Ordinary Me: R-U, Catching Up

R: Copping out. See this list.

S: Sunday dinner Almost every Sunday the dude and I sit down with my cousin's family and Sissy to eat dinner. Sometimes it's just pizza that we've ordered in, sometimes my cousin outdoes herself and dinner includes appetizer, a knockout entree with two vegetable sides, and dessert. She makes cakes (I really ought to feature her here one day). Sometimes she makes marvelous cakes for our birthdays, sometimes she makes the cake for someone else and feeds us "the hump" (the part of the cake that gets cut off to flatten it and make it look professional). But the best part is that we are all together, taking part in each other's lives and helping my nieces grow up to be interested, interesting, loved, and lovable people. (The bitch, sometimes she gets sentimental...)

T: tonic When I was growing up, this is what we called soda (pop, coke, fill in the regionalism). When you think about it, it makes as much sense as soda, and on the days you use Coke or ginger ale to settle your stomach, it makes more sense than any other word for the fizzy concoction. It makes a helluva lot more sense than calling it coke. If you want to call the brown stuff cola, that's one thing, but do not tell me you want an orange coke. Other words people laugh at me for using: grocery shopping and pocketbook.

U: Ulcerative Colitis. I believe in a humanistic medicine, so I don't define myself by my disease. It is what it is. I am fortunate to have a very mild case, with very few flare ups. It still means I have to stick medicine in unthinkable places and have medical equipment stuck up my bum pretty regularly.

I try to deal with it all with a sense of humor. The story of my diagnosis cracks people up--it must be pretty good to do that given the subject matter. I've been thinking about writing a book about my experiences. I'm calling it "My Big Fat White Ass."