Seven Quick Takes: Lunch with James Sire, Herb Scissors, and More!

I was showing off my new book to Siah. I honestly thought he’d be impressed. Instead, after making a joke about the title {which involved reading it reaaalllyy sssslllooowwwlllyyy}, he’s says, “I know that guy.”

Me → “What guy?”

Him → “The author.”

“What? How?!”

“I had lunch with him once.”

“You had lunch with James Sire?”

“Yep. Centurions.”

Bah. No fair.

Have you heard of herb scissors? I hadn’t, but for my birthday, Friend R. bought me some. They look just like these:

Aren’t they cool? So far I’ve used them on cilantro and green onions. They. are. fantastic.

E-Age-Almost-12 is currently reading The Shining Company. He keeps raving about it, and when I finally asked him why he liked it so much, his response was interesting to me. He said it is written unlike any other book he’s ever written. It’s written in the first person, and he says that Sutcliff makes him feel like he is the person. In other books, “I always know everything. The author tells me what is going on. In this book, I get confused, but I’m supposed to get confused. If it is the end of a hard day and I’m really tired, the writing gets fuzzy and I don’t understand as well. It makes me feel like I’m him.”

I thought that was a pretty good review!

Any of you have children with sensitive scalps? I mean the type who wail excessively when you dare to do something crazy…like scrub their dirty head, or brush their hair? I spent time trying to identify the perfect {painless} hairbrush when Daughter A. was a preschooler. She was a mess. O-Age-Five has a similar history, but since he’s a boy, it was mainly the scrubbing of the hair that was a problem.

Anyhow: problem solved.

Guess what both these children had in common?

Magnesium deficiency!

I began supplementing them with magnesium after reading this could be the underlying cause and, 10 days later, no more hair aversion issues.

No joke.

We’ll file this one under Amazing Health Tips. I mean, I have no clue if it’ll work on your kids, but I’m two-for-two here at the house.

Yesterday was our first 100+ degree day of the season. When it hit 82 degrees in the coldest part of my house, I finally broke down and turned on the air. It was either that or skip exercising.

Today’s high is also 100 degrees. But I looked at the forecast, and the high is only 77 on Tuesday. When you raise cattle, this is called “pneumonia weather.” On the other hand, when you raise grapes, this is called “extra good wine weather.” I raise goats, so neither applies, but I thought I’d mention it anyhow.

A couple of my friends from my reading group and I went to see Mom’s Night Out on Tuesday night. Oh. my. goodness. It really was laugh-out-loud funny. I think my favorite part was when the main character was reporting her van as stolen and she was giving the description, which included all the bumper stickers it had. She gets awkward and says hatlingly, “Um. My homeschool is smarter than your honor student.“

Too funny.

Here’s the trailer, if you haven’t seen it:

Pretty soon, I’m going to have to think of a seventh take each week, because the guest house is so close to done, I can taste it. {Not that I make a habit of tasting guest houses.} I don’t have a photo because everything basically looks the same. My final photo will be taken once they paint the front door. I sort of wanted to choose a cool color, but in the end I went with simply matching the trim because that is the color of my front door.

The only reason it isn’t done already is because we hit a bump with the final inspection {the state wanting to enforce a new law when we should have been grandfathered under the previous year, since that is when we pulled the permit}. It all worked out in the end, we passed the inspection, and now we’re just doing the finishing work.

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