Booze & Pills

Everytime I have house guests lately, I go to offer them drinks and find the alcohol is gone.

Which is odd. Cause I almost never drink -- which always surprises people, who seem to think I wander around the house all the time with a martini in one hand and a half-nekkid sweet young thang in the other.But I average about two drinks a year: a margarita on the first hot summer day, and maybe champagne on New Year's or at a wedding.

And since I don't drink and diminish the reserves, I've always had the best-stocked bar in town with multiple bottles of what I'm told is the best vodka, bourbon,gin etc -- and one really crummy bottle of some sort of spiced rum that I used to make rum raisin rice pudding with (til my stepdad sneaked into it and drank it; seriously, if that isn't one of those "you might be an alcoholic if..." moments, you will die a drunk).

I never notice the supply level until I offer it to company -- and so far this year I'm missing two bottles of bourbon and two of vodka.That's a lotta hooch.No one's bothered the gin.

And no, I didn't drink them in a moment of Ambien-amnesia. I ambien-EAT, and I always see the crumbs the next day.I do other Ambien things too in my sleep -- but again, there's always evidence. I would notice the empty bottles.

I really don't think the cleaning ladies are likely suspects, which mostly leaves the Hot Sorority Visigoths next door (they have access to my spare fridge). They're so nice, and they made me muffins... But they do have a lotta guests.

So today I find myself at the Rite Aid buying booze. A lotta booze.
And filling prescriptions.Lotta pills. (Nothing very exciting or illicit. Believe me. If I wanted that stuff, I'm sure they sell it at the bus stop right outside my office.)

And running into a LOT of people I know.

All of whom arched their eyebrows at the contents of my basket.
All I needed was a half-dressed Sweet Young Thang and I coulda really kept the rep alive.

One, One Thousand: who wins a dog?

I remember when the one thousandth guy signed on to be my Facebook friend, he posted on the wall (appropos of nothing in particular), "I'm one thousand! I win a dog!!"

The little clicker this morning turned over to the one-thousandth click on this homemade, makeshift blog. (Seriously. I know it's sad. You can't imagine just how technologically illiterate I am.)

So I guess somebody wins a dog.

Whoever you are, thanks for reading. I guess this means we'll be taking a trip to the Humane Society a little later.

Red Light/Green Light

So my dad calls up yesterday to tell me that Uncle Woody just heard some news about their family friend Charlie, who lives in Western Kentucky. He couldn't just TELL me, without some fairly long and involved details going back 50 years, but the Reader's Digest condensed version is this:

Charlie stopped at a red light.

One of his buddies happened to be behind him in traffic.

When the light turned green, and Charlie didn't move, his friend got out to investigate -- see if he could help out with engine trouble -- and Charlie was slumped dead over the steering wheel. Heart attack.

My completely inappropriate response was: "That is AWESOME!"

I mean, if you could live a great life -- Charlie was 70; never sick a day; lived and worked on a hugely successful and beautiful farm (all paid for); and was by all accounts, the happiest guy you could ever meet with never a moment's plan of "retirement" -- and then you could just DROP DEAD in the space of time it takes from the light to go from red to green? How FANTASTIC would that be?!

Charlie's death was the happiest story I heard all week.  And I mean that in the kindest, most respectful, admiring way possible.

What I was reading at the time my Dad called was "Lackluster marriage enlivened by cancer scare" from the Onion's Twitter feed.

George and Maureen McKay's stagnant, passionless 36-year marriage was briefly enlivened recently by Maureen's late-May cancer scare.

"When the doctor told us Maureen had terminal stomach cancer, our priorities instantly changed," said George, 57, who had steadily grown more distant from his wife over the decades. "Suddenly, all that mattered was spending those final days together." "Last week, we found out the doctor made a misdiagnosis," George continued. "Now, thank God, everything's back to the way it was before."

As soon as Maureen's stomach problems were found to be nonfatal, the couple returned to their normal mode of interaction: icy silence punctuated by the occasional bickering over petty household matters...

Still, the couple has their memories of the whirlwind three weeks. One moment in particular sticks out in Maureen's mind. A few days after the misdiagnosis, George presented her with a thick woolen sweater to wear around the house if she felt cold. It had been years since he had bought her a present out of the blue.

"I was so touched that I cried," said Maureen, holding up the unattractive purple-and-green sweater. "Before, I would have made fun of this ugly thing and shoved it in the closet, but instead, I wore it every day. I mean, until I found out I was okay. I haven't worn it since. It's really not my style."

Settling back into their pre-cancer-scare routine, the couple has canceled the vacation they had planned, deciding it would be wiser to put the money toward a new roof on their home.

"Boy, am I glad that's all over," George said. "Now we can get back to being a normal married couple again."

Me? I want to go out like Charlie.

"The Bubble"

"Beautiful people are treated differently from moderately pleasant looking people. They live in a Bubble. A bubble of free drinks, kindness, and outdoor sex." 

- Jack Donaghy, 30 Rock

I wish I still had a picture of last summer's Summer Romance, but it's several BlackBerries later now so you'll just have to take my word for it that he wasn't an hallucination.The only description I can think of is, imagine the best-looking Baldwin brother (the one who doesn't even exist he's so handsome), and make him about 3x better looking and maybe 5 inches taller. As my friend SandraL described him "Now THAT is just a little bit of all-right."

If I could post the pic (and that's assuming I could figure out how to do that), you'd KNOW exactly why I was so invested in the whole Liz Lemon/Don Draper storyline on 30 Rock.

Geeks like me loooove the stories where the Tina Feys of this world hook up with the Jon Hamms.(In this particular scenario, I would be the Tina Fey.)

And we love it even more when the Tina Feys release the Jon Hamms back into the wild.

That isn't exactly how my summer romance played out.

It was more like, we spent a lot of time at Starbucks (he was an alcoholic -- the kind who doesn't drink any more; I forget what they're called; dry drunks?); we went out to eat a lot (which I really hated because he always wanted to pay and I always got the sense his business wasn't going well); and then we stopped.

And by stopped, I mean he dumped me.And by dumped me, I mean: we saw each other on a Saturday and made plans to grab a bite later in the week and then I never heard from him again. Ever.
(My mother is still convinced he's dead. A guy I went out with later speculated "he probably just ran out of money." Which I was insulted by, since I am actually a very cheap date.)

Anyway. He was a mystery to me before, during, and after.

People always say extraordinary good looks are like a great ocean view -- you quickly grow immune and it becomes ordinary -- but I'm not so sure. I actually watched a waiter at Buddy's pour hot coffee all over this guy's boot because he couldn't take his eyes off him. And I think the waiter was straight.He was just THAT good looking.

But, much like Liz Lemon's doctor boyfriend (who was confused by the Heimlich) he was otherwise admittedly unremarkable.

For fun, he liked to play poker. He thought Vegas was a great vacation. He might HAVE thought it was ok to marinate salmon in Gatorade, and it seems entirely likely he would not have been able to use irony properly in a sentence. (Liz: "he can't play tennis. He can't cook. He's as bad at sex as I am. But he has no idea.")

Awhile after he dumped me, I posted on Facebook that I was maybe ready for a new boyfriend -- "tall and handsome as the last one, but smarter this time."

My friend Linda thought that was mean, and my response was that this guy would NEVER figure out Facebook. (MySpace sure, but not Facebook.)

Although to be fair, he did find my Twitter all on his own...

And I only wish that meant what it sounds like it means.

I eventually realized he didn't require a rebound when I remembered that I only went out with him in the first place because HE was a rebound from the even BETTER looking guy who had broken my heart at Christmas (ok, imagine Jake Gyllenhaal, but about 5 inches taller and in MUCH better shape).

Apparently... I really AM that shallow.

Liz Lemon is just a better, more evolved woman than I am.

*#@(!!$*

OK, I admit it.

I briefly deviated from my Lenten swearing ban over pizza with Dave and Julie last night.

To make it worse, I was eating the Karma Something Something pizza at the time, which probably makes it worse.

According to Twitter, my atonement will take the form of planting the number of trees commensurate with the number of swear words at this year's ReForest the Bluegrass.

Julie has said, as instigators, they feel like they should help dig the holes.

I promptly agreed. Because if there's anything more Lenten than blaming the other guy, I don't know what it is.

In the spirit of full disclosure: these are the exceptions I have allowed during the ban: ass, dumbass, and ass-clown. But not "asshole." (It's in quotes, so I'm not actually saying it.) My rationale is if it can make it into prime time or daytime TV, then it's fair.

My favorite words are all part of the ban, and all contain the letter F. (Dinner definitely included a transgression. Or two.)

What is funny is that I now notice my friends swearing, and then apologizing -- as if they've offended me. Ha. I have had MARINES apologize for my language, so I don't know what it would take to offend me. (I really don't use the C-word. I don't like it. And out of respect for my religious friends, there are a few, shall we say, Christ-centered, expressions that I don't use in their presence. And I only "damn" inanimate objects, not people, because I wouldn't want it done to me. As for the F word... well, you see where I'm going...)

I think my response to my friends swearing during this penitent season is more akin to smokers who've given up cigarettes, and no matter how often they're exposed to them, they never lose the desperate longing to indulge.

So you might want to cover your ears sometime around Easter.

Max and Lorraine

Nobody believes that I hide the brand-name stuff when my parents visit, but I do.

Then I usually forget where I put everything and have to go buy more.

Right now, I can't find the Advil.

And I need the Advil, because I fell down the stairs last night and got banged up head to toe. Which is all THEIR fault.

I tried to tuck them in by 10, but no, they HAD to watch Anderson Cooper. Followed by Jon Stewart. And then Colbert. At 72 decibels.

After that, I said enough. Lights out. They didn't have to sleep. They could just lie there quietly.

But no. One of them sneaked downstairs and turned on the heat. Mom sneaked down for the last of the pumpkin pie ice cream. My stepdad sneaked down for bourbon. (Usually, I remember to hide it because I have rules against Alcoholics and Diabetics killing themselves under my roof, but I'd been making sweet potato soup with it and forgot it was out.)

They "sneak" and "creep" about like a herd of elephants. Doors slam. Windows rattle. Bowls and glasses get dropped.

Part of this is because they can't hear, so they don't know how much noise they make.

Part of it is, they refuse to turn on the lights, and instead use their flashlights to stumble around the house in the dark -- don't ask me why, but I THINK it's because they think it's less obtrusive, and they won't disturb anybody.

They are somewhat less than successful.

Thru all this, I got up several times -- mainly to go downstairs to get something to drink, to chase down more Ambien.

Everytime I did, I'd quietly shut their bedroom door -- so I could turn on the @?#* lights and figure out where I was going.

Everytime I did, one of them would pop their little heads up like whack-a-mole: "Leave that open!! It's stuffy in here!!" (Yeah. Maybe because they turned the HEAT on when it was 60 degrees outside.)

So I'd turn the lights back off and just feel my way thru the house by memory.

Except my memory forgot that they'd ALSO re-arranged all the furniture (in anticipation of improving on my rudimentary vacuuming skills).

That's how I managed to catch my foot on an end table; fall over it (where the edge stabbed me solidly in the ribcage); and then grab it and take it with me as I tumbled down four or five stairs before my head conveniently broke my fall on the left bannister.

This is where them being half-deaf came in handy. (That, and my Lenten resolution against swearing. Mostly I just moaned and whimpered, and let me tell you, it is not nearly as satisfying.)

My mom happened to notice I was black and blue from head to toe as I was headed out the door to work.

My (admittedly less-than-rational) response was "LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO!!" and told her that's what she got for turning on the stoopid heat and leaving the stoopid bedroom door open and turning the stoopid lights off.

She just patted my head, handed me a BioFreez patch, and said reproachfully, "Well you shoulda turned the lights on Goofy. You know we can sleep thru anything."

Yeah. Apparently.

Now I just gotta go buy more Advil. And Ambien.

The new Facebook's here; the new Facebook's here!

I saw the new Facebook for the first time yesterday, and as someone who resists change with every fiber of my being....I gotta say, I kinda like it.

It's heavy on the status updates (which I like), and with one click ("ignore all"), it gets rid of all those Mob/Green/Starbucks/Seahorse/FlowerPatch/Flair requests (which I never liked or understood).

Access to my groups and fan pages is cumbersome, but I'll probably figure it out. (And there are too MANY groups and fan pages on there as it is. I don't want to be the 1,432,245 person to join anything. Stop asking me. Please. And if the cause you ask me to join directly violates the separation of church and state, consider yourself "de-friended.")

Now that Oprah's there, and Mark Zuckerberg apparently built his page himself with his own bare hands, I can't help but like it a LITTLE less.

But I'm really enjoying watching @MarthaStewart get the hang of Twitter. Somebody must've finally told her she had to stop yammering on about those damn @Flor tiles (no matter HOW much they paid her).

Dr. Oz

So I got a little more pro-active with my whole Deep Vein Thrombosis /Kidney Stone/ Passive-Aggressive diverticular Ovary yesterday.

The one nice thing about having taken care of my parents during their multitude of death-defying diagnoses over the last few years, is that I have amassed years and years of relationships with the best specialists in town (starting at Markey Cancer Center and working over to St. Joe for the heart surgeries).

Surprising all my relatives (who cringe a lot and beg me to be quiet), I've discovered that all of our good doctors have been very happy to answer the lists of questions I prepare beforehand as they relate to before/during/and aftercare. (I've fired all the bad doctors. I am not rude. I am specific.) They know I'm there as an advocate, and to help take care of my family. I'm not there to second-guess them, or play doctor; I just do my homework quietly and want them to give me the most thorough answers they can. (For good measure, I take along a copy of Dr. Oz's The Good Patient, and I conspicuously flip through it.) As directed by Dr. Oz, I make sure we regularly bring pizza and donuts to the nurses, and they all get cards from us every Christmas.

My parents are accustomed to small-town care where the doctors are never to be questioned, and where even the most routine appointment will mean an 8-hour wait in a room-full of sick people. Left to their own devices, they would put up with it too. Regardless of their protestations to the contrary, I fully believe they would be dead had I not dragged them out of there and relocated their health care here. (At least my Dad -- who had his triple-bypass here -- agrees with me.)

Seeing as how they all pour so much well-insured money into the Lexington Health Care system, I do consider us good customers.

And seeing as how I can't seem to get any of my own health-care providers to pay attention to me these days, I didn't see anything wrong with piggy-backing a few questions onto my stepdad's post-op follow-up yesterday with his GI/surgeon. A. He's one of my favorite doctors ever; B. He saved my stepdad's life (though it really was touch and go there for awhile, no kidding); and C. He didn't mind that I blogged and twittered the whole thing. Transparency didn't seem to scare him one bit.

Yes, I realize it was a little unorthodox to BOTHER him. And yes, I realize it's the equivalent of a rude guest who pulls up their shirt at a cocktail party and says, "hey Doc, would you mind looking at this place on my back?"... but y'know, I'd just gone beyond good manners.

So I slipped him my cell number with a note that said I needed some medical advice. It's not like I was hitting on him. And I figure, he's a GI surgeon; this is the anatomical neighborhood he works in (it's not like I asked their dentist).

My parents are horrified... Beyond embarrassed.

But hey, it worked. He called me at 6 o'clock this morning. I asked him if he could give me a good referral based on the pain I was explaining (the whole Deep Vein Thrombosis/Kidney Stone/Passive-Aggressive diverticular ovary), and he went one better and said he'd do my test himself. And he's figuring out some new ways that don't involve me drinking two liters of liquified sulfur-Pez.

Sigh. He's like my own Dr. Oz.

He just works a little further South.

FB vs Twitter

I haven't seen the new Facebook layout yet. It doesn't show up on the BlackBerry so I'll probably wait and see it Monday on the big screen.

If it's as bad as they say, it may cement my incipient suspicion that I'm more of a Twitter gal than a Facebook gal.

Don't get me wrong - I'm as addicted as the next person - but I noticed a long time ago, I don't use FB the way most of my friends do.

As my buddy Ian and I discussed over the Christmas Eve dinner table - we don't play Scrabulous; we don't send each other electronic cups of coffee; we don't tend your virtual garden; and if you send us a seahorse to put back in the ocean, it'll just die. Ian and I don't have any pieces of Flair. Whenever I get a L'il Green Patch request, my response is that I gave at the Office. And I really did. (Even if I did get flamed on Facebook the other night for blowing the tops off mountains because I subsidized KU by turning on the air conditioning. I remain certain that I do more than average to keep the tops of mountains intact.) My new old friends @AliThinks and @AllanThinks suggested by Facebook standards, it meant I'd "arrived." I felt a little better, but in truth, it always hurts my feelings a little when someone hates me. For days, I found myself defensively explaining to everyone I could get stopped just how eco-friendly I am.

But blood feuds and enemy-making aside, I really just use Facebook to look in on my friends -- see what they're doing, and let them know what I'm up to.

That is, in essence, Twitter. Without all the flair. Without the Scrabulous. Without the Big Blue Waves that I don't know how to catch, much less pass on.I wish there was a little bit more of the FB style profiling info on Twitter -- but name, politics, religion, and marital status all become fairly quickly apparent anyway.

It isn't, as Brian Williams suggested to Jon Stewart, about always having an interesting answer to the question "what are you doing right now?" As with real-life civilized discourse, it's perfectly permissible to sit quietly and shut up.

While I was very late to the facebook party (and was dragged there kicking and screaming by my pals Elle and Kimmy- and I love them for it), I was actually a fairly early adopter of Twitter. By Local standards. (I was on there way after my friends @AustinChronicle, for example, but way before the local Daily Paper).

I kept reading about it in the Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) and thought "this is just crazy enough to work."

Granted, I was slow to catch on.I thought it was more like a Radio you broadcast on, when it's actually more like a CB where you have conversations (to go back to my 70s roots where I was perfectly happy with my 8 track tapes thank you).

Luckily, my official TwitterTutor, @AliThinks -- who knew me on Facebook -- took me aside and showed me the ropes.

She taught me how to follow BACK, and now I can filter my news exactly the A.D.H.D. way I like it. Most of the time @WSJ feeds right on top of @nprPolitics interrupted by bursts of sanity from @Bittman and @MMFA.

She also taught me how to make new friends -- like @MissKristina who's sending me a Ryan Adams bootleg that I wouldn't even know existed if it were not for Twitter.

Not that giving me stuff is the only way to make friends -- but I highly recommend it.

(@ChefDaveO would STILL be one of my favorite people even if he hadn't shared his stash of Baby Bok Choy.)

And that's really what I love about Twitter -- it's a way to gather all my favorite people in the world together in one place and hear what's on their minds.

I'm sure there's a danger -- as with all things online, it could be isolating rather than uniting: everybody sits in their respective houses while maintaining the illusion of communication and connectivity -- but I find it's opening my world up.

I was a FAN of my friend @BiancaLynne for a long time before I even met her, for example -- but Facebook was where we eventually got together and made a plan to have coffee.

The same was true of my BFF -- who now schools me in all things NewMedia and patiently tolerates my baby steps. I was a fan for years (decades in fact) before we ever had a real-life lunch. Facebook is what facilitated that.

My preferences for Twitter over FB will likely end up being moot -- everyday I get a new Tweet that half the people I know are getting kicked off FB.

But for now, you can find me on twitter http://twitter.com/RealityTrucks
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Leave a Msg. Or a txt. Or a tweet. Or an FB. Or a Skype.

Do I Stutter?

Since I communicate for a living, I usually don't have a hard time making myself understood.

I'm pretty ... plain-spoken. Forthright. Forthcoming.

Which is why I'm so frustrated with my doctor right now -- a great doc and diagnostician, who -- I should say, has taken great care of me for decades.

But now we're at an impasse.

I'm not sick (as far as I know) -- I just have this recurring left side pain. It comes. It goes. Sometimes it's so bad I can't walk. Sometimes it goes away after an Advil.And some days, it doesn't show up at all.

It's not an ache. It's not a strain. It's not normal.

My doc ruled out the usual suspect Girlie parts, and then decided to send me on to the GI guy. Whom I know. He isn't very likeable but he is a VERY good doctor.

I really don't think this pain is GI-related (since I don't have a single GI symptom) -- but I'm trying to be open-minded, making room for the possibility that I did not, in fact, go to Med School.

Unlike many patients, I don't object to the prospect of the recommended colonoscopy. If it's gotta be done, it's gotta be done. I know the TEST isn't nearly as bad as the rap it gets, and I know this guy is good, and that he's a big fan of drugs.

All I keep telling them is: I can't drink the two-liter prep.

And all they keep hearing is: I WON't.

I'm not being difficult. I'm not a two-year old.

When I say I can't, that's what I mean. I can't keep the stuff down.

I had these tests back in college, and I couldn't keep it down then either. They attempted the tests, more than once, and then eventually sent me home to fast. For a long time. Eventually I came back.Eventually they did the tests.And I never was able to drink the prep.I was RIGHT. They were WRONG.

It was a simple procedure made unnecessarily complicated and expensive -- time and money wasted -- just because the Doc at the time refused to believe I'd never lost an argument over what will make me throw up.

My current doc knows all this.

But what I keep being told is, "We can't help you if you won't take the test."

Lots of people WON'T take this test. They refuse to. I get that. But I'm not in that camp.I would. I would (if it was necessary) I just need some slightly customized instructions on getting ready for it.

So, what I got instead of help or a diagnosis, was a referral to my ob-gyn. In two weeks.

(I've dated enough doctors to know the words NON COMPLIANT have probably now been stamped on my chart, which loosely translates as "Let her die.")

And the OB probably won't be able to figure it out either.

And meanwhile, I don't think I can watch any more House.

Or NBC News.

Tonight included a segment on a poor girl who had this mystery-left-side pain for YEARS -- and was mis-diagnosed with everything from bladder infections to lazy ovaries. (Am pretty sure mine are antagonistic.)

What she HAD was Deep Vein Thrombosis.

She didn't die. But the clot got so big and old and hard now they CAN't remove it. (Or I don't know: maybe they WON't).

All I know is, if THAT's what I have, everybody is gonna be really sorry for being so Mean to me.

A Lenten Miracle?

In recent years, I've noticed a trend of parents removing coffee tables from their living rooms -- apparently pediatricians got together and decided they were Death Traps. Kids were bumping their heads on them or something.

Mostly, I've noticed it leaves the rest of us without a place to put our drinks down. And that's annoying.

We did not grow up in a household where the family revolved around the children. NOTHING was child-proofed. Nothing was moved to high shelves out of our reach.We were just taught to leave stuff alone. And if either of us had gotten a split lip crashing into the coffee table, I'm pretty sure the response woulda been "watch out for the furniture dumbass."

Good or bad, the occasional unobstructed light socket gave me an early appreciation for the value of going outta my way to not hurt myself. Our only visit to the E.R. as children involved my brother (now the chef) slicing his thumb open on a tuna can. (Probably he was going to make us a lovely nicoise or something - I don't remember).

Consequently, I have zero tolerance for pain. I have no experience with it. And that's by design. If something hurts, I just stop doing it.I'm not an athlete.I don't have kids. I'm rarely caught doing anything that might result in injury. I've never broken a bone (unless you count my toe, which I dropped a beer stein on in high school). I've never spent the night in the hospital as a patient.I'm there a lot as a bystander, and they TERRIFY me.

So I was SCARED when I woke up a couple weeks ago in so much pain I couldn't walk. I couldn't move. It was in my lower left side. It was so frightening, I diagnosed myself with kidney stones -- mostly on the basis of people saying it's pain like you've never felt before. This fit.
Because it was deadline, I managed to tough it out for three days of horse-sized, dentist-prescribed ibuprofen and several gallons of cranberry juice.

On the fourth day, I managed to drag myself into my doctor's office. I explained this pain was like, a Seven (on the scale of one to ten I've seen them quiz my parents on in the hospital). Til then, I don't think I'd ever topped a three, so this got my attention.

She was sympathetic, but a couple negative ultra-sounds later, she said a colonoscopy was all that modern medicine had left to offer me.

Seriously? Cause I think that's about as barbaric as leeches.

After a lot of time on WebMD (where I first convinced myself I had prostatitis), I couldn't believe I possibly had diverticulitis (the odds-on favorite) mainly because I eat better than about 90 percent of the American population, notwithstanding the occasional post-Ambien box of Cheese Nips.

I coulda lived with the test itself -- I know from an endoscopy I had several years back that my G.I. guy doesn't believe pain builds character and he doesn't let his patients suffer -- but I also know that the prep for the test involves a gallon of something that tastes like liquid Pez.Forget it.
The nurse clarified that the FDA took the pill-prep off the market in December (so I barely missed the deadline), and now it's only TWO LITERS of stuff to drink.

I didn't schedule the test. I knew Katie Couric would be disappointed in me, but I can't drink two liters of something that tastes GOOD. I wouldn't be able to drink two liters of iced tea if it didn't have the proper tea-to-lemon ratio, or was served at the wrong temperature. I couldn't see the liquid Pez in my future.

I'm always amazed at my Mom-friends NOT because they get thru labor - but because they survive drinking that flat orange sprite type drink that they use to test for gestational diabetes.

So I weaned myself down to Advil, ate a lot of Activia (because Jamie Lee Curtis would never steer us wrong), and prepared to die.

And three days ago, I finally woke up with no pain for the first time in two weeks.

I don't know if I was spontaneously cured, because I still don't know what was wrong with me.

I just filed it under "miracle." Tex says Jesus probably healed me because I gave up swearing for Lent.

Poor Jesus.I hope he's not too busy.

I'm gonna be callin on him a lot, because if the last couple weeks is any indication of how my health future is going to play out, it's made for people who are made of sterner stuff than I am.