women of a certain age are like sunflowers; they know how to turn their faces to the sun.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

The One That Got Away

"The night is bitter,
The stars have lost their glitter;
The winds grow colder
And suddenly you're older -
And all because of the man that got away."
-Judy Garland

Every day I play a little game with myself. After I post, I subscribe to my own feed at Bloglines and see how many subscribers I have. A month or so ago I hit 25, which seemed like a benchmark of sorts. (Hey, when you're still wet behind the ears like I am, you take what you can get!)

Since I had dilly dallied around too long, I couldn't run a contest for predicting the date I would hit 25. But I had grand plans for a post telling you 25 things you never wanted to know about sex me, but were afraid to ask. Somehow I never quite got around to it. Real life kept getting in the way.

Well, today I received my comeuppance. My readership went DOWN by one.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!

Don't know what I did to cause someone to drop me like a hot potato, toss me out with the dishwater, cast me aside like yesterday's news, but I feel like a sock without a mate.

So, I get a second chance for a meaningless contest! Yay me!!! (Raise the roof)

Leave me a comment and let me know the day and hour upon which I will discover I have reached twenty-five again and I will send you a goodie box with twenty-five "somethings."

AHA! It's a MYSTERY prize.

25 knitting needles
25 skeins of sock yarn (you may think this is beyond the realm of reality but then, you haven't seen my stash!)
25 stitch markers
25 mateless socks (with the yarn to finish them)
25 rutabagas
25 cents
25 dollars
25 THOUSAND dollars (dream on...)

You get the drill.

And no fair signing up twice, if you already subscribe. That's cheating (or fudging finessing the stitch count, if you will.)

And I promise to stop obsessing about where we went wrong...

SIGH!

Are you lonesome tonight?
Do you miss me tonight?
Are you sorry we drifted apart?
Does your memory stray to a bright sunny day
When [you read me] and called [me] sweetheart?
Do the [posts] in your [in-box] seem empty and bare?
Do you gaze at your [laptop] and picture me there?
Is your heart filled with pain, shall I come back again?
Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight?
-with apologies to Elvis

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm guessing Dec 14.

And please don't be mad at me, but I happened to be subscribed to you twice (bloglines and google) and I got rid of one of them. I don't think I'm your 24 though. :-(

margene said...

I don't think the numbers have anything to do with you. Someone could have moved to another feed reader. Also, in my experience, Bloglines goes up and down for no reason...
I guess Oct. 29.

ikkinlala said...

Well, I've never subscribed before, but based on how well I've been keeping track of things lately it might be better for me to subscribe than to trust that I'll remember to visit regularly.

So I will guess that you'll reach 25 again today, within the next hour, provided that I manage to figure out how.

If I'm right I won't hold you to the contest (since I won before), but I would be interested in reading a "25 things" post.

Opal said...

Just to put a vote in, I'll put a number out there with no scientific value whatsoever. Oct 27th!

Anonymous said...

Susan - I say 25 lashes with a skein of yarn to the one who jumped ship! I for one enjoy your blog - and you! You provoke my thoughts, cause me to chuckle, and open my eyes to a new view.

My prediction for you to hit 25 will be the 26th of October.

I would LOVE to be the winner of the 25 things mystery prize!!

:-)

Donna Lee said...

I don't subscibe (I honestly don't know how...) I just bookmark the blogs I like (like yours) and visit them whenever I turn on the computer. I do read all your posts because I always enjoy them and often think about them for a while. We are cut from similar cloth, I think. Anyway, my guess is that today 10/25 by 11 pm you will be back up to 25 and probably surpass it.

Michelle said...

I don't think you should take that number as the acurate number of your "loyal readers". For a long time I never used Bloglines because I simply didn't know how to use it. I used to just have a really long list of bookmarks.

However, after your post, I'm sure someone who bookmarked you will go and add you to their Bloglines. I guess the 26th at 9am.

Anonymous said...

I say don't worry too much about it - people move to other readerships. I guess Weds, Oct. 31st in the late morning.

amy said...

I had no idea you could find out how many people are actually subscribed. Does it count everyone? Because I use Google Reader for blogs I visit. Do you use anything else to track? I really like statcounter.com. It's addictive at first, though...

Oh, no guess on the date. I'm so not good at that sort of thing. :)

Carie @ Space for the Butterflies said...

Well my guess is 20.05 on 30th October! And as others have said before me, you have a wider readership than bloglines with other feed readers and people who just bookmark and sheer random chance so I think you're probably way over 25 by now!

Denise said...

If you want a better measure of who's reading your blog, and where they come from, use something like (free) Stat Counter - it steps you through the set-up process nice and easy, too. AS others have said, Bloglines only shows up those who happen to subscribe, not all your readers :)

I'm guessing you've already got your 25th back, but if not, I'll go with 28th October, at noon!

TheBlackSheep said...

Ha! If I were really sneaky, devious and knew what I was doing, I'd "predict" and then go subscribe to the feed. :D

However, I don't know what I'm doing so I can't, and it would be dishonest, so I won't. :P

Good luck!