Itchy Scritchy Scratchy

I can't belive it! It never happened when I was at school. Managed to get through my entire schooldays without a single nit. Now I'm sitting here with some stinking stuff on my hair which has to stay on it for 12 hours waiting for it to be dry enough to go to bed.
My delightful daughter, who has long hair and has to be held down to get it brushed - has nits. the Bees Nees is to blame of course - although I suppose it could be the Girls Brigade. She's always hugging her lovely friends and all that hair is bound to just beckon to little nits looking for a new home.
Well, if brushing Iona's hair is difficult - you should have seen my attempt to put this lotion on and get a nit comb though it. I haven't even told her what it's for because she would have gone totally mad and shrieked hysterically. She merely thinks that we are making her hair extra healthy and killing germs.
Sam on the other hand keeps trying to get me to nit comb his hair because he loves it. Luckily he seems to have escaped as does Alan. But Mummy was called into her bedroom a couple of nights ago and the rest is history.
My what a host of nit products are on the market. You can even buy an elecric nit comb now that appears to electrocute the little blighters as you comb. The nit comb that we purchased today was an eye watering £9.99, but purports to be an all singing and dancing nit remover.
This is were I wish that I had lovely fine hair that the comb went through with ease. Sadly my thick and wiry Crystaltips -Like hair has been almost removed by the roots this evening and oh how I am looking forward to sleeping with this delightful odour permeating the room.
Ho hum. Let's hope it works.

Nice Photo

Well, I'm pleased to see you're still at the blog & while it's certainly been a while, it's good to know you're making the effort. It's been such a long time since I've been on either blog although saying that I started mine last week, is there anyone else apart from us 2 bothering to post on you blog. I think you should rally round & give the rest of them a good shake, that's not a McDonalds one of course.

I'd better go, roasting here in apartment & need to get out for a walk, those were the days eh, a walk from Fairfield Court to your place. Anyway, take care & lots of love.

Markie Mark

Stress Busting

Oh what a day - or is it what a week! It's not that I know how to do relaxation, but actually carrying out the various actions to relax - ....breathing regularly and deeply for example it's just hard to actually do it when under a lot of pressure.

Sometimes I wonder if we actaully have control of our lives now - or whether our lives just control us. Of course, if I was a hugely organised person I would just ignore the emails that pop up every other minute while I am trying to get another piece of work done, or learn to say the word "no" a bit more often. Then at home - where does one find solace and quiet - certainly not even in the toilet in our house. "MUMMY, WH-ER-E A-R-E Y-O-U?" shouts Iona smashing through the broken lock on the door and exposing me reposing on the throne to the rest of the family in the bedroom.

But today was one of those evenmorestressfulthanususal days (hope the spell checker isn't on). I've put a restful picture at the top of the page just to help me begin to relax before I go to bed - to be honest this is a new computer and there are no pictures saved on it to this is one of the only ones I could find.

First there was the launch of CCWA NI which for the sake of Margaret Ritchie's important diary as at 9am. I'm not used to comuting to Belfast in the rush hour - 45 minutes. Thank goodness I live and work in Newtownards. But at least we got to sit and listen to speeches for a good 45 minutes - not the most relaxing way to spend your morning - but beggars can't be choosers. Then it was off to the Community Relations Council Live Issues conference at which I was speaking - couldn't get parked - but a lovely man guided me into a spare space only about 2 miles from the Ramada!! Then I managed to go into the wrong conference and realised my mistake which Sam's P1 teacher asked me what I was doing there. Mmm ... it was some education resource conference.

Anyway all was well eventually and I even managed to bend Duncan Morrow's ear about the (non stressful) fact that the salary for my post runs out today - not to mention the core costs for the Community Relations Programme. He's the second Chief Executive to say "I don't know how this has happened" in relation to The Link funding in the space of two weeks.

I decided to write a "to do" list while supposedly listening to another contributor's input (God forgive me!) and it had a slightly calming effect except that there were 15 things on it that need to be done in the next two days. Then headed home so at least I got a chance to see my lovely children at some point today.

Mowing the lawn could be termed stress busting, I suppose until you see the height of our grass and the small size of our hover mower. It would probably need to hover about a foot above the grass as this was the first cut. Still I got about half of the back lawn cut and filled the brown bin.

The Community Forum meeting tonight was in the main quite encouraging, but I still find myself grinding my teeth and clenching things that probably shouldn't ever be clenched when dealing with issues in the Forum. I was taken aside by a member of the Loyalist community afterwards (always a nervous moment) and in muted tones asked about the possible sources for the funding of a table tennis table. Sighs of relief all round. So here I am at home blogging in a valient attempt to de-stress and only feeling more stressful becuase I haven't sorted out the washing and made the lunches in preparation for tomorrow.

Oh well .... time to book my Mother's Day massage I think......