Read instructions before use

Someone once told me, or I read, or I saw or I heard that you could stuff all the expensive fancy eye creams - the best thing to get rid of big dark baggy rings under your eyes was Preparation H.

I have a few of the expensive (bought for me as gifts) and inexpensive (self-purchsed) eye creams but still look like an extra from the Michael Jackson 'Thriller' video, so decided to give the Preparation H a shot.

So I am layering it on and my 'ever-curious-soon-to-be-hormonal-but-already-experimenting-with-mummy's-cosmetics' daughter is watching me and studying the packaging and after a moments deliberation pipes up with 'mummy, why does it say to put it on after you go to the toilet?'

Good question. Who would like to answer??

I want to be a Play Therapist when I grow up

It all started in a year 8 employability class when one of the pupils asked me what I'd like to do when I grew up.

Stage two was when we had to take Dolly up to hospital rather unexpectedly last week to have a series of scans and tests done. Now you would think that to an eight year old all the prodding, scanning, probing, jabbing and widdling on demand might seem a tad disconcerting, as it certainly was for mum.

Not at all. Thanks not only to the super medical staff on the ward and in the radiology department, but largely to the wards Play Therapist.

Don't you mean physiotherapist I hear you say. No. Play Therapist. Someone who looked after the little patients by providing suitable games, puzzles, activities and crafts to keep them occupied between examinations and tests.

Someone who explained in child friendly terms exactly what would be happening and why. I found that useful myself! Someone who played 'Where's Wally?' to expertly distract whilst bloods were being taken. And someone who made mums and dads a proper mug of tea.

Brilliant job, and that's what I want to be when I grow up.

PS Dolly say hospital fish and chips are the best in the world

PPS all tests came back clear :-)

Sent from my iPhone

Life without the internet

First the router, now the modem. Makes you realise just how reliant
you have become on the old tinterweb when you don't have it.

Im going to have to actually walk into a shop to buy my groceries!
And does anyone know if you can book a hotel by telephone?

Worst of all, no access to online coverage of tomorrows Ulster match.
Might have to see if I can borrow a wireless set for that one.

So, if you're trying to communicate with me in a hurry, you might want
to forego email and try the phone. I'm sure we have a landline
somewhere...

Sent from my iPhone

Nice day for it

We had a bomb scare in town today, about half a mile from where I am currently working. That meant police checkpoints and roads closed and diversions and big traffic tailbacks.

I was sitting in the tailbacks thinking where else but Belfast would you see people move out into the streets to watch a bomb scare? Hairdressers and their customers all standng at the cordon watching the bomb disposal robot approaching the package. Men with pints lounging against the wall watching and chatting with the police at the cordons. Mums with prams and shopping chatting while taking in the goings on. Kids hangning out of windows overlooking the site. And me sitting in the traffic queue with the roof down on the mini.

Of course, if it had been raining, that would have been a completely different story! Wouldn't it be good if it could be like this all the time?? ;-)

This arrived today

I need a (virgin) man

I haven't been able to use my desktop for some time as first of all I
had a router issue and now I have an ongoing Internet issue. I feel
the resurgance of my love affair with the Virgin man coming on!

Hmmmm. Judy, do you think ...??

Sent from my iPhone, and thank the Lord I have it!!

Father Ted moment

I was showing some pupils pictures of Paris and we had already oohed and ahhed at the Eiffel Tower when I switched to a picture of the Arc de Triomphe nicely lit up at night.

One pupil suddenly says 'look Miss, there's that other tower in the picture too. WOW! That arch must be massive, the tower looks tiny beside it.'

I actually heard myself saying it ... no, it's not small, it's just .....

Economics

Reading a post on Steve's blog reminded me of an experience I had myself.

In sixth form I too studied Economics. I did the 'O' level in one year (I have a B grade Steve) and in the second year went on to do the 'A' level, where I didn't do quite so well ;-) As part of our course we were encouraged to buy an entire set of essay answers written by a professor of Economics from the London School of Economics, which I of course did.

Having done well enough to get to university I followed a degree that required a certain amout of Economics knowledge so in the first year we had lectures in Economics. The module was assessed by an assignment, the title of which was 'What is the function of the Bank of England?'

Now, there was a girl who had not only been at my school, but also in my 'A' level Economics class doing the same course as me, and we were the only two in the entire year group who had ever studied Economics before. We decided that, rather than re-invent the wheel, we would just copy our 'What is the function of the Bank of England?' essay from our set of essay answers written by a professor of Economics from the London School of Economics because, frankly, we had a dozy old codger for lectures who wasn't even going to notice that she'd received two identically written essays.

We expected A grades, as you would. Disappointing then when my copy of the professor of Economics essay was graded at C- and my friends identical copy of the professor's essay got a B+. Go figure

Fun Monday

I don't do these very often, but this one sort of tickled me.

Jan has asked us to explain what type of TV viewer we are. Well, truthfully I don't watch much on TV but there are two programmes I never miss, always record and have seen gazillions of times over.

The first is one everyone will know - NCIS, standing for Naval Criminal Investigative Service. It is a drama series revolving around a fictional team of special agents who conduct criminal investigations involving the US Navy and Marine Corps. I love it. Actually, I love Leroy Jethro Gibbs. And Anthony DiNozzo. And Judy loves Ducky :-)

Second is a programme in the UK called Come Dine with Me. The show has four amateur chefs competing against each other by hosting a dinner party for the other contestants. Each competitor then rates the host's performance with the winner winning a £1,000 cash prize.

Some of the cooks are a complete and utter disaster, like the woman who made six (I kid you not) pavlovas before getting one right, or the one who fell asleep and her guests had to cook their own main course! And the mix of competitors is always good; veggies mixed with butchers type things.

But the absolutely best bit is the element of comedy which is added to the show through the narrator, who provides a dry and "bitingly sarcastic" narration throughout.

Seasons

I am sitting at my new desk in my new position in the 'nook' on the upstairs landing of the house listening to the rain blattering off the roof and the wind blowing the tree branches into the windows. This is going to be a long, long winter :-(

Happy Birthday bro!

Subtle insults

My brother bought a new car this week. He need it because the number of children in his family is going to be doubled from two to four in January.

Anyway, he bought a new car, a couple of years old but in excellent nick. When questioned he explained that the previous owner had been an old man. 'Oh' laughed mum 'someone my age then, ha ha ha'. 'No' said brother, 'he's not that old, he must have been about 50'.

That would be just eight years older than me then. Old, eh.

I was wrong

when I said it had all gone pear-shaped

wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong!

Poetry

As part of the major rearrangement of rooms that is taking place at home currently, I have been bunging out cupboards and today I came across a box of my kids old school notebooks. The work has made interesting reading, like the following poem penned by my son.

My Mum

You're as smashing as a red rose in a garden

You're as tasty as chicken

You're as cool as a can of Coke

You're as soft as silk

You're as excellent as rock music

You're as cheerful as happyness

You're as lovely as presents

I've done it again

Much to the embarrassment of my kids, I have just accosted a strange man in Tescos. Not that the man I accosted was strange in himself. I'm sure he was perfectly normal in most ways. It's just that it was a man I didn't know from Adam.

It all started innocently enough, my son thought he had seen one of his teachers and decided he would go and say hello. Having already paid for my groceries, I proceeded to go back into the store with him, laden down with full grocery bags, risking being arrested for shoplifting.

When we caught up with the man, my son got cold feet, and knowing the longer I hung around with my bags of shopping the more likely it would be that I would be arrested for shoplifting, I decided enough was enough and grabbed the man by the elbow.

'Well, hello!' I chirped, to which the stranger turned round , looked me up and down, turned beetroot (yes, it does happen!) red and started to back away from the mad woman.

Of course, any normal person would apologise and maybe explain. Not me.. oh no, I started to giggle nervously. Which only made the poor man go even redder (yes, it is possible!)

At this stage the kids have run off in total humiliation leaving me to eventually apologise and let the poor man go on with buying his haemorrhoid cream.

How to decorate a room round a Stade Francais nudey calendar

By the power of the internet

In 1997 we went to visit friends we had met on honeymoon who lived in Boston. Whilst we were visiting them, they took us on a trip up to New Hampshire to a little place called North Conway. North Conway was lovely, with little old fashioned general merchant shops and old inns and a lovely hand-made quilt shop.

At that stage in my life I still had time to do a bit of quilting, but when I saw the specimens in this store I decided I just had to have one. So I selected one (tough job - they were all so nice!) to bring home for our downstairs bedroom.

As I was paying, the lady at the counter told me she had made the quilt herself, and showed me where she had signed and dated the quilt on the reverse side.

I never really thought another thing about it. Until yesterday. I had stripped the bed and was washing the bedlinen and decided that I would also give the quilt a wash. Usually I got it dry cleaned, but I didn't have time for that so looked to see if there were any care instructions before popping it into the washing machine. Well, there weren't, but I did find the lady's signature.

So I thought, I'll google her, which I did, to discover she still runs a little quilt shop in Conway, NH. Then I thought I'll see if she's on Facebook, after all everyone's on Facebook these days. So I typed her name in and lo and behold there she was again.

The long and short of it is that I have been able to contact the lady who made my quilt and send her a long overdue photo of her handicraft in situ in my bedroom.

Isn't the internet wonderful??!

60 minute makeover

I am blogging from the iPhone because the desktop is currently packed
away whilst a major transformation is undertaken with study
arrangements. It may or may not be successful - and that could refer
equally to the blogging from the iPhone and the transformation progress.

As I type the painter is slapping on new dulux and as usual it bears
no resemblance to the colour on the sample card when it's on the wall.
On top of that, I feel like I've been six rounds with Barry McGuigan
having spent the afternoon assembling IKEA furniture.

And in about ten seconds when I push send, the phones gonna tell me
I'm trying to send this email update to an invalid address.

BTW, were already well over the 60 minute mark - even the 60 hour
mark. Why, oh why .....

:-)

Sent from my iPhone

Fairy sleepover tonight

Bollywood

There's a community festival going on round these parts. The kids are
loving signing up to new activities on offer, especially Dolly as
there are no more than three types of dance workshops. After much
deliberation, bollywood dancing was selected from the three.

So I duly took her to the first session last night, fully intending to
drop and go. But would she stay on her own? Would she heck as like!
So it became bollywood dancing for mummies.

Today she was full of me dropping her off and her being on her own, up
until the point we got to the venue when she stuck to me like glue and
it became bollywood for mummies part two.

Now don't get me wrong, it's been great fun but tonight I have to say
I'm completely bollywood bolloxed. How bad can it be? you say. Bad
enough that I physically had to use my two hands to lift my legs into
bed tonight, and whether or not I manage to get them lifted back out
again in the morning is anyones guess. I wouldn't go laying bets...

Sent from my iPhone