Management feels that I don't get enough off my (now enormous) chest doing a four hour show each weekday so they've helpfully suggested that I pen a little column for our website. Our Operations Manager, Tom, who is generally idle himself and therefore full of nifty ideas to keep others busy, says, "Why not write a little something three times a week?" Oh yeah sure. Then maybe I can wax your car, Tom, and give you a backrub, okay? Anyway, welcome to our newest online feature, Sheri.Column.

2000 was a year of big changes for me. Getting married...getting pregnant. (See picture in the scrapbook.) That was a surprise! Sure, I know where babies come from. But I'd never been pregnant before, so I guess I thought that maybe it would never happen. In fact, I was eight weeks pregnant and still thinking that I'd gotten hold of a bad shrimp somewhere before my doctor convinced me that I really was expecting. Such unbelievable news that I'm still having a hard time wrapping my mind around it. A friend who has been trying for a long while to conceive recently asked me what I'd been doing differently this time around. I thought about it and came up with my groundbreaking but admittedly nonscientific Leather Theory of Conception.

Here's how it works: Purchase an expensive pair of leather pants. Look unbelievably hot in them. Stare at yourself in the mirror saying, "Damn girl, you're working it." Be sure to spend more than you can afford and definitely more than seems rational. (You may first have to talk yourself out of the idea that only sluts and emaciated models wear leather pants. This part took me months, but hopefully you're less neurotic and inhibited than I am and can get this done on the way to the mall.) Wear your new leather pants exactly once. During the actual wearing you will never look or feel sexier; you will marvel at how comfortable leather really is; you will think, "Maybe I should have been a lot sluttier looking all along." Strangers will be blown away by your raw female power. You will be a goddess.

None of the above has anything to do, by the way, with seduction. Your man can be on the other side of the world for all it matters. The leather pants are not meant to entice him. We all know that flannel pj's, a baseball cap, and a willing spirit are all it really takes to get him in the mood. No, the leather pants have a different kind of magic. For the instant you swipe your VISA to buy them you set a mysterious and complex process into motion. The act of wearing so fitted, expensive, and frivolous a garment triggers a chemical in your brain that sends a message throughout your body. That message translates roughly to "Hurry and get pregnant RIGHT NOW so that these will never, ever fit again. Quick, before she gets to wear them twice." This amazing scenario will unfold before you've even made that first payment on the plastic.

At this point, since you've probably figured out the actual mechanics of reproduction, go ahead and do that stuff too - can't hurt. But trust me: if you get pregnant, it was the leather.

Next time...My Breasts: Huge Enough to Require Their Own Zip Code?