Occasionally your old pal Jean gets a fact wrong in her column. Nothing serious, but being a perfectionist, it bothers me anyway. I've been dying to set the record straight for years in a few cases, but when I request a mention in the corrections box of the paper, the editor looks at me all cockeyed, like I just asked to sit on his lap or something. Well, it's important to me! Geez! I don't want people going around with misconceptions in their heads. So, here are a few corrections to start you out with. I'll be listing some more later!!!!

In "Never Say Diet!" (January 1997), I said that the Hamburger Diet required me to eat nine ounces of hamburger for lunch and dinner, then drink a quart of water afterwards. It was actually supposed to be six ounces of hamburger. (I was eating too much! That could be why I gave the diet up after four days. I should try it again.)

In "I Simply Refuse To Look At Catalogs Anymore!" (September 1997), I said that hubby Rick spilled mustard on my mustang floor rug. It was really peanut butter. (Too bad it wasn't horseradish! Get it? Actually, I was pretty sore about that rug getting damaged.)

In "A Clotheshorse I Definitely Ain't!" (May 1998), I told you all about what I wore each workday. But, due to an editing mistake, readers were informed that I wore a silkscreen-print T-shirt of teddy bears on Wednesday and a Minnie Mouse sweatshirt on Thursday. The reverse was true. This was an editing mistake and not my fault. (I called the copy editor about it, and she explained that, when she was busy deleting all the extra exclamation points from my column, she accidentally erased those sentences too. She didn't notice it until later, and she couldn't retrieve them, so she wrote them from memory. All she had to do was call me to verify it! I wouldn't have been mad. But she didn't, and now there's this huge error forever. Sheesh!)

In "A Hershey Highway Doesn't Sound So Bad To Me!" (April 2001), my middle name is spelled "Melanie." Apparently, the copy editor thought it had been misspelled, so she corrected it. But nope—it is really spelled "Meleanne." You seee—my parents liked the name Melanie but they didn't know exactly how to spell it, so they decided on this. Of course, it was completely wrong, but by the time the correct spelling was found, "Meleanne" had already been written on my birth certificate. I used to feel bad that part of my very own name was a bizarre typo, but I've grown to accept and love it for what it is. (After all, pobody's nerfect!!!!!!)

In "Paging Mr. Stork!" (November 1992), I said I was expecting a baby. In truth, I was not expecting a baby.

In "File It And Forget It!" (March 1998), I said that the auto loan place that was behind SouthCentral Insurance was once an A&W restaurant, but it was really a car wash. (Duh! Of course! What was I thinking?)