You Might As Well Laugh
Buy the Book:AMAZON BARNES & NOBLE INDIEBOUND AUDIBLE
Published by: Bancroft Press
Release Date: April 1, 1997
Pages: 284
ISBN13: 978-0963124630
Overview
This is a collection of humor columns written for The New Haven Register and appearing in Working Mother Magazine. Sandi Kahn Shelton, a single mother working as a reporter for a city newspaper, often went to work already exhausted from a morning spent tracking down homework assignments in the couch cushions, reassuring children that the goldfish wouldn’t die from missing them during the school day, and all too often, trying to figure out school project instructions sent home by overly optimistic teachers. Her favorite was when her third grader was told to carve a Sphinx out of a bar of Ivory soap…but a quick runner-up was when she had to outfit a family of clothespins in medieval costumes. By morning. When her editor discovered she was spending valuable time regaling the other (single, childless) reporters with stories of Life With Children, he suggested she start writing these anecdotes down, and the paper published them. At least, he reasoned, they could get some writing out of her.
The column won first place by the Associated Press for Humor Columns, and was picked up by Working Mother magazine, where it was seen by a publisher who asked if he could publish it. Shelton sent off a box of some 500 columns to his house (her only copies, by the way) and was shocked when, three months later, he said he’d organized ten years of columns into a book.
Add on GoodreadsPraise
"A cheerful, flippant view of family life, with a compassionate undercurrent that gives these observations weight."
-Kirkus Reviews
"I came upon this book quite by accident. I've not laughed quite as helplessly for a long time. I really got an ache in my side! Her style is simply delicious and the feelings picturised are so familiar that even as you laugh you get that gentle, comforting feeling of having someone understand just what it was like..."
-5-star Amazon review
Excerpt
An All-Nighter
There is no logical explanation for this, but about once or twice a month, along comes a night when no one in our house gets any sleep.
That is: zero sleep takes place.
In other words, we are all awake all night long.
No ZZZZZs.
Take this night, for instance.
8:30 p.m: I stood up and declared, loud enough for everyone to hear: “Tonight I am going to get tons of sleep. I am so tired that I could fall asleep right this minute and not wake up until next week.
“Yes, sirree,” I went on. “Sleep is what is needed here. Good, healing, nourishing sleep.”
And off I went with 4-year-old Stephanie to give her a bath, brush her teeth, read her the required two stories, sing the required three songs, and then sit in the dark until a suitable interval passed and she agreed that I could leave the room.
And I actually did make it through the bath, the teeth-brushing, and the stories.
But once we turned out the light, I was a goner. No songs.