S'marvelous, S'wonderful Sheila!!!

About three years ago I stumbled across the most consistently thought-provoking, interesting blog - The Sheila Variations - and truly, I felt, for the first time, that I was not alone in the world. There were others out there who were just as obsessed with Cary Grant, Norma Shearer, George Cukor, Katherine Hepburn, Laurette Taylor, and Louise Beavers as I was. How many times had I mentioned Ann Southern to someone and been met with a blank expression, how many times did I have to explain who Irving Thalberg was? Sheila and her hard core friends/commenters, with their enthusiasm and discernment and brilliant analyses, may not have realized it but they were applying balm to my aching show-biz heart. Suddenly, I wasn't the only torch-bearer out there, and the burdensome task of keeping Laurette's memory alive was shared.

But it didn't end there.

Sheila's wide-ranging interests - yes, obsessions - travel so many tangents and rocket in so many directions that I frequently pause while reading her blog pieces and say to myself, "One person knows all this, loves all this, and shares all this in a brilliant way that conveys such insight and wisdom . . . " Sometimes I am breathless at the sheer quantity of her always high-quality postings. Surely she has a platoon of Oompa Loompas clackity-clacking away on scores of keyboards. Tina Brown in her heyday couldn't get the entire staff of the New Yorker to produce as much as Sheila turns out daily, weekly, monthy, consistently and reassuringly pouring forth her ideas, comments, grandiloquent theories and touching high-school journal entries for us lucky visitors to her site. Sooooo lucky.

Sheila came to New Mexico last week and we met in person for the first time. I felt exhilarated and more than a little bit nervous. After all, Sheila is a celebrity to me, maybe one of the most multi-dimensional people I've ever heard of, and I was meeting her!! But I also knew that she knew me, because I've posted things here and in her commentary that expose me - flay me - as assuredly as a scalpel. It felt like I was Erin Brockovich about to meet Julia Roberts.

I drove around the airport a couple of times and scanned the face of every redhead (I've never seen a picture of Sheila except when she was portraying Edie Sedgewick at a Halloween party), but on the third time around, there she was, illuminated like a beacon of light made corporeal, a smile that somehow I absolutely knew, and then she was in my VW beetle, and we were screaming and laughing, and it was as if we had known each other forever and were just reminding ourselves what we looked like, sounded like, talked like . . . it was sooooo comfortable and sooooo glorious.

Just being with Sheila was a life-altering experience. I posted a couple of weeks ago how I wish I were a better person, just 'cause I'd like Sheila to see the best of me. Well I still feel that way. I want to read a book a day. I wanna be thinner and more active and more energetic. I want to get out into the world and have more adventures so I can share them with her. I want to absorb life in great big gulps, filling my lungs with the pleasure of being, because life suddenly became more wonderful to me, more full of possibility, as seen through Sheila's eyes.

Thank you, Sheila. Thank you for everything. I'm crazy in love with you.

And now, bring on the troops! I'm sending an all-points bulletin to Alex and Beth and Mitchell and Jackie and Chrisanne and Emily: come to Albuquerque and rock my world! My sofa awaits!