Vicodin coma

I spent the last 5.5 days in a Vicodin coma, brought on my tooth pain I ignored until I couldn't stand it anymore. Actually, the first couple of days was in a Tylenol-3 with codeine-coma, but in any event, I was incapacitated.

10 things I learned while in a Vicodin coma:

1. The next time I have a glimmer of tooth pain, I'm heading to Dr. Marshall. I will not stop for red lights or pedestrians. I will park on the street and demand he see me Right Now.


2. As soon as Dr. Marshall thinks the words "root canal" I will drive straight to Dr. John Slavens. I will not stop for red lights or pedestrians. I will park on the street and beg for him to see me Right Now.

3. If a parental figure is curled into a ball fighting not to scream with pain, praying to every God ever mentioned to stop the pain, the offspring of said parent will poke you and ask in a quivering voice, "Mommy, are you dead?"

4. You can read books in the odd 20 minutes or so of clarity that comes between pill feedings, but you won't remember any of them.

5. You can watch TV, but it's best not to lest those infommercials seem like a good deal. Of course by the time you drag yourself out of bed, find your purse, then your wallet, then your credit card, the pain or the coma will be back and you won't place the order anyway. So I guess you can watch TV; just don't have your credit card handy.

6. Your husband can tell you all sorts of lovely secrets or berate you nonstop and you won't care. You won't even see his lips move, let alone know what he's saying.

7. You can try to respond to email but you won't be able to form complete sentences or come close to proper grammar.

8. You can try to talk to your friends, professional peers and colleagues, but you'll just scare them when you sound like Courtney Love or Lindsay Lohan anytime past midnight. Remember the adage about it being better to keep quiet and have folks wonder if you're stupid than to open your mouth and prove it. In this case, you have the coma as a defense, but you're better off just crawling into a ball and shunning everyone.

9. When you do emerge from the house to go for the root canal, don't bother trying to make yourself look human. You're not human. You've been suffering and sweating and cursing for what seems like years. Your only obligation is to be clean. The good doctor is going to stick a rubber dam across your mouth and focus on a tooth. His staff will be nice, but they just need the paperwork filled out and signed with something close to legible. And if you have to go to the pharmacy, please. They've seen worse than you, and you won't be holding a handgun. Well I can't speak for all of you, but you won't likely need the handgun. You can pretty up later. When the pain wrinkles have relaxed and you can talk again.

10. You will lose weight. However, a little-known side effect of Vicodin is constipation. So while you might register a weight loss, you're still packin' (if you know what I mean.) Once you stop taking the little white pills of salvation, you might have an exit wound the size of Alaska, but you won't mind -- and if you're lucky the pain won't be so much to send you back to the Vicodin wagon.

To sum up:

If you have tooth pain, find a dentist in a hurry. You're risking your child's peace of mind and your marriage.

If you need a great dentist and you're anywhere close to Indy, Dr. William K. Marshall is your man. I love him. So does Ali. I don't know that Jeff would feel comfortable professing his love, but he thinks Dr. Marshall is just swell.

(I thought I couldn't love a dentist more than I love Dr. Marshall, but to be fair, Dr. John Slavens is an endodontist. So I don't have to choose. If you ever need a root canal, he's your man. I personally hope to never see him again. In an official capacity, of course. But I don't want to see anyone else for this particular need. I would drive from six states away to see him. Of course I'd kill people along the way because I'd be in another Vicodin coma, but you get my point.

I'd write more but now I have to post great reports on the good doctors on Angie's List...I guess that's No. 11. If you have good dental health care providers, talk 'em up. I have had a few enemies in my time. On none of them (OK, maybe a couple) would I wish this pain.

I just don't understand...

So last week, I hit the beach. Well, the pool, actually. The point is that I was on vacation in Southern Florida for four days with a group not known for their ability to just say no to alcohol.

I did OK, although I never found the work out room. I did walk to breakfast, so that should count for something. And I stayed up late, so there had to be some extra activity points in there somewhere.

I managed to avoid the dessert tray the entire time. But I had my first ever sake bomb the first night out (that's a shot of sake in a glass of beer.) I followed that up with a double shot of tequila. And there may have been beer.

The next day, I decided that it would have simply been rude to reject the champagne that came poolside.

There was just no excuse for diving into the sour cream Lay's. Or the Doritos. But my boss force fed me the cookies. Really. He did. Oh, and there may have been mac-n-cheese at the Pro Bowl tailgate party. And beer. There was beer. But I should have earned at least one activity point for my stellar performance in the Tippy Cup Olympics.

So all in all, it was not my best Weight Watchers weekend. Compare it to the previous week where I worked out at least four times (at an hour a pop) AND I didn't go over my points. At all. That week, you may recally, I gained 0.2 pounds.

Last week? Know what happened last week? I lost that 0.2 pounds.

How is this right? I'm WEAK. The lesson I want to take away is that I can drink to excess, hang out by the pool and be none the worse off.

The lesson I should take is that I was darn lucky. That the intern worked some magic. That the scale is off. That I dreamed the whole thing. I just don't know.

But I have a plan.

I'm going to pretend it's Week 1 and just start all over. If I'm good and I still gain weight next Wednesday, I'm going to IHOP. Have you seen those new commercials about all-you-can-eat pancakes?

WW update 2

OK, so apparently the WW Cheerleader was right. Not that I expected my fat cells to flee like teenagers from household chores. My fat cells and I are life partners. I can't divorce them. My only hope is to kill them off one by one and hope their children don't come back to avenge their parent's death.

But I was good last week. I'm practically living on raw vegetables and food that comes in Weight Watchers boxes. And I'm working out.

So what happened when I stepped on the weekly weigh-in scale today? Up I went. Zero point two pounds.

The intern (I love her and one day I will learn her name) was quick to tell me that it was nothing and that my work outs probably are to blame.

God love her. I've fallen for that old, "muscle weighs more than fat" routine. It's a crutch that led me to stay in double digit sized jeans. My calves alone could feed a small country should I be left there and the only protein in sight. I can't really change that. But I'm not ready to give up.

But get this: in two days, I go on a four-day work trip to Miami-Ft. Lauderdale where booze and dessert and fat-filled entrees will be dangled before me 24-7. I'm determined to work out, but I don't know if I can stay on the straight and narrow. If I know me, I'll at least spend a moment or two on the curved and pudgy. I might even visit the crooked and bloated.

But I'll try.

Wish me luck. They have raw vegetables in South Florida, don't they?

WW update

After bitching about Weight Watchers last week, I feel the need not to recant but to temper my ranting just a little bit.

Today was weigh in day and while the thought of seeing the scales woke me up in a cold sweat this morning at 6:02, the big reveal showed that I have somehow rid myself of 7.2 pounds.

Do I believe it's really gone? No. It's out there hovering in the air like one of those tiny flies that you can never swat even though it keeps buzzing your face while you try to sleep. My fat likes me too much to leave for good. We've been together too long for it to just take off and leave.

So I'm not celebrating yet, but I AM sticking to the points system like grits on a redneck.

I had a conflicting meeting this morning with my WW weigh-in/meeting, so I darted in and out of it. The Mistress of Perk heard my number and this is the support she gave: "Don't expect that to continue."

She'd already given the warnings about plateauing on weight loss. I'd listened. I even followed the directions on calculating points and the extras for activity. I set my expectations really low.

I know it's going to get harder. And I know she was just trying to help. Hell, I don't even believe the scales. But a little: "You go girl" might have been better received.

Earlier in the week, I was describing my nascent WW experience to Jeff and Alison said, "What's perky" mean anyway? How can you be too perky?"

Cringing that I'd been less than nice about someone in front of Ali, I said, "It means too happy. You know, someone who's too cheerful and tries to push you into being too happy with them."

"Did you say too heavy?" she asked.

I sighed. "HAPPY. I said HAPPY."

So I remain too heavy but happy that this WW thing might not actually be a scam....Light some candles for me.... it's the start of another week and my great success on the scales means I lost a whole point of food I could have otherwise eaten!

No good deed...

Alisonisms

Ali was a great little trooper this weekend. We'd planned to go to the movies, make cookies, decorate the tree, shop a little, get our nails done.... but I got seriously sick and was in bed the whole weekend. I thought I was recovering and tried to help her with the cookies but thought I'd lose mine. It was terrible. But she didn't complain.

Jeff had planned to focus on a big case he's got, but he ended up helping with her -- a lot -- and taking care of me. They were both troopers.

Anyway, here's a collection of Alisonisms:

We were putting up the tree tonight (finally!)and Alison, still a believer, turned to me and casually informed me that Jimmy Vielee doesn't believe in Santa Clause. "And Jordan believes in the postal service."

***

I was combing through Alison's snarls, I mean curls, and I suggested that maybe we do something different with her hair. Lately she's wanted the "wild" look, which is no barrette, no even partial pony tail or braid. "No way, Mom." she said.

I asked her why -- she'd let me do whatever I wanted to before.

"I was more reasonable in the 1st grade," she said.

***

Ali came home with lots of papers in advance of our trip to Camp Tecumseh. On the last one, she added a little editorial note for me: No snaks. (translation: no snakes. She does love me.)

Speaking of snakes, we were struggling through some homework the other day. She didn't really want to do it and wasn't focused and couldn't come up with an answer as to why the author of Coyote Magic had wanted readers to learn from little Charlie's (I don't remember his name) angst about dogs and how the story had helped him.

I suggested that maybe Charlie had been so intrigued by the story of how the coyote had stolen fire for the villagers that it made him like the coyote a little bit, and that when he met the coydog he thought maybe it was a little bit like the coyote he liked and that when the coydog was soft to touch and wouldn't hurt him that maybe he'd learn to like all dogs.

"What do you think?" I asked.

"I think maybe you could learn a little lesson about how to like snakes," she said.

***

And finally, Alison had been totally freaked out about having to perform when she had to pretend to be a saint and give a little performance in the school gym as people walked around. She overcame it, though, with some great help from Miss Lawson, her teacher, and little support from home. She did just fine as Saint Elizabeth Seton.

A little while later, the Awesome Miss Lawson (Ali LOVES her and we do, too) asked me if I thought she'd be ok to do a speaking part when Class 3B led the Mass. I said I thought we should try it out.

She did it today, and Miss Lawsom reported that she'd done fabulously. Ali and I had talked about it for about a week and this morning, I asked her how she was feeling about it.

She wasn't worried at all. I asked her why she wasn’t – compared to the museum piece. She said, and I quote:

“Three reasons. 1. It’s a million times shorter; 2. I can read from this piece of paper right here; 3. I’ve done it before.”

Love Bug or Thug Bug?

I grew up in the country, but that doesn't mean I know much about nature. I remember running into the house once, all in a dither, yelling for my dad because the Tom turkey was beating up one of the lady turkeys.

He didn't get out of his chair.

It took me longer to figure out why he wouldn't help than I care to tell you.

But suffice it to say that neither of my parents were much into telling their offspring about the birds and the bees. (See what that philosophy gets you, Amer?!)

Anyway, this morning, Ali called me off of the porch "to get a load of this!"

"It's the biggest bee I've ever seen," she said.

Sure enough, there was a member of the bee family doing God knows what to what appeared to be a dead cicada. At first, I wondered if I had a little cross-species, um, pollination going on, if you get my drift. Then, I thought, hey, maybe it's a case of bug murder.

Now, I'm wondering what the hell wasps eat. Because whatever happened to send the cicada belly-up, the wasp was taking advantage.

I'm as clueless as I was back with the turkeys. Any country folk out there to shed a clue?

Reading Report

I ran across this great blogger the other day, who I'm recommending to anyone who needs a little parental support, relief, insight and laughter. I've added her blog to my blog roll, so you can check in on her, too, if you like.

Here are some of her Radical Parenting highlights:

These articles are by Vanessa Van Petten who runs RadicalParenting.com a parenting blog written from the kid's perspective with 20 teen writers. Her goal is to give parents a secret view into the world of kids and youth.


Teacup Parenting: Is your Child too Fragile? She delves into the four different types of kids she sees today and what their pitfalls and strengths are!

Cotton Candy Friends How social networking, IMing, texting and the Internet are changing teen’s friendships

10 Rules Kids Wished Their Parents Lived By Here are our radical parenting principles put together by Vanessa and our Teen Team of how we wish parenting would be.

50 Best Mom Blogs Parents always ask us “which websites should I read?” Here we did a complete overview of our favorite mommy bloggers across the net with reviews, favorite articles and descriptions.

Transportation

The other day, we were all three riding our own bikes and Jeff was remarking to Alison how great it was that we could all motor on our own.

We've nearly worn out the detachable tandem we bought about 4 years ago. It's taken us down streets, along the canal and Monon Trail, downtown, up to Carmel, to school and to the movies. She's loved it, and it's always attracted a few comments.

Once I spent part of the afternoon giving her school friends rides around the parking lot when I went to pick her up.

Getting her on her own bike may have been delayed a little bit because she liked both the independence of nearly riding on her own but the ability to lay back a little and coast if she wanted. Plus, she was bothered with little or none of the balance or steering.

She's been a demon her birthday bike now for the past several weeks.

We were out on an evening ride the other day. She was "scout," which meant she got to decide where we went but she was also responsible for letting us know if intersections were clear to go through.

It's helping with her braking ability -- a bit -- but she likes it mostly because she gets to be in charge. (I'm not bossy; I'm a leader.)

So Jeff and I were hanging back and he was waxing poetic about what a great thing it was to do this as a family; to see her take off and be so independent. I only grudgingly accept that she's growing up. It's not my favorite thing, in all honesty. I revel in her spirit but I hate to think of the day she moves out.

Jeff shifted from entertaining me to address his charge.

"Alison, do you realize what it means that you can ride your very own bike?" he asked. "You can go anywhere you want to anytime you want to!"

Never missing a rotation in her pedaling, she shouted back with a huge grin: "Just like a book!" she said.

I love that girl.

Rainout

Alex, Ali and Jeff were supposed to go to the Indians game tonight, but it's been raining all day, so it's turning into a sleepover. Alex brought his baseball glove, hoping for a foul ball, but it is not meant to be.


They're disappointed but making do. right now, they're playing golf on the back porch. They say it's golf. It sounds like baseball. I've closed the kitchen door to save my out-in-the-open Fiesta ware. One particular move will win you 100 million points.

"Hey you big cheater, that one counted," I just heard.

"No it didn't.

"Yeah. Huh."

"Well, OK. Maybe that one was 900 points."

***


Other excerpts:

Alison was on her way to her room. Alex said he was coming with.

"If you must," she said, sighing.

***



Dinner time. Jeff fixed spaghetti at their request but we were out of fresh vegetables other than salad. He went down to give them a choice of frozen peas or salad.

"We'll have salad please!" they said.

They're 7.5 and 8. And they both chose and ate all their salad. Crazy.



***

It's getting darker. A lightning bug found his way inside. I could totally hear them.

"Hey cool."

"Let's get him in your room."

"OK."

They scuttle behind me.

"What are you doing?" I ask.

"Nothing!" they sing in unison.

***

It's still raining and they've decided to out outside to find more lightning bugs. It's summer. What's a little rain? But I'm going to go free their prisoner while they're not watching...

Making a splash!

From the time she could walk, Alison has loved mud puddles. She's jumped in them since she first discovered the fun of splashing.

Lately, she's pushed it up a notch. It's been rainy here and every night this week, we've gone out on the bikes. Since the first puddle formed, she's thrown all her fears about falling off her fancy, new 2-wheeler and just flown through the water.

It rained again tonight and I was pretty sure the bike would have to stay parked. Jeff had planned to play softball, but even his crazy gang of crazy players called it off about 7:30. At 8:30, it finally seemed clear and Ali looked up from the lap top to ask if we could go out.

I initially demurred. It's too close to bedtime, etc... but then again, she's only going to actually want me to go with her on the bike for a few more years. (if I'm lucky.) So we collected Jeff and went out for a little while.

She zoomed through more mud than I had really expected and she even had a wipe-out trying to turn around. She was more scare than hurt and by the time she'd found another long puddle, she'd forgotten how much her hands had been hurt in the fall.

It was dark when we got back, and she missed her bed time by quite a lot. But it was worth it.

Here's how she ended up. I used the flash on my camera, which makes it a little fuzzy and lighter than it actually was.

We might be bad parents, and she'll likely never wear those clothes again, but it was fun. And it's summer, for goodness sake!

Oops I let her do it again

Alison Reed is going to be successful in her adult life. The only question is which side of the law she'll be on. I swear she has the soul of a con artist.

We haven't played Monopoly in a a long time, but we cracked it out this morning -- the Littlest Pet Shop-themed game board, of course. We roused Jeff out of bed and Alison picked out our game pieces. She was a pink LPS octopus. I was an LPS zebra. Jeff was the LPS husky.

It was all going my way. I had two monopolies on the rich side of town, two vehicles (LPS version of railroads)and plenty of cash. Alison had a lot of property but not much cash and she had the bad luck to land on one of my improved properties. She was $50 short but wasn't protesting, just resigned to the facts of the game.

"It's OK, honey. You can owe me," says I, falling once again into her trap.

Not 20 minutes later, she had my Biggest Littles Pet Shop AND my Round and Round Pet Town (aka Boardwalk and Park Place) and I was reduced to mortgaging the rest of my holdings.

"I love this game," she said.

I'm going to blame my lapse in judgment in having been away from the game for so long.

Ultimately though, Jeff somehow managed to eke out a win. He'd taken a bunch of my properties when I left the game and she was jailed a few times when he landed on her big money spots.

It was actually a good way to start easing out of the weekend. We spent some time at the Monon Art Fair yesterday where we got a great new piece of art for the yard and I collected the start of a fairly impressive sunburn.

I added to it by sitting at Broadway Betty's pool sipping too many gin-and-tonics and hanging out with some of the coolest women in the city. It's the infamous "Estro-fest" gathering and one of the events that makes summer fun.

Margaret Burlingame and I have a tradition of bringing a special gift to the bash and this year it was candy wrapped in papers that carried the Estrofest logo, different themes and great sayings like, "A lady is one who never shows her underwear unintentionally."

Margaret had a training that she couldn't skip and had to miss the party. Note to Margaret: it was another happily received offering. Thanks for doing all the work... :)

My good friend Tina Noel chaufferred me to the party, which turned out to be great because not only was my glass bigger than hers, it seemed to never be empty.
I think I must owe her something good...

All in all, the weekend has offered something to everyone at Chez Reed. We went to the Vic for an Indians game on Friday; the neighborhood art fair which gets better every year and a poolside party on Saturday; and blessedly nothing planned for today.

I'm not sure I'm ready to face the work week. I'm definitely going to need this day to recover, although I'm guessing we have either the bikes or Jordan Y pool this afternoon. I've got to hunt down the sun block.

Back at the Speedway

Angie's List is sponsoring the in-car camera on Sarah Fisher's car for the Indy 500 this year.

Way cool!

Reed's Rules for the Summer

I have new rules for the summer.

If you're coming over to the Reed house for a party, a couple of beers or even just a short visit, you can't come unless you follow these rules.

1. You must be happy with the fact that I'm not going to clean for you.
2. You must be happy with the facts that kids are supposed to get dirty, scream and have fun that stops only when someone bleeds.
3. You help cook, clean, serve and supervise as needed.
4. You must have fun.

I'm happy to report that both Team Ogden and Team Vielee not only followed these rules, but they helped define them tonight. We had a great, impromptu cookout that involved 8 kids, 6 adults, 18 assorted sausages and a dozen hot dogs or so.

It was great and so little work it was almost magic. Even the older kids helped out. Alex took care of the chimenae, the older girls helped find things we needed and set up, and everyone else chopped, cleaned, fire-up and opened assorted bottles. We started early because we all have homework and baths to deal with, but my backyard was full of squealing kids and laughing adults from start to finish.

I want every party/get-together this summer to be like this -- the planned ones as well as the unplanned ones. It was so relaxed I didn't even take one stinkin' picture. I attached these two to illustrate how I'll be acting for the next few months.

So consider this your warning. I want you to come over, but I'm sending up the flare. I've already warned my co-workers and friends at work that this is the summer for Fun Cheryl. No more serious face. It's going to be fun.

As long as we all follow the rules....

The Joke's on You

Inspired by Ginny Reed, who every day put a little note in her daughter's lunch box, I've been sending notes with Ali's lunch since she started Kindergarten. I can't remember if it was late in first grade or early in second that she said to me, "Mom, can you stop sending notes? It's kind of embarrassing."

I stopped, but I wasn't happy about it. "Stupid boys at the lunch table," I grumbled.

A few months ago, she asked me if I could start up again, but this time, maybe it would be better if I sent jokes instead of notes. So of course, I complied.

She has hot lunch at least once a week, and sometimes two, so she doesn't always bring her lunch, and I don't have to come up with a joke every day.

Still eschewing peanut butter and every sandwich sans cheeseburgers and hot dogs, Ali usually takes pizza, pizza rolls or chicken nuggets, along with a container of applesauce and a dessert.

She sometimes has pot stickers or tacos and she's usually the envy of the cold sandwich crowd, including the three boys she sits with. Sometimes, she confided the other day, the boys purposefully forget their lunch because they know she'll share with them. One day this week, she took one slice of leftover pizza and one leftover Taco Bell taco. The boys nearly went wild.

But I digress, a couple of weeks ago, Ali asked if I could put a pencil in her lunch box, along with the joke, because, "you, know, I might want to tell you something about it."

"You want to give me feedback?" I asked.

"Yeah! 'Cause, we'll, no offense, but today's joke...it just didn't make any sense," she said. "No offense."

So I give you a sample of jokes from Mom and feedback from the Ali Cat. Remember, she's 8, so the jokes are geared for 8-year-olds, and I've not corrected spelling:

1. Why was the baby ant confused?
Punchline: Because all of his uncles were ants!
Ali feedback: "ant that funny!"

2. Where is the ocean the deepest?
Punchline: On the bottom!
Ali feedback: Huh?

3. How do rabbits travel?
Punchline: by hareplane!
Ali feedback: "Halairius!"

4. What do you call a funny book about eggs?
Punchline: A yolk book.
Ali feedback: "That's a funny yolk!"

5. Why was the broom late for school?
Punchline: It overswept.
Ali feedback: Funny!

6. What do lazy dogs do for fun?
Punch line: they chase parked cars!
Ali feedback: Ha Ha Ha

Got any great jokes suitable for 2nd grade? I have a month of school left...

Mushroom Season

My friend Lisa e-mailed me the other day asking if I wanted to go down with her to the lake house. Way cool, I'm thinking. The weather is great, I can lay on the dock and read and tan. The boys will cook. The kids will play. What could be better? I'm in!

But she went on. John is taking her mushroom hunting in the woods that surround the lake in southern Indiana. She calls herself a Hoosier, but this will be her her first foray into the woods for fungus.

For my sister Nancy, Lisa's would have been a must-do offer. She's always loved mushroom hunting. At Easter this year, when the big kids were looking for money laden eggs at Shakamak State Park, she was scouting for 'shrooms.

If you're not from the country you may not know that Springtime in Indiana is the time the woods are alive with fungus. Morels are the holy Grail -- the biggest and best, but there are a lot of different ones -- small, medium, dark, light. All musky , velvety and kind of phallic, if truth be told. They're sneaky little buggers, though, and like to hide. So to be a good mushroom hunter, you have to have great vision, great patience and a great affinity for all God's creations.

• I can barely see with my glasses on or my contacts in.
• I have never met this thing called patience.
• And while I love many things, creepy, sleepy snakes just waking up from their winter's lethargy are not among them.

So I had to decline the invitation. I hope Lisa likes it. Plenty of people do.

I remember my dad taking us out in the woods when I was a kid -- back home you keep your mushroom hunting territory to yourself much like the Sanders family guard the special recipe and the Coca-Cola family shields the formula.

How people don't walk all over each one's area was beyond me then and is beyond me now. It was all such a secret. Yet there was limited land. I'm guessing there was a lot of criss-crossing, but like fishing, mushroom hunting is a silent game. (yet another reason I'm not good at either) so maybe the hunters never knew each other was in their territory -- unless the evidence of shorn mushrooms was found.

So Dad would pile us in the truck and then send out out in the woods. He seemed to think we had an inborn talent for it just because we were related to him. Or maybe he was just getting us out of my Mom's hair for a while.

Invariably, I'd be somewhere within his sight, stumbling along looking out desperately for snakes and stepping all over the mushrooms I never -- as in EVER -- saw.

I'd hear him say, "Cheryl. Stop right there!"

Every time I was sure he was warning me about a snake. But no. He'd say, "Can't you see it?"

"See what?" I'd shout, looking this way and that, straining to hear the slither. Sure I was in the sights of some fanged monster.

"Just stop and look around."

He'd be crouched down, one knee to the ground. He'd have already collected a dozen morels and their smaller cousins. "Look over there. It's RIGHT there," he'd say.

He would sit there in the middle of the woods and take a long look around him. He must have had some sort of mushroom radar because he'd spy them under leaves and nestled next to rotting branches. He'd point me in the general direction and just shake his head when I never came up with anything.

He never got so frustrated that he left me out there alone, and I never got into trouble for not finding them. For all I know I was just comic relief. In all my years of forced mushroom hunting, I may have found 5. Maybe. But probably because I fell down on them. Come to think of it, I don't know that I ever actually saw a snake either... But they were out there. I just know it.

The hunting is, of course, just the prelude. Once you have an acceptable "mess," you take them home, split them in two and let them bathe in a bowl of water for a while. This isn't just to marinate them. It's to help get the dirt and bugs off of them. Ick.

Then, you dredge them your own breading concoction (another real mushroomer's secret) and you fry them in a cast iron skillet. You can have them for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Sometimes you have gravy.

It's a real delicacy. Just like brain sandwiches, Rocky Mountain Oysters and frog legs.

Give me canned, sliced mushrooms. Or porta-bellas stuffed with crabmeat, spinach and yummy cheese.

Yeah, I know they come from the woods, too. And that cheese comes from milk, which spurts from the udders of cows or goats.

But I don't have to forage for the fungus I eat, and I have never yet felt a four-legged creature's udder, teat or any other nether region. Nor do I intend to.

So enjoy mushroom season and all the hand-selected, breaded and pan-fried fungus you want.

I've never yet seen the slithery tail of a viper hidden amongst the produce or dairy aisle of any grocery I've ever shopped. But they do occasionally offer morels fresh from the woods, all cleaned up and shining through sheer plastic film. So if you want to nibble and you're not inclined to find them yourself, you still can.

I can't wait for Lisa to get back. They're newlyweds still. Were I Lisa, I think I'd distract John from ever getting to the woods...

Tech Support; Alison Reed speaking

So I've fixed dinner for Alison and she's indulging her passion for mashed potatoes and gravy when the phone rings. Jeff's not yet home from work, but is going to head right out for a wine tasting with his new BFF John Vielee. I'm not feeling well, so Ali is at the counter, eating on her own while I'm on the couch looking outside and wishing I felt better.

I answer and it's a boy. For Alison. Coincidentally, it's John's nephew, Charlie Vielee.

"Hi Charlie," says Alison, still eating, puts the phone on speaker. I go back to the couch.

Turns out Charlie needs help with a spy mission on Club Penguin -- the latest craze in the world of the 4-feet-tall crowd.

"Alison, how do I get past the secret code in the GS Secret Mission?" he asked.

She goes immediately into tech support mode. All she needed was a head set and she could have been on the Geek Squad.

"Are you at the ski jump?" she asked.

"Yeah. But I can't get the secret code," he says.

"OK. Here's what you do," she says, rattling off a series of instructions. "No. Look. Wait. Let me log on."

She moves over to the laptop, logs on and walks him through the process. She must have been on the phone for 15 minutes, offering suggestions, praising him every now and then and double-checking that he'd done exactly as she ordered.

Charlie managed to get through the mission and was a pretty happy camper.

"Bye, Charlie," Alison chirped, and returned to her dinner. I wonder when she's going to start charging.

A flock of seagulls, a few falcons and other assorted singing birds

After several months of hot pursuit, 1.5 years of dating, a kick-ass wedding, a beautiful, funny, sweet daughter, and 11 years of marriage, my husband rolled over in bed Friday morning, caught my eye, smiled and said. "This has been the best week of my life."

I won't sicken you with the details of my currently highly happy marriage, I just felt the need to brag. Of course, it's not bragging if it's true.....

Jeff is suspicious of this somewhat sudden return to the hey days of our courtship. He suspects that my recent obsession with Christine Fehan's GhostWalker series is contributing to it.

While I'm not trying to dissect whatever it is we've done lately to be so in sync, I would bottle it if I could. I'd even give it away to anyone who needs a little jolt. It's not that we've been on the brink of trouble -- we've just had more moments where we irritated the hell out of each other in the 12 months than either of us want.

We have been working harder to really partner on dealing with the vagaries of life; getting Alison off to a good start in life, including keeping her clean, fed and out of CKS Detention; and keeping the house a little less grimy. I've been putting effort into making time for me and me alone rather than taking on more than I want to do and then unfairly complaining about it. (Yes, I know I can be a highly-toned bitch.)

I struggle with my penchant for domestic martyrdom, though, and I blame that damn Pentecostal church where I spent too much of the first 16 years of my life. It's probably not a totally accurate recollection, but there were few remarks hurled at me from the altar that I can't seem to shake. It was a real fire and brimstone kind of church, and we all got singed a little bit over the years.

One of the take-aways from the whole thing (again, it might be my personal twist) was that even if you're a rotten person, if you put others first you still have a shot at the upward pull instead of the downward slide to Hell. If you step in front of a bullet for someone, it's a guaranteed shot straight up.

I've got a lot to answer for. So I'm always looking for a loophole.

Right, now, in addition to making time to read trashy novels, I'm remembering other lessons from the church. Those about being good to others and getting your priorities in order. I'm pretty sure the priority they were talking about was a little red brick church in the country and the Almighty.

Me, I'm thinking about my family and making it work. And that means doing a little bit more for me, which makes the time I spend with them that much better.

My new focus has the birds singing ahead of the official start to Spring. There must be something to it....

I

Funniest line of the weekend

My colleague and friend, Jackie Myers Thompson, and I have been going back and forth about a work trip that's been more on-again/off-again than most. (This one may set the all-time record frustration factor.) It's been a little maddening for both of us.

After the last go 'round when it seemed the trip was going to be rescheduled, she asked me about what to do with a potential media stop.

And here I quote," Do you think I should wait until you confirm that? Because I can't cancel and then try and reseurrect it after that."

Now, both Jackie and I are alleged PR professionals and spelling is one of the requisites of the trade. She was pretty sure she'd gotten "resurrect" wrong.

But here's the best excuse ever given for misspelling a word -- and just in time as stores start decorating for Easter:

"I can't spell reseurrect...I'm a Jew."

I knew sleep was important!

Check this out!

According to Healthy Living I'm an idiot for dragging my chubby butt out of bed at the crack of dawn.

See No. 14. Life is not fair.

It's good to be with Mrs. Reed

If you're under the age of 10 and you have limited wants and needs, there's not really many better places to be than with Mrs. Reed.

Case in point: It's Presidents' Day so the local schools are closed down. Alison and Alex are hanging out with me today.

Officially, I'm in charge of them. Unofficially, Alex is providing childcare while I check in at work, do a little recreational reading and recover from weekend yard work.

They beat a path downstairs for Club Penguin when he first arrived. They've checked in on SpongeBob and their Webkinz pals. While I have a couple movies, I think Wii Sports is next in the line-up.

Around 11, Alex was hungry so I let them have some gogurt but then said we'd have lunch and they needed to think about what they wanted. I was planning on marching their little couch potato butts to McDonald's. It's a little cold but the restaurant is only a mile away and the sun is out.

But we couldn't agree on lunch. So we stopped in (via the Honda) at McDonald's, Arby's and Taco Bell. I'm making them eat fruit before they get to even think about dessert.

We may hit the park and/or library later. We would have lunch with the brass penguins downstairs from the library -- They're Glendale Mall institutions and kids get to climb and slide all over them until they stand taller than the sculpted trio -- but they claimed they were having stomach issues. So we ended up driving home, me in the front with the heat blasting, them in the back with the windows down sucking up frigid fresh air like queasy Cocker Spaniels.

All traces of illness vanished once we hit my driveway. It's magic like that. They grabbed their bags of booty and headed downstairs again.

They sound like they've finished lunch now. I'll have to check the fruit and milk supply.

Judging from the latest Alison outcry: "Alex, peee--u! That's just nasty!" Alex just farted.

He doesn't care. He's playing Wii tennis. Alison is coaching him. That counts as exercise, doesn't it?