Lunching with books

Thank you for all the kind comments about my hair. Today is the day that Emma gets her haircut. Her mom is pulling her out of school because the stylist didn't have any other openings before Christmas, so I am eagerly awaiting the after-school viewing.

So anyway, it occurs to me that a casual reader (or even a regular reader) would hardly recognize this as the blog of a book-lover. Other than my participation in Barrie Summy's Book Review Club, I've hardly had a word to say recently on books. Let me tell you why that is...I haven't been reading!! I haven't been reading, and I am feeling the loss. For the past two or three weeks, the only reading I am getting in is while I'm eating my breakfast or lunch alone. Once the last bite has been chewed up, it's back to work. And it's just going to stay busy all the way till Christmas. But I thought I would tell you about the books that have been read in little snippets as time presents itself.

I did just finish Mr. Darcy, Vampyre by Amanda Grange. Quite honestly I've had enough of vampires for right now, but I was intrigued--I couldn't resist picking it up. And while it was certainly an entertaining, well-written book, it was, I think, a little slow. I don't want to post any spoilers, but let me just say that it was some time before Elizabeth found out about Darcy's secret, and in the interim, it was just life, if not normal, then at least not overly abnormal. Read between the lines if you can...

Now I have moved on and am allowing myself to switch back and forth between my meat-and-potatoes book and my dessert book (classification style courtesy of Ms. Summy). My M&P book is The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown, which we've had for a while now and I'm just now getting to, and my dessert book is Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison. I'm just starting both of them, and yesterday was a serious-minded lunch, complemented by The Lost Symbol, so today I chose Angus and spent the entire meal laughing out loud. Seriously, that book is hilarious. I'd had my eye on it for a while (who wouldn't with that title?), but after the Dec. Book Review Club posts, Angus having been reviewed by Barrie herself, I decided I needed to read it. Dan Brown is just going to have to wait, because I plan on lunch dates with Angus for the forseeable future.

What's everyone else reading?

The Irony is Delicious!

This past summer my boys were in swim team with the daughter of a good friend of mine, who is the same age as my younger son (now eight). We'll call her Emma (which is, in fact, her name). Well quite regularly after swim team, we'd all stay to swim, and after an hour sitting in early-morning Houston summer heat, I was ready to get in the pool myself. Everyday I'd catch Emma staring at me, either underwater or above, and everyday she'd make some crack about my bathing suit, which is a tankini top and fitted swim shorts (they actually look like they could be regular shorts, but they're not). Multiple times she asked me why I was in the pool with my clothes on despite seeing me in this suit almost everyday. One day while I was prepping to get in the pool, she asked me if I wanted to race, then looked me up and down, and seeing the same outfit as usual, said, "Nevermind, you're not wearing your bathing suit." !!!!!!!

Okay that's all just background info for the real story of this post.

When I got my hair cut short a few weeks ago, Emma saw me for the first time after school on the playground. Her response to her mom asking her if she liked my new haircut (not in front of me) was, "I don't see Miss Alyssa, I only see a man." Then later, after her mom confided this to me, she ran by me, glancing in my direction, and smirked. I assumed she was remembering her earlier cleverness. Instead she looped back, came up to me, and said, "Who are you? Are you someone's dad?" Good one!

So yesterday my friend called and said that she'd told Emma that they needed to do something with her hair--it was getting too long and unkempt. Emma's resonse? "I want to get my hair cut like Miss Alyssa's." And so my friend asked if I'd please take a photo of my head and text it to her so that she could show the haircutter. This is the picture:


(In case you're confused, no, that's not a picture of someone's dad, it's really me!)

I can't wait to see the haircut I've inspired! Little turkey! And now I've got to come up with some good teasing lines of my own.