So, it comes to this: I've been reduced to potty jokes. The season must really be in the toilet.

On the whole, I can't stop myself for crap. See? There I go again.

Yay! Woo! Reds beat the Indians, 2-1! How wonderfully unexpected!

Tonight's contest wasn't televised for me, so I got to listen to it on the radio and practice my skills of visualization. Let's see how I did:

• Aaron Harang allowed one run over seven and one-third innings. The crowd booed when they took him out with a couple baserunners and one out in the eighth, but I couldn't hear them at first over my own booing.
• Adam Dunn and Felipe Lopez hooked up to hit solo shots to account for all of the Reds scoring. Two runs! I have a good feeling about those two.
• Ryan Wagner came in to walk two batters. Wags, despite being a bad-ass, is a young bad-ass who seems to crack a little under the pressure. He'll get there.
• Danny Graves came in with the bases loaded and two outs in the eight to strike out Travis Hafner and end the inning. Boy-oh-boy, did Marty sound surprised. Then he finished out the ninth, and not so much as a single out was a fly ball. Who the hell was that??

The Reds won tonight without the assistance of D'Angelo Jimenez, whom you all know by now has been designated for assignment. I would like to say that I'm sad about it, but I'm really not much of anything about it. Jimenez was about the least engaging character on the team. Had I gotten around to writing his profile before now, the one joke I had prepared was that What Wearing #3 Says About You is that you are Jimenez's mother, because that's the one person who knows him well enough to care that much.

As much as I'm not sad, I'm equally not impressed. The was about the safest, easiest, least-surprising roster move that possibly could have been made. It was less of a shake-up than a gentle rocking motion. However, since I'm still just a fan and not a paid baseball pundit, I'm going to be satisfied with the win tonight and not worry too much about the move.

Let's all continue to practice our visualization skills and visualize a win for Elizardo Ramirez tomorrow. Go Reds!

Great news! In a blinding flash of brilliance this afternoon, I was suddenly hit with a sure-fire plan for how the Reds can turn it around. First, they draw numbers from a hat, and then one by one, in numerical order, they each eat a hard-boiled egg and drink a green beer. After that, they…hey, wait a minute. Didn't I promise I was going to use this off-day to finally talk about the Mother's Day present I received this year?

I guess that's what I'd better do then. The rest of the plan is pretty self-evident anyway.

After the 17.5 hours of overnight travel from Seattle that included only 2.5 hours of sleeping, I was finally home. Fatigued though I was, Jon presented me with a very large gift, about two feet by three feet, flat, and wrapped in solid red wrapping paper.

I tore open the paper to find the shirt I'd gotten autographed at spring training, as described in the spring training entry of the March 29 game against the Yankees. Jon had found a frame and gotten a baseball card to add. We are afraid to wash the shirt, because it's signed on the vinyl, but Jon did iron the shirt all by himself. Now that is love.

This was more than just a cool souvenir; this was a memento of a moment in time. Four scenes in my life are etched permanently into my memory. They are the times when I jolted awake from my usual numb roving through life to find myself in the midst of the startling realization that I was truly and utterly happy.

The first one was when I was 11, sitting alone on a hill overlooking the scintillating surface of the lake at summer camp. The second was when I was 22, right after we'd moved into our house, at my computer next to the open window that was admitting the gentle, lilac-scented breeze. The third occurred simply enough on my sofa less than a year later; I was three months pregnant and looking for a job.

But the most recent is the happiest and most haunting of all: suddenly opening my eyes to find myself in the cool evening air on the hard bleachers of Ed Smith Stadium, a Reds victory unfolding before me, surrounded by my dear husband, our sweet, perfect son, and the dying applause that I myself had started.

So, even though the Reds are no fun to watch right now, you'll understand that I am going to hang in there with them. After all, through almost no fault of their own, they are enduringly intertwined with the single happiest moment in my life.

And you never know; once they institute my great plan, maybe they'll be there for the fifth moment, too.

Wow, what a game today. I'm riveted to the MLB GameDay long enough to witness Sean Casey single in Ryan Freel. The score is 6-3 when I take off for a measly hour to attend a meeting to discuss the future of documentation in my company, and when I get back it's 10-3.

I did like, though, how the Reds managed to score just enough runs in the ninth inning so that people everywhere would be able to say “If only Graves hadn't pitched, we'd still be in it!”

Casey had an awesome game, which I'm particularly happy about because he's on my fantasy team, and I had him playing. Freel had a less-than-awesome game, but not bad enough to really hurt my fantasy team.

Speaking of the fantasy team, before the game, I got to watch the first few innings of the Indians game, which included Aaron Boone hitting, on ESPN while I was at the gym. Boone is on my team, but I have not played him in a month because he's been sucking rice through a straw. I hear that the Indians are playing a really bad team this weekend, though, so it looks like I'll finally be giving him a chance.

Tomorrow's an off day, which means the Reds are going to have to get real creative if they expect to find a way to lose. Maybe they could pick a fight with a warren of rabbits to keep up the steady stream of pummelings.

I'll be using the off day as an opportunity to finally post a picture of the baseball-related Mother's Day gift that I mentioned last week. But in order to fully appreciate the baseball-related Mother's Day gift, you have to know its story, which is the story of the March 29 spring training entry of the game against the Yankees. That link will also appear tomorrow.

However, to understand the March 29 spring training entry, you really need the context of the March 28 spring training entry of the game against the Twins, so I'm posting that right now.

Enjoy, and go Reds!

Well, guys, it was yet another losing effort. But we're trying to stay positive, right? We know that there's always a silver lining. Let's see, it's gotta be around here somewhere:

• Ramón Ortiz allowed two runs over seven innings. Too bad it was twice as many as his offense would provide by way of support and he ended up with the loss.

Let's keep looking.

• Kent Mercker allowed zero runs. That is downright phenomenal for a Red reliever. He did, however, almost overthrow Javy Valentín on the intentional walk of Mike Piazza. I guess that's one of the hazards of having a catcher who's four and a half feet tall.

I don't think that's the silver lining either.

• The bullpen should be very rested now. The starters have been going longer (even Paul Wilson ate up six innings with his spectacle yesterday). Plus, these games have been eight innings long from the pitching staff's point of view. And a rested bullpen has to be a good thing; fresh crap beats exhausted crap, right?

Hm. Maybe not.

• Griffey's diving catch was cool. It wasn't a very difficult diving catch, but it's way more than I've seen out of him since…well, maybe ever. I haven't been watching that long.

That silver lining is close; I can feel it.

• Aha, here we go: D'Angelo Jimenez pinch-popped-out from the left side to make sure that Jacob Cruz was allowed to save his energy for full-time coaching of other guys who get more playing time than him.

You see? There's something to feel positive about. Plus, now that we've found this silver lining, maybe I can use it to make something nice, like a poncho to keep the fallout from this continuing shit storm out of my eyes.