Warning: Some Images May Be Distrurbing to the Sensitive Reader

When Steve Carell made a joke the other night at the Academy Awards about throwing up, I was relieved. And then when Jon Stewart followed it up with his own vomiting joke, I was almost elated. As a person with a sensitive stomach, I can't tell you how happy I was to learn that people still think barfing is funny. Although my husband may beg to differ.

"The guy from the room next door looked at me weird," my husband said when he returned to our hotel room after getting us some coffee and doughnuts from the continental breakfast buffet one recent morning. I was ravenous after losing my dinner sometime around midnight the night before.

"You are not a quiet puker," he added.

I don't have a lot of bad habits that my husband has to put up with. I don't smoke. I don't drink. Much. I don't take diet pills or shop on QVC or buy jewelry. But the one thing I do do rather excessively is regurgitate.

My husband knew this long before we were married. A habit like that is difficult to hide, although bulimics often do. I'm not bulimic - I'm just extra-queasy.

It's not easy being queasy. People suspect the worst - like you drink too much.

"She does this every year," my son explained to my new son-in-law who had the misfortune of being in the room next to me during an all-night sick-up during our family Christmas trip. "She drinks too much then gets sick to her stomach." He was right - except what my son-in-law didn't know was that "drinking too much" for me meant having two glasses of wine with dinner instead of one - not four pints of whiskey with a couple of beer chasers as my son's comment tended to imply.

And anything greasy with that wine? I can practically set my watch for when the retching will begin.

"I'm the same way!" my sister said to me recently. "I get sick every time I drink vodka with lobster!"

Me - I wouldn't even need the lobster.

As far back as I can remember, I've been a frequent vomiter. When I was a kid I carried a paper bag with me every time my father picked us up for visitation and drove us back to Illinois. My three sisters fought over who would get stuck sitting next to me in the car.

There are some things, due to my hair trigger nausea reflex, I learned the hard way are best not to partake in - which include but are not limited to: eating an entire tub of movie theater buttered popcorn, bread dipped in olive oil, and wine tastings.

Yes, I know, it sure removes a lot of pleasures in life. But I do have many fond memories of hurling at some of the most beautiful locations in the country - from national park campgrounds, to B&B's, to four-star hotels. I've tossed my cookies from one end of the country to the other - from Maine to San Francisco. When I was growing up I remember having the dry heaves into a garbage can in my best friend's bedroom, and more recently I had the sudden misfortune of spewing half-digested Mexican food all over the side of my husband's car while driving home after having dinner with friends.

You don't even want to know what my pregnancies were like. But I'm going to tell you anyway. They both consisted of nine months hunched over a toilet punctuated with 45 minutes of labor and a baby. I barely remember the labor and the baby.

My husband calls me the Queen of the Porcelain Throne. I think Duchess of Disembogue is more accurate. Everyone knows queens don't kneel.