Happy Easter

By pure sheer luck I managed to be off work for five full days. Feeling the itch in my feet I decided to take myself down to Derry for a night. I was gonna go by myself, stay in a hostel, walk around, read my book and drink coffee. But there are two absolutely amazing people in Derry, Magda and Steve, who I met at university and hadn't seen in years. I dcided to give them a shout in case they fancied meeting. Then I realsied that Dirt Bird was home for Easter so she came along too and we had a lovely, lovely time. But it was more than just a lovely time for me. It was healing for my soul. If I spend too long without some kind of adventure I feel restless and discontent. I used to think that I had to travel half way round the world to settle this urge but I've realised that even just gettig out of Ballymena helps.

We met Magda and a few of her other friends and went to Sandino's where we were entertained by an eclectic mix of live music. We then headed back to Magda and Steve's where we were fed mojito's and pizza. The next day we had a lovely breakfast in their garden, a stroll along the beach and yummy icecream at a traditonal cafe. We were very well looked after.

Last night I was at my mate's birthday party. It was a fun night playing drinking games and being silly. Today I could really do with a mint frappe (my new favourite hangover cure) but I'm going to have to settle for juice and doughnuts. Oh well.

Ha Boot Da Ha

If my niece knew what a birthday was this is probably what she'd say to me. And though she's not quite old enough to be aware of birthdays she still made me a lovely birthday card and came round to visit me. She brought her mummy and her two dogs with her. I made tea for the adults, Martha got a wee taste of mint milkshake and the poor dogs had to settle for a few rat kibbles.

After being at the zoo yesterday you'd have thought that the rats would have been boring to Martha but not atall. She thought they were great. And you'd have thought the rats would have been nervous with two dogs around but they are far too cocky to be scared. In fact, Maya was much more scared of the rats than they were of her.

Flat Warming and Rat Warming

It feels like such a long time ago that I had anything of any real worth to write about. In a way it's a good thing. My time is occupied doing stuff, rather than writing stuff. The stuff that i do isn't so exciting that I feel the need to write about it. I go to work. Work is fine. For the first time in a long time I'm happy in my job. I volunteer once a week at a youth club. Sometimes it feels like there's not much point me being there but a lot of the time I feel I'm doing something worthwhile. I encourage some of the lads to make cards and last week I brought the guitars down for them. Sometimes I just play pool or chat with them.

I get to see my darling niece on a regular basis which I could write about at great length but I am aware that, whilst this is great for me and my family, it's not great reading for people who don't know me. It's an utter delight though to see her smiling at me, or hear her giggling when we play peekaboo.

There's also the rats of course, which are another endless source of delight. Rocky is getting fatter and fatter. Pepe's definitely not pregnant but she's earning herself the reputation of being the naughty one. We talk about the rats so much that mum says she dreads to think what we'll be like if we have kids.

It's my birthday this friday so I'm having a party to combine our flatwarming ratwarming and my last year of being a twentysomething. So that's my life at the minute in a nutshell. I'm happy and content but lacking in a bit of inspiration But if that's the least of my worries I'm doing alright really.

Bad REaction

I do love my darling ratscals but, unfortunately, I've discovered that I'm allergic to them. This is what happens when their wee tiny clws even so much as slightly scrape my skin. My skin burns for about ten minutes then these huge itchy blotches appear. I've never reacted to anything quite so violently. Thankfully it settles down after half an hour and just leaves me with a bit of an itch. And this happened as a result of Pepe climbing up and down my back so I'll just have to avoid that in the future or wear thicker clothes.