Sister Nancy Beth's true confessions

Sorry to have left you in a lurch, Christians, but the abdication of my blogging duties has been the stuff of the bitterest of tears. For you see, I have so gravely sinned against my mission of Christian Cosmetology that I have spent the past week hiding in sheer mortification of my many crimes against you. Father Joe assures me the first step of atonement is confessing it to you, so here goes: In a whirlwind embrace with that serpent Homosexuality, I bought a rather pricey Pottery Barn sofa and it just got delivered last Thursday.

Let it comfort you Christians to know that God's vengeance is mighty and swift. Within 45 minutes of its delivery, I threw my back out while dragging a heavy potted plant back to its location on mine & Jesus' walkway, truly a life-altering experience if ever there was one.

My prior run-in with severe lower back pain was when I was 21. I remember it being painful, but not enough to completely keep me down. I still managed to get through my shift at my part-time job, and I bounced back after a couple of days. Maybe it's been too many years since I experienced those intense muscle spasms, because whenever I'd hear someone say, "I threw my back out," I assumed it was along the lines of what I got over 15 or so years ago, rather than the horrible induction ritual into old age that it truly is. Let me now say that this egregious misconception has been corrected, and I offer my sincerest apologies to those of you whom I previously dismissed as a bunch of pussies.

Fortunately Jesus was able to get me in to my chiropractor that afternoon, who gave my spine a good cracking. I can only hope what happened next is a bad dream, but I seem to recall that my chiropractor then had one of those sexual predator/illegal immigrants you read about on Newsmax stroke a banned-in-Alabama-type apparatus on my lower right back & buttock while he plotted the Reconquista of Sister Nancy Beth's southwestern ladyparts. Oh, señor, that way lies only madness!

If that weren't basis enough for a lawsuit, I had to go to work the next day because Friday is the only day of the week when there's no one who can do relief reception at Conchita's Unisex Beauty Palace and the universe as we know it will collapse upon itself into an all-devouring black hole if it ever happens again, which it hasn't since 2001, but only because my back-up failed to show up. Bitch. Thank God for the long weekend, because you can be sure I spent Labor Day the way the Founding Fathers intended: grousing about all the anti-Christian persecution I must Suffer at my job.

Also in the midst of all this chaos comes an unexpected visit by my aunt from Minnesota, whom I met at LAX at 1:00 a.m. this morning. On our way home, some ditzy starlet crumpled the fender of the Praisemobile when she swerved into my lane to escape some particularly fearsome bit of animation from her hallucinations. Evidently she didn't even notice our brief moment of contact (the Praisemobile is nimble), so I had to shout her down to pull over. The damage looks slight, and she has offered to pay for the body work (we'll see how that goes...), but I am less than thrilled that I have to spend my time tracking down a reputable body shop and deal with the hassle of getting it fixed because she couldn't take the entire half-second it took to turn her head to make sure I wasn't in her blind spot.

The reason for my aunt's visit isn't entirely happy. I have a sister who may be in her very final days of cancer, thus my aunt's haphazard itinerary. Being unable to to move my body into certain positions, and feeling that even necessary motions for walking slow were agonizing gave me some insight into her illness, whose pain has radiated out of her abdomen and managed to slow her normal adult's gait to a standstill. She is now bedridden, and can barely stand up to use the bathroom. The past 18 months have been like watching someone being slowly crushed to death under an enormous rock, and the lone consolation for everyone is that it may be over soon. Then again, maybe it won't.

I'm sorry to be such an enormous downer, so I'll try to bring some Good News. Despite the obvious temptation to once again taste the Forbidden Fruit of the Homosexual Lifestyle taking up 37 square feet of of floorspace in my living room, it has only strengthened mine & Jesus' Traditional Marriage. My aunt slept on it last night and swore it was supremely comfortable, without any coaching on my part. Being able to comfortably accomodate an out of town relative struck me as plausible a sign of maturity as my aching back. So, despite the obvious moral lapse it was for all of us (let's face it, readers, you hardly gave me the moral support I needed to resist the siren's song of uppity home furnishings), I think we can say it ultimately may have been for the good. Let's just chalk this as another one for to "You gotta sin to get Saved."

Anyway, the pain has gradually subsided, and I have fulfilled my obligations to my aunt. For past week, I have spent as much time as I could afford lying on my left side, bent at the knees. This has hardly been conducive to great blogging, you might have noticed, so bored office workers of America, please know that I regret not being able to "put out" for you the last few days. Now that my my life has resumed its normally frenetic pace, I will try to be a more vigilant Witness for Christian Cosmetology and reward your visits with fresh Offerings. Praise Him!