Scratching My Head
The most important topic of 1,000 years ago
Scientists recently translated a sentence from an approximately 1,000 year old comb: “May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard.” This sentence is the oldest known piece of writing using an alphabet.
I had a great laugh at the irony of this. We translate an ancient saying, and it’s not about the gods, or soap, or even a love story.
It’s about lice.
Think about that for a moment. Of all the things that survived, we now know one of the most important things to people 1,000 years ago was combing nits out of their beards. And yes, I’m thinking of monkeys picking out bugs from their fur right about now.
Parents know all too well of these little creeps: the louse. Notoriously spread through contact between school-age children, they creep and crawl all over your scalp. They are hard to get rid of, too, requiring a really hot cycle in the washing machine and vigilance with a comb. And more often than not, several doses of over-the-counter medication. In several doses. That’s because they take days to hatch, and hair falls all over the place.
They aren’t harmful in the sense that you’d get a horrible disease from them, unless you count being grossed out.
Well, I can tell you with all sorts of authority that dealing with lice on your child is made about a million times worse in a custody situation. Because, as I mentioned, lice takes days to hatch, and hair falls all over the place.
Did I mention that lice takes days to hatch?
Coincidentally, the number of days to hatch is approximately the same number of days between households in (what I consider) to be a typical custody schedule. So, what ends up happening is that your child keeps getting reinfected.
When this happened, of course my ex-husband (let’s call him B, which may or may not be the first letter of B’s name … totally, purely, 100% coincidence if it was) and I were on the same page with these lice:
Me: B, you need to wash everything in hot water.
B: Why?
Me: Because she has lice.
(A week and a half later:)
Me: B, you need to wash everything in hot water.
B: Why?
Me: Because she has lice.
(A week and a half later:)
Me: B, you need to wash everything in hot water.
B: Why?
Me: Because she has lice.
(A week and a half later:)
B: You need to take her to the doctor.
Me: Why?
B: Because she has lice.
Me: Did you wash everything in hot water?
B: No. But she needs prescription medication because she keeps getting lice.
Me: So you didn’t wash everything in hot water?
B: This is getting out of hand.
Me: How much does this medication cost?
B: $250.
If only ancient people had $250 prescription lice medication.
Book Promos
I am totally behind on my newsletter stuff, so I hope you forgive me for mashing this all up here on you. I promise, none of the promos have to do with lice.
Doomed Legacy (Book 9) by Matt Coyle just dropped! Perfect time for some thrills this holiday season. It’s another book (hence the Book 9) about PI Rick Cahill. Mr. Coyle also won some awards, which generally means the book won’t have annoying typos and constant POV shifts like a lot of self-published books do. I purchased this to give a read because it looks really good. I’ll let you know in an upcoming newsletter when I finish it.
Thy Killer’s Keeper by Edita A. Petrick features ex-FBI agent and profiler John Salton as he puts his far-out theories to the test. A futuristic crime suspense story.
Hidden Pieces by Mary Keliikoa … Sheriff Jax Turner must pull the pieces of his broken life together to save a young kidnapped girl.
The Group Promos
Download a bucketload of free books by signing up to the authors’ newsletters. Not guaranteed to be as cool as me.
- Horror Giveaway Promo … for the horror seeker in you.
- Free Fall Fantasy and Sci Fi … travel to another world.
- Mysteries & Suspense Giveaways … put a little mystery in your life.
- Full Swing Fall Speculative … for anything spooky or just plain awesome.
- November Thriller Giveaway … lots of thrills with your turkey.
- Action, Adventure & Intrigue Giveaway … it’s intriguing!
- Ready For This? A Suspense, Mystery, and Thriller Giveaway … for more of what you love!
- Take A Thrill Ride … with these thrilling books.
Thank you everyone for checking these out! Nothing I have in this newsletter is a paid sponsorship, but I do trade for a mention in other authors’ newsletters.
Happenings
I decided to switch over to fantasy reading because legal fiction was getting too boring for me. Are lawyers really this boring? Am I really this boring?
Right now, I’m catching up on the Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine for bite-size stories, which is free to read on the Kindle Unlimited.
I’m also gearing up for another season of the Wheel of Time, which I hope is better than the last season (which sucked). If you prefer reading the tomes, the Kindle has all of them bundled into one purchase. You can also get the companion if you want to skip over the reading part and get to the “who is this?” part for the TV series.
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