The Coffee Talk Companion: "Sovereign of the Seas."

The Coffee Talk Companion is an ongoing feature in which we dissect and discuss former Facts of Life star Lisa Whelchel's online journal entries.

Lisa's on a cruise this week! Not only did she pick the laziest kind of vacation a human can take—a cruise—but, of course, it's a Christian cruise. AND she's still on the frickin' Daniel fast which totally negates the only reason EVER to take a cruise: to eat until you cry cheese. AND she forgoes writing about the cruise, which would have made for the best Coffee Talk entry, like, ever, to give us some more Bible-themed reflections on 2006. Can you imagine?



Eh. Well, there are pictures of Justice included (old pictures, but we'll take whatever Justice we can get), so we'll let her start yappin'.

I’m writing this from my cabin on a cruise ship. Now, before you get too jealous let me just remind you that I’m STILL on the Daniel fast! Yes, on a cruise. Actually, it hasn’t been as hard as I thought it would be. Although, I have no intention of eating one more piece of fruit in any form: raw, cooked, dried, preserved, rolled up, or chocolate-covered for the whole month of February. And, I can’t wait for my first cup of coffee on Sunday morning! Yea!

Hey. Sometimes it's the little things. You know? Yea!

This is the K-Love Friends and Family cruise. Premiere Christian Cruises puts this all together and they are the same people who will also be putting together the Music Boat cruise to Jamaica in April of this year. If that sounds interesting to you please click on the banner on my home page and find out more about the trip.

Oh, god, we are SO tempted to book passage on the Music Boat cruise. Actually, no, we're more tempted to try to get Rosie's gay cruise to book the same schedule and follow the Music Boat cruise around all week.

And do we think all the Caubles will be on this cruise? Well, we know Steve will be somewhere else, but what about the kids? We ask only because it would be the perfect opportunity to put into effect Operation: Donut Rescue. Anyone on board? (On board—we're so clever! Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.)

I took Clancy on their Girls’ Getaway cruise two years ago and she celebrated her 13th birthday on board. So, I’ll be taking Haven on that cruise this year to celebrate her 16th birthday.

Ah. Never mind. Operation: Donut Rescue will have to wait until the Rapture.

So, I got to thinking, I would really like to take Tucker on a cruise, just the two of us, before he leaves home. Since this cruise was scheduled for the same week as his 17th birthday I called up my friend at Premiere Christian cruises and asked if I could hop on board even if I wasn’t speaking on the cruise. He shocked me when he said, “Lisa, I just sent my last son off to college and I so believe in what you want to do I will give you a cabin and all you’ll need to take care of is the tax.” Oh my goodness, what a gracious and wonderful gift of time and memories with my son.

He shocked her?!?! Imagine our shock to learn someone let Lisa on a cruise ship for free. Is it decreed in Revelations that, Come the turn of the new millennium, one woman above all others shall be selected to ruineth the vacations of millions? You know, Christ was crucified about 2000 years ago. It's time to move on, people. Geez.

But that’s not all, my best friend in the whole wide world, AngelaThomas.com, was to be speaking on the cruise so I would also get to spend time with AngelaThomas.com, which is too rare since LisaWhelchel.com and AngelaThomas.com live in different states and both have crazy busy lives. (By the way, you really must check out her website, www.angelathomas.com to see if she is speaking near your home town. And sign up for her Mailing List while you’re there!)

Oh, what hysterics! Lisa refers to her BFF as a URL and implies that her BFF refers to her as a URL, too. Because they don't have time in their busy lives to actually speak to each other! So they just end up reading each other's journal entries! And then call each other their domain names! Oh, that is rich. Well, we'd like to play, too, LisaWhelchel.com and AngelaThomas.com. From now on, please refer to us as SociopathicGluttonForPunishment.com.



Right this minute, Tucker is waiting for me to walk upstairs for dinner. That, plus the fact that I made a promise to you last week, means I will be posting a few more random journal entries from my 2006 personal Bible study journal for this week’s Coffee Talk. (The rest of the pictures this week are from the same time period my personal ramblings were written.)

And this is the place where SociopathicGluttonForPunishment.com seriously contemplates JumpingOffTheEmpireStateBuilding.com. Since 2007 began, we've lost our job, had back surgery, have run out of milk TWICE and lost our maid Clarita to a random INS sweep. (Fine, one of those things didn't happen.) Alas, we don't have the strength to analyze Lisa's Bible Code this week. Sorry! So we'll just go ahead and list five key words from her monkey business that we feel best sum up her thoughts. Dot com.

1.) Zerubbabel
2.) warfare
3.) sacrifice
4.) sufferings
5.) death

Actually, sorry, those five words best sum up how we feel when we subject ourself to Lisa's thoughts. Her list of inspiration would probably look something more like this:

1.) Chick-fil-A Chargrilled Chicken Club Sandwich
2.) Bloomin' Onion
3.) Diet Dr. Pepper
4.) Appeteazer
5.) Michael's

Which is interesting because if you take letters from all the words from the Biblical portion of this week's Coffee Talk entry and put them together, you can form the above list. Well, you do have to add your own "z", but still. However, we will mercifully forego reprinting here this week's Biblical blather. (This act of kindness could best be compared to driving from Tallahassee to Miami without having to go through the seven hours of bullshit in between.) Should you want to subject yourself to the full Coffee Talk entry, knock yourselves out. But don't say you haven't been warned. Repeatedly. Like every week since July 2006.

That out of the way, let us get to this week's most important 2006 Revelation for us: We were not aware that before his hosting job at Chili's, Tucker was a drive-thru attendant at Chick-fil-A!!!!!!!!!!!!



We are thus assuming that Tucker finally got his cruise at 17 (as opposed to Haven's 16 and Clancy's overachieving 13) because of this Chick-fil-A/Chili's bifecta. Nicely, played, Tuck. See, this leads us to once again aver that Tucker is totes working a master plan. He's reaping the benefits (meager as they may be) of growing up Cauble without catering to his mom's Christian needs. Rather, he's catering to his mom. Literally. Tucker's smoke-and-mirrors use of chain restaurant employment is nicely distracting ol' Leese from the fact that he's, well, wearing a Led Zeppelin T-shirt.



In the words of Deniece Williams, Let's hear it for the boy! We are THIS close to emailing Tucker on MySpace and asking him to spearhead Operation: Donut Rescue. But, no. We don't want to fuck up Tuck's plan. We are now convinced that as 2007 progresses (and stops being the asshole it's been so far) and Tucker approaches 18, we'll be seeing some very interesting Tuck-related changes.

Stop. Justice time.



And...

Go.

Oh my goodness, I can’t believe that in two “Coffee Talks” I’m still only through May 2006 of journal reflections.

Yeah, us either. Have no fear, folks, we'll be treating the subsequent 2006 reflections much as we treated this week's—by not treating them at all. Though, we of little faith have little faith that Lisa will actually complete her reflections. She left us hanging midway through last fall's "Churches I Have Known" tour, and we couldn't have been more pleased. Well, we could have if she'd never begun it at all, but that, unfortunately, wasn't up to us.

Well, I guess I’ll have to continue another week (or two.)

Well, if you're going to threaten us yet again, lady, we'll respond, yet again, accordingly: PERIOD OUTSIDE THE FUCKING CLOSE PARENTHESIS.

By the way, I’m back from dinner and now I have to pack my bags, set them outside the door and meet Tucker for a late-night concert by “The Afters.”

Hmmm. The Afters. Yeah, they're Christian, but remember, Tucker had no choice. He was trapped on a boat. This was all part of the plan, people. Trust us, after the Afters, Tucker put mom to bed and sneaked down to the staff bar. The booze is cheap down there and the staff barely speaks English. Meaning, they're drunk and have no idea they're on a Christian cruise. Oh, and we know these facts only because we lived and worked on a cruise ship for four months. But that's another story for another time.



“Thank You, God, for the gift of this cruise, a son who still wants to hang out with his mom, a best friend I can’t get enough of, cyber friends who care enough to read my personal ramblings, the treasures you hide in Your Word just for me, the promises attached to fasting, and the hope of coffee in only two more days! I am lavishly blessed by Your generous Father’s heart.”

And, if we may...

Thank you, Lisa, for the gift of the cruise portion of this week's Coffee Talk entry, a woman who still wants to hang out with her son, a best friend who's a Web site, the insistent use of the term "cyber friends," the treasures hidden in such sentences as "And, I can’t wait for my first cup of coffee on Sunday morning! Yea!", the promises attached to more unhealthy fasting and the hope of another Coffee Talk entry in only seven more days! We are lavishly blessed by your generous, unsolicited accounts of visits to what most of us refer to as reality.



Or not.