Sandi Kahn Shelton

I know. I know. I’ve been a failure as a blogger lately. It’s not even because the New York Times, bless their hearts, has discovered that being a blogger is hazardous to your health and written this story about the dangers of it .I couldn’t bring myself to read the full article since I am very suggestible and would have to be taken to the hospital by ambulance almost immediately, but, according to the concerned folks at the Times, it seems that bloggers are having heart attacks, the implication being that they don’t know when to stop blogging and go eat nourishing food and get some sleep.

Clearly I am in no danger since I know how to not blog.

Actually, though, life has not been exactly a stress-free dream around here.

Things keep coming up.

April and May are always the months when the world seems to come out of hibernation, and things start filling up the calendar. Last weekend I participated in a writers’ conference, which was fun, but…well, talky. I think I spoke nonstop for about six hours on the topic of how you find characters to write about, and by the end I had nothing left in my brain.

And now that that is behind me, it seems I have to prepare for a 45-minute talk on the “challenges of my writing career” to an audience of students at the 5th Annual Writers’ Festival at Tunxis Community College on April 23. I laughed when the organizer told me that they would love if I could bring any photos to illustrate the challenges of this so-called career, which could be shown on an overhead projector. Perhaps I should take a picture of me slumped over my desk, still wearing my bathrobe at 4 in the afternoon, and tearing my hair out while I down cup after cup of tea. Oooh, or perhaps I should show this picture, of the true way my writing gets done. I outsource it to dogs.

At any rate, the good news is: spring is at last coming to Connecticut. There are buds on the trees, the grass is greening up, and at night now you can hear the wonderfully creepy sound of the peepers, sounding like space aliens have arrived.

Excuse me while I go get another Tums and remind that dog he has a novel due on September first.

One of the most fun things about writing a blog is checking the statistics page and figuring out how people find me. It’s great to see what people type into their google searches that lands them right smack on my blog. Mystifying how that google works, actually. 

For instance, here are a just a few recent ones…

Say come to crazy

I have never, as far as I know, said come to crazy. But I’m thrilled that google sends people to me who are interested in ordering around crazy.

Do psychic reading tell the truth

Hmmm. I have often wondered this myself.  

Explanation subprime mortgage humor funny

We’re all looking for a little humor funny lately over the subprime mortage explanations.

Ultrasound pictures of baby picking nose

See? I didn’t even know there were such things!

Ivory snow detergent and dinosaurs

You could go a long time without linking these two objects in any kind of coherent way.

What funny things people say when they are having a colonoscopy

You mean like, “When is this going to be over, and is my insurance really going to pay for this?”

Belief that inanimate objects are out to get us

Well, sure.

Is the word fixin to really a word?

Well, yeah. Where I come from, “fixin” is one of the main words you need to get through the day. It means something that hasn’t quite happened yet, it’s “fixin” to.

Banging a unicorn

Some things you don’t even want to think about…

Man woman this life is short wake up one day on a day everything wish for gone just like people get old and situations changing feelings for you look right now gone just like that

This is obviously a person who doesn’t know that with google searches, you don’t have to type in every word you’ve ever heard of. But how did this lead anybody to ME?

Solid lump under dog’s tail.

Yuck.

Show me a saltfish head

Okay, I haven’t wanted to talk about the saltfish thing, because–well, I don’t exactly know what a saltfish IS. But at least 20 percent of the people who want to find salftish pictures end up coming to sandishelton.com. And why? And why do scores of people every day want these photos?

The love of a good colonoscopy

Ah, yes. It used to be we desired the love of a good man or woman. But once you’re over 50, all anyone craves is the love of a good colonoscopy.

I was on the train to New York the other day, to go visit Stephanie and see how she’s settling in to her sophomore year of school–and when I handed my ticket to the conductor, it turned out that I was in the presence of none other than the Conductor to the Stars!

This is a guy my husband wrote a feature story about, because he recognizes EVERYBODY who rides the train! He’s amazing that way. (Full disclosure here: I never recognize anyone. After the Thanksgiving Day Parade one year in New York, our family was walking behind a guy with a funny hair situation going on, and my husband kept poking me and nodding toward the man, trying to get me to realize that we were within 23 inches of The Donald Himself. Ivana and Tiffany were right there with him. Did I know who this was? Any of them? Not a chance.)

Anyway, because my picture used to run in the newspaper every week back when I wrote a weekly column, this conductor (his name is Bobby) recognized me, and for a while, we had fun talking about writing and conducting trains and authors we love, and then it turned out WE BOTH HAVE BLOGS.  

Well, I couldn’t wait to go read his blog. And it has been such a pleasure, going back through his archives and reading old posts, because he’s very funny and warm and has such a good sense of humor.

Here’s the link to his blog. It’s called Bobby Derailed, and you’ll enjoy it as much as I have, I’m sure.

Best of all, though, please scroll down and read what he wrote on the anniversary of September 11, and then go and read his entry from last year, which you can find here: http://bobbyderailed.blogspot.com/2006/09/september-13th-2001.html.

It’s one of the most moving pieces I’ve read about September 11th from someone who was right there witnessing the scene so soon after it happened.

Okay, I’ll play. I got “tagged” by another blog, by Henri and since I’ve seen this done on other people’s blogs, I guess it’s a fun thing to do: tell eight things that most people don’t know about me. 

1. My mother thinks that I had a past life, because when I was four years old, I was watching her plant zinnias one by one, and then said very calmly to her, “That’s not the way we used to do it in the army.”

2. Despite being reasonably intelligent, I am the only person I know who never, ever knows what is going to happen in a movie. Little children can see the way something is going to end, and I’m still stunned. 

3. One of the craziest things I ever did was getting married when I was 18 years old–in a hippie wedding that took place on the beach in Santa Barbara in the middle of winter. I wore a long white dress that I made myself, and a veil from a friend who had gotten divorced. I came through the woods to Mendelssohn’s Wedding March, played on a tape recorder.

4. The marriage was a mistake, just like everyone told me it would be. But I got two wonderful kids from it, so it can’t be written off as a total mistake, can it?

5. I can always get a parking spot when I want one, right where I need it to be. I just say that it’s going to happen and it does. I am now trying that out with other things I need–like, say, houses in Italy.

6. I am the only one in my family who does not think it is wrong to cheat at solitaire.

7. I have never learned to whistle or to blow bubbles with chewing gum, despite repeated lessons from many, many experts, both children and adults.

8. I love to go on the spin-around rides in amusement parks, like the swings, and I adore Ferris wheels and things that put me way up high, but I hate the speedy ones, like roller coasters.

One of the most fun things about writing a blog is getting to see what phrases people type in that somehow get them stumbling over to your site.

Lately here are some of the things that google, in all its mysteriousness, apparently thought I might be able to help with. Some are actually quite astonishing and even alarming. I’ll start with the innocuous ones first, so you won’t get too worried:

This is the song of little tiny people. Well, I am only 5′2″…but I didn’t know that was so obvious just from my writing.

Why do we talk to inanimate objects. I was just asking myself that the other day, when I was trying to find my car keys.

Do inanimate objects have feelings. !!

How to make my life be confidential and improvement. I, too, have wished for my life to be confidential and improvement. Instead, my life often feels public and imperfection.

I cut my bangs and they came out horrible what should I do. Been there.

Any 1 no what comes after human live after they go. I’m thinking google has a little too much confidence in me.

How to repair a broken tooth without going to the dentist. Yikes! Although, let’s face it, haven’t we all wanted to take over our own dentistry rather than let other people stick pointy sticks in our mouths?

Hemingway writing novel clean refrigerator. I think this stands without comment, because I don’t know what to say.

Sandra Shelton organized for life. This makes me very proud.

Do you thank I care about you gettin married to a monkey. This I could not make up. But I have to say that it’s been worrying me some. Some one should care about this. I can only hope my site helped in some small way.

Thank you, google, for all that you do.

Okay, not so many people have sent in their page 123 of their novels, or even page 23 of their work in progress stories.

I am happy to wait…but in the meantime, I have found a lovely time-waster. It’s a meme I discovered on quite a few blogs, a little game in which you type your first name into Google and then the word “needs,” and you will find out what cyberspace has the idea that you need.

Isn’t this just the most wonderful way to procrastinate? I think we could easily spend a whole productive day typing in the names of everyone we know, just to see what needs might show up.

Here’s what is under “Sandi needs…” (This is exactly how they were worded, and except for the mysterious err skel one, I think google truly does understand me.)

• SANDI needs your help. [This is obviously very true.]
• SANDI needs a break from Hollywood. Her problem is, she doesn’t feel anyone wants her for herself–only for who she is.
• SANDI needs more city council signatures.
• SANDI needs volunteers for the picnic.
• SANDI needs err skel to test it out. [I don't know any more about this than you do.]
• SANDI needs more tortoise, less red. “The shampoo was wonderful,” Sandi enthused.
• SANDI needs you to manage more at work.
• Does anyone agree with me when I say SANDI does not need any cosmetic surgery?

And my very favorite:

• I am looking forward to living the rest of my life thinking of God, my family and my friends instead of only about SANDI and what she needs.

I’ve always felt there’s a reason they don’t let February have as many days as other months. It  misbehaves so badly that we just have to get through it as quickly as possible, and get on with March, when at least there are daffodils.

We have had a February of crises, both minor and major, involving all the deep inevitabilities of life: death, taxes, water, wind, ice, blood and fire. It has been a little like being in an epic movie. There was a point when my husband looked over at me and said, “We’ve had so many bad things lately that we think we’re having a good day when there are only one or two horrible things that happen.”

February, I said to him. It’s like this every year.

But–dare I say this?–life has momentarily stopped throwing hardballs at us. The heater is fixed, the toilet works again, the taxes are done, the driveway ice has been chipped away, and the dog’s bloody paw has healed.

We even have water again in our well, which is lovely–it only occasionally now throws a whole handful of sediment into our bathtub, and, frankly, we’re learning to appreciate the exfoliating properties of gravel, which are often overlooked. Our skin is going to be so soft come springtime.

I do have to say, though, as nice as it is to take a bath at home, it was sort of companionly and fun going to friends’ houses to shower. How often, after all, do you get to go visit people before they leave for work in the morning? You really get to appreciate how organized your friends are when you see them first thing in the morning. I find morning mostly to be the time of day when I am at my most harried and forgetful, but I have vowed to turn over a new leaf. I have learned this week that there are people who do not every day run out of the door sloshing their tea all over themselves, then running back because they can’t find their keys, or they just remembered they need to get a phone number off the caller ID, or they realized their shoes don’t match.

I’ve actually seen people leave for work who have not only eaten breakfast, but they’ve done the breakfast dishes, swept the floor, done a load of laundry–and I can’t be sure of this, but I do believe they’d even put out food to thaw for dinner.  

Anyway, February is on the run. Yesterday ice stopped falling from the sky, and the sun came out. My editor called to say that the paperback of A Piece of Normal has been selected by Target as one of their Bookmarked books and will appear in a special rack in the store. A website for working moms, called Work It, linked to my blog, which made me so happy because their stuff is so funny and so necessary out there in the world. And my blogosphere friend, BlogLily, is well again and has even learned how to do a podcast, in which she reads a wonderful Billy Collins poem and her child sings a song about elephants in French. And oh yes–she recommended my book! I was over the moon.

And–I’ve gone back to work on my novel, in earnest now–my characters understand that there is to be no more fooling around and no more procrastination…and well, spring is going to be great.

I think I may have reached an important milestone in working through my personal grief over my deceased computer.

My deceased computer, I might add, that is ONLY TWO YEARS AND FOUR MONTHS OLD and should not have died because nothing bad ever happened to it, unlike the time I killed another laptop computer by forgetting to zip its case, and so when I got up after writing for eight hours one afternoon and picked up the handle of the case, with more than a little bit of force (brought about by drinking many, many cups of very strong tea during those eight hours of writing), and the laptop went zinging across the floor of the coffee shop where I was writing, bouncing three or four times on the tile floor, with the battery hitting the wall—–and yes, that computer was dead, too, and had just demolished the entire manuscript of a book I was writing, but at least that time I understood why.

This time, there was just the Blue Screen of Death and an awful grinding noise, something like a death rattle.

Yes. It is true that it is still dead. I just went downstairs to my desk and turned it on for one last time, just to see, you know, if there was any way it might let me get a couple of old documents off of it, you see. If there could be some kind of electronic miracle, perhaps a tear in the fabric of the universe. Maybe I could get the essay I wrote about my sister after she died. Maybe some of my stories I wrote in the last two years for the newspaper I work for. Some of the letters my friend Diane wrote in emails to me, because she does write the funniest emails in the world.

I clicked the ON button, and it came merrily on, churning itself up to life.

It said:  ”SMART Failure Predicted on Hard Drive.”

Then it had the nerve to say:

“Please back up the contents of the hard drive and run”

I had to stare at this, blinking, for a moment. Back up the hard drive and run?!

This computer is kidding itself if it thinks we can still back up the hard drive.

Anyway, this is a catharsis moment for me. Tomorrow, having given up on it, I shall take the damn thing to Best Buy, where it is still under warranty, and they will wipe the hard drive clean, and return it to me, a brand spanking new computer that will not remember anything about its past.

In the meantime, I have actually done something tonight that I have meant to do since I started this blog: I have posted some actual PAGES. If you look on the right-hand column, you will see that I have typed in some columns I wrote a while back. They are from my book, “You Might As Well Laugh,” and I typed them in because–well, because my kids told me I should. They said blogs can get boring without more to look at!

Who knew?

Today brought much news, hardly any of it good. The Iraq Study Group finally got around to pointing out that the war isn’t going well, but we’re still probably going to stay there. Taco Bell blamed the lowly scallion for making people sick. Christmas shoppers apparently aren’t buying as much as they need to for the economy to stay afloat. And need I say it? Jennifer Aniston is once again alone.  

But–life can’t be all bad when it’s the first Wednesday of the month. That’s the day that Maira Kalman’s blog appears in the New York Times. Her blogs are so colorful and inspiring that they can only appear once a month; they take that long to accomplish.

Even here there is a little bad news, I’m afraid: you pretty much have to subscribe to the New York Times to see them. But I have copied this one page from this month’s entry. Believe me, there are many more pages–and I hope you can somehow go on the site and read them all. They are so beautiful and moving that it’s almost worth the subscription fee.

I’ll be honest here. I am new to this world of blogging, and just about every aspect of it seems strange to me. When I first started writing this, I asked everybody I knew who knew about blogs, “But how will people find my blog?”

Everybody had the same answer, delivered with complete confidence. ”Oh, you’ll see. Spiders and robots will come.”

Sometimes you get an answer that makes you not want to ask any follow-up questions, and this was one of those times.

But anyway, the other day I found out that there is a page I can go to where there is a list of various people who have managed to stumble onto this little space on the internet. Not the spiders and the robots–only God knows how they operate in the blogosphere. But real people go into google sometimes, and they type things, little search phrases, and sometimes those phrases lead them, quite accidentally, I’m sure…to me!

Some people, for instance, have been sent to me when they typed in questions about their slippery duvets. No doubt they were looking for something a little more helpful than anything I had to offer. If they had left an address, perhaps we could have started a Slippery Duvet Support Group. Another wanted to find out about a “problem bedroom over garage.” Still another wanted “humorous columns leaf blowers.”

These I could understand. They have a remote relation to things I have thought about.

But there are other, more alarming trends in the cyberworld.

Some other hapless folks that have been sent to me were instead trying to get info on these fun topics:

• real pictures of saltfish with head and hands
• dogs blood clot hindquarters
• stuffing dangers
• you tub de kahn
• feng shui meaning spiders
• north car/family physicians

and my personal, mysterious favorite:

• instant yeast to buy new york city.

Should we be worried?