10/15/18, Your comments

Hi Everyone,

I hope that all is going well for you, as we creep up on Halloween. Have you planned your Halloween costume yet?? I’m going to give a Halloween dinner for my godchildren, but I haven’t figured out what to wear yet (they’ve already seen my Whoopie cushion costume, so I’ll have to come up with something new). And yes, I bought Halloween costumes for my dogs—they are tired of their bumble bee costumes!!!

On a night when I couldn’t sleep, having cruised through 3 time zones over 6,000 miles in 3 days, I guess jet lag caught up with me. I like to say that I don’t get jet lag, but it does catch up with me too, though not often. Being wide awake in the middle of the night, I read your comments in response to my blogs, and was deeply touched by many of your kind, loving comments, especially about my son Nick (from the people who say they have been helped by him, with their own struggles.  I keep you close to my heart, and in my prayers).I always read your comments, but sometimes I go back and check for any I missed, and being awake at 4 am was a great opportunity. Some of your comments made me laugh out loud.

On a practical note, one of you suggested that I go to a San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting to report about the coyotes loose in our neighbourhood. There are more and more reports of them all over the city, and I think your suggestion is great, and will act on it. The city is refusing to deal with it, and they say there are too many to deal with or control. I hear more and more reports of pets lost to coyotes, not just in SF, but all over the country. What is happening that we’re being inundated by coyotes??? But I thought the Board of Supervisors suggestion was great.

Another comment was that someone had read 118 of my books, and was afraid that they had missed some. I have written 171 books to date—-5 of them were never published (my 2nd through 6th books, written when I was in my late teens. My very first one was “Going Home”, which was published and is still in print. And they were all published and are still in print, from my seventh book on). 5 of my books are non-fiction, on a variety of subjects (pregnancy, homelessness, my son Nick, etc). There are 147 novels, and the rest are a book of poetry, and many illustrated children’s books for young children. If you look at the most recent hardcover book, it lists all the books going back to the first one, so that way you can tell if there are any you’ve missed. And thank you for reading the 118 until now!!! Wow!!!

The comment that really made me laugh out loud, was the reader who was laughing at me for recently replacing a 14 year old TV in my bedroom. She said that if I have a 14 year old cell phone too, that would make me a historian. Well, guess what? I DONT have a 14 year old cell phone—-I have an 18 year old cell phone!!! Ha!!! So there. And it works great—-it is a tiny, old, Nokia, which pre-dates the flip phone. I drop it on the floor regularly, and I pick it up and it keeps on going (when my children drop their cell phones, it’s the end of their phones!! Not mine). I love it because it’s not only reliable, but it has multi colored flashing (disco) lights when I get a phone call, so if I’m in a noisy place, I can SEE when it’s ringing, if I glance in my purse. And then it has different flashing lights to tell me I have a message. How can you beat that??? Unlike a smart phone, I cannot tell you on what date and time Grace Kelly was born, what shoe size Albert Einstein wore, or how many people live in South Dakota and what their favorite movies are. It has a camera feature I have never figured out how to work, and basically it only works for phone calls and texts. I don’t want emails on my cell phone, or like my children, I would have my eyes glued to my phone during every meal. I am NOT a high tech person. I can barely work my computer, and make embarrassing mistakes on it all the time, I only use it for email, and not much else, and I don’t know how to shop on line (and everyone refuses to show me). I write my books on a 1946 German typewriter, an Olympia, which I LOVE, and wouldn’t dare write on a computer, or I would erase 14 chapters while trying to figure out where the shift key is. I accidentally erase as many emails as I send.  The only thing I know how to do on my IPad is play solitaire, which I enjoy. Supposedly I could send emails, watch movies, or launch a rocket ship and work my curtains from my IPad, but damned if I know how. I have proven to be an F student on anything computer oriented, which is embarrassing, and even more so when I see 2 year olds playing games on their IPad in their strollers. It’s in their genes, not mine!!!  When I got married, I arrived in my husband’s house with the only TV I had at the time (museums were begging me for it), it had lots of snow, only certain channels worked and had a coat hanger stuck in it as an antenna. Although much older than I, my husband had adopted every kind of modern tech at the time, and was addicted to TV, he would watch several channels at once on separate TVs, and even had one in his closet so he could watch the news while he got dressed in the morning. I didn’t watch much TV, so I didn’t mind my dilapidated old TV (which he made me throw away. Can you imagine??!!). And when we moved into a new house, he sent me out to buy 15 TVs to put EVERYWHERE. I dutifully went to Macy’s and bought 15 TV’s, and was taken upstairs by security who didn’t recognize me, and thought I was buying TV’s with stolen credit cards. Who buys 15 TV’s??? So if the reader who commented on my 14 year old TV and was laughing about my cell phone, was laughing at that—now you know the WHOLE story. (My husband also got the first ‘portable’ phone at the time, which was in a suitcase, weighed about 40 lbs, and he took it proudly to restaurants so everyone could see it. Personally, I like my 18 year old Nokia much better). Maybe one day I’ll get a Smartphone. But I’m not ready to take that leap yet—-and I will NEVER be writing my books on a computer. I paid $20. for my typewriter at a 2nd hand shop (or maybe 10th hand) when I wrote my first book at 19, and my Olympia isn’t going anywhere. 171 books later, we are doing just fine!!!

So now you now some of my dark secrets. I am not a ‘techie’. My children have given up trying to get my old cell phone out of my hand. And I also have a new TV in my office, and I haven’t even figured out how to turn it on yet, a year after I got it. I worry sometimes that someone might try to steal my old Nokia cell phone out of my purse one day, and my kids laugh REALLY hard at that. After all, they must be jealous that my cell phone has disco lights and their Smartphones don’t. And I really don’t need to know Albert Einstein’s shoe size, or Julius Caesar’s birthday. I’m doing fine as I am.

So thank you for your comments and for reading my blog. And even if I don’t answer you specifically, know that I read ALL your comments, and am very grateful for them, and enjoy them a lot!!!!.

Have a GREAT week!!!!

love, Danielle