absence makes the heart grow blonder

I'm on "vacation".

I use the word "vacation" loosely, because what do I really have to be on vacation from anyway? Sitting around Starbucks? Reading magazines? Seeings how I just came off a week of having no Pastor and no kids, this does not seem like a vacation.

The Pastor got home last Thursday night from England. The Pastor is very smart. Smart because he just wrote and defended some big long paper about Kings and violence and Abimelech with a bunch of Hebrew words in it? Nope. He's smart because he knows to bring me presents even when he's only been gone for a week.

He got me a dress from my favorite little Indian (dot not feather) store. It's interesting because no self-respecting Sari-wearing Indian girl could get away with wearing this dress. The dress actually has an Armani Exchange label in it, even though I am 100% certain it is NOT Armani Exchange. Of course, Dr.-I-can-write-Hebrew-words-and-know-all-sorts-of-Bible-stuff had no idea what Armani Exchange is.

The night the Pastor came home we got Daughter #1 and Daughter #2 back. They came home with fake, hoochie fingernails. I can only assume the former Mrs. Pastor either thought 1. we wouldn't like the fake nails and she would somehow be irritating us and 2. she is helping to prepare the girls for whatever career they might have later in life where one might actually wear really long hoochie nails.

Personally, and I'm certainly not mom of the year, I wouldn't be inclined to super glue long sharp nails, a.k.a. weapons, on little girls who have a history of pinching and scratching.

Of course, I started off the vacation sick. I went to the doctor Thursday before the Pastor got home. I didn't really want to, but I was being kind and gracious. That is, kind and gracious to the other people who have to travel with me. I knew if I still felt bad when I got in the van and started driving across States, I might end up killing someone and that wouldn't really be nice, would it? Even if they deserve it.

In addition to the Upper Respiratory Infection, I also started off the trip by
menstruating which is nice that my body would do that a full week early, just for my va-ca. Of course what else could be expected from my body, the same body that gave me a period on my wedding night, the past two Christmas's and last vacation.