Cockroaches and Cowboys

I’ve always wondered how it is that certain preachers come up with their sermon topics. Many, of course, follow a church calendar. Can you imagine a preacher giving a sermon on tithing on Easter Sunday? Nah. Neither can I. But Preacher Kely has come up with a pretty good list of sermons topics that nobody has ever preached on — click here.  You got a list of your own you wanna share with us?

Rose, who has been lurking around here, has joined a cast of bloggers over at All The Church Ladies. She wrote her first essay about the hazards of hospice care. You can read it here.

I met a gal from Richmond this week. I love Richmond. Have spoken there a couple of different times at the UMC church in Carey. And one of my favorite all time bookstores is in Richmond’s Shocke Slip district — Fountain Books. If you live there, go in and give my regards to Kelly Justice, such a sweetheart that Kelly. Anyway, Nicole, the gal I met via Twitter, gave up make-up for Lent. Now out here in the Pacific Northwest that wouldn’t be a big deal. Plastic surgeons out here have to work the graveyard shift at McDonald’s to pay the bills. If it weren’t for the twentysomethings who grew up on a steady diet of reality TV and fake boobs, our plastic surgeons would be totally unemployed. But that’s not the case in Richmond — or much of the South — where a woman’s face is her calling card. Click here to see Nicole sans her calling card.

My buddy Chad Gibbs who wrote the book God & Football is at work on a new sports rivalry book. This one took him to Fenway Park, where the crowd was singing. Click here.

We are closing in on the last few months of this school year, which means it’s FIELD TRIP time. I used to accompany my children on field trips. I still remember walking Ashley and Shelby across the street as we headed somewhere, who knows where, in 3rd grade. But by the time Konnie got old enough, field trips had lost their luster for me. I agreed, who knows why, to help with the field trip to Portland. We weren’t two hours down the road when Konnie was crying because all the other girls were picking on her. I encouraged her to ignore them and just sit with mama. But later that day when one of those same girls said something ugly to another girl — not even my own daughter — I told her to quit being such a bitch. Needless to say, that was my last field trip, ever.  Not my finest hour as a mom. That and the time I climbed the fence at the ballgame yelling at the ref about a bad call he made — not on my son — but my girlfriend’s boy. Lawd. I was a crazy mom.

Billy Coffey is a redneck like me but he handles these field trips much better than I do. I’m warning you ahead of time, though, you want to read this one when you ain’t wearing make-up. Click here.

And just because it makes me smile: