe me, we need this high of an adult-to-child ratio.
3. The only white kid belongs to me and the Pastor.
4. I have on black heels, black skirt, pink satin cami. I really didn't need another satin cami top, but they are so cute and it was cheap ($7). But I digress.
5. They are playing water balloons.

Sunday night worship experience:
1. Indoors.
2. Starbucks coffee AND cookies. Cookies!
3. Candles.
4. A table where you can make an art project.
5. Music! There's a band! Drums!
6. I am sitting in a booth. Yes, there are restaurant style booths in the church service. No one has come by to take my order though.

Change of subject. My honors student.
We walk into church. Carl is standing there. Nathan, you remember Carl, don't you? Nathan looks up at Carl and says "It's Patrick, isn't it?" Carl looks down at Nathan and says dude!!! she JUST told you my name is Carl!!!

Cowboy Event 

Nazarene undies, AGAIN

OK. I seldom run around in my panties with all the kids in the parsonage, but hey... I was in a hurry tonight. Getting ready for yet another Nazarene night out. So I'm in my panties, running through the house like a crazy person trying to pull myself together.

It's not like I've had these panties for very long. A couple of months, maybe. It's not like any of my 80 some odd pairs of panties are raggedy. I think these panties are pretty. During one of my run throughs of the house, the kids affirm the prettiness of my panties. Then I'm in the bathroom make-uping. The Pastor steps out of the shower and says oh honey you have a small tear in your panties.

Thanks for noticing.

So we are at the Nazarene night out. I wish just once they'd have liquor at one of these things. Spirits dull the mind though. Exactly.

Hiding behind The Book. 

pillow talk

who: me and the Pastor
what: pillow talk
where: bed
when: last night
why: silence is deafening!

actual conversation~
Pastor, reading bible: Hmpf!
me, french-tipping nails: what?
Pastor: oh nothing, just bible stuff

Allrighty then! Just let me know when you have something more chat-worthy. May I suggest something along the lines of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie?