Some of you are already familiar with Fishbowl patron, Lice Services Canada – Ottawa Head Lice Treatment and Removal. They offer lice removal services to families at their Westboro location, travel to schools all across Ottawa AND treat lice at home! What I really appreciate is that Lice Services Canada offers frazzled parents practical help. For example, did you know that you can email them a photo of a suspected louse for identification? They’re happy to answer your questions by phone or email too. Good news for us, they’ve taken it to the next level.
If you:
- Think your child might have lice but aren’t sure because you’ve never seen a case of headlice before.
- Have been through a lice infestation and want to make sure they’re all gone.
- Have lice in your household but want to make sure YOU don’t have them.
- Have lice going through your child’s classroom and want to sleep peacefully at night knowing your family is lice-free…
… you can drop by the Lice Services Westboro location on Sunday mornings between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. for a free head check. Did I mention it’s free? If any of the above applied to me right now I would (a) call Lice Services and let them know I’m coming on Sunday — calling ahead is not strictly necessary but helpful for Lice Service staffers (b) grab an extra large hot beverage at any number of Westboro coffee and tea shops and (c) bring myself, my husband, AND my kids. If we got the green light we’d stay for lunch in the village and make a day of it. :)
It’s very important to know that this free service is NOT the five-minute peek that parent volunteers do at school once a term. This is a wet hair, laser-focused, high beam head investigation by one of their pros and it takes about 15 minutes (hence my need to bring a hot beverage). The best part: if you get the green light, you’re free to go. If they find something, you have options. You can stay for treatment (check the Lice Service website for pricing), or go home and take care of it yourself with or without the Lice Services comb and treatment. No pressure! Regardless of which option you choose, the pros at Lice Services Canada – Ottawa Head Lice Treatment and Removal are happy to answer any questions you might have.
I was so busy telling you about our recent coffee date at the Scone Witch that I forgot to write about about the fancy hot chocolate I enjoyed at Quelque Chose here in Westboro the other day. BEHOLD:
Isn’t it gorgeous? It was extra sweet, especially when paired with a lovely companion and fine conversation.
I confess that this MAY have inspired me to buy a mini-blowtorch. I want all of my hot chocolates to look like this!
Speaking of Westboro, if you’re a fan of Westboro Village and want to hear about great local finds, I recommend you sign up for my e-newsletter for exclusive Westboro content. I send one out every month or so, when I have something good to share. :)
Mark and I went for a quick cross-country ski this morning. Given the sub-arctic temperatures we had in Ottawa at Christmas and the usual freeze-thaw-freeze cycles, this represented his first outing on skis this year and only my second. Our destination: Pine Grove Trail. It’s an NCC trail in Ottawa’s east end, just off Davidson Road. (We parked at P18. Get more info about it on the NCC website!) It’s a very easy and pretty trail; perfect for those of us who are feeling rusty and need a bit of a confidence booster. Well, I’ll tell ya, the weather was perfect, maybe a little too perfect, because the new light fluffy snow stuck to the bottom of our skis in a very bad way. So much so that we lost all of our swoosh and were practically walking by the end. I couldn’t figure out what we did wrong (wrong wax?) or if it was just a perfect storm of winter conditions (fluff + barely zero degrees + ski friction = cement-like snow clumps) that made it happen.
It was comical. It felt like we were trudging along on very long and pointy snow shoes! It may have been easier to just take them off, but we persevered.
I survived with my good humour intact by shifting my perspective. Instead of fixating on the lousy ski conditions I concentrated on the beauty all around me and how good it felt just to BE here at all.
Part of what kept me going was knowing there was a part TWO of our Sunday outing: a coffee date. I’d been Googling variations of “best coffee shops in Ottawa” and “Ottawa coffeeshop date” before finally settling on a destination that isn’t primarily known as a coffee shop: The Scone Witch. It’s been years since I’ve eaten at the Scone Witch so I figured we were long overdue for a visit. The Beechwood location was closest, so that’s where we went.
The Scone Witch gets top marks for coffee. Mark and I both ordered a latte and they were hot and strong; exactly what we needed. There’s lots of variety on the menu and I had a tough time deciding what I wanted. Mark ordered the bacon and cheese melt on a cheddar scone. I normally choose something from the savoury side of the menu but today I opted for the vanilla cream scone with strawberry jam on the side. It was bliss: a warm, fresh, perfectly textured melt-in-your-mouth scone. A winner in my books for sure. Mark really enjoyed his choice as well.
I am drooling just thinking about this:
The ambiance was less enticing, but consistently high Google reviews makes me think people don’t care because the scones are so good. It’s open and bright, which is great, but the high ceilings create an echo chamber which amplified kitchen sounds and also amplified the person next to us who spent a long time talking very loudly on her phone. (Ugh. Awkward.) A combination of high and low seating creates a social environment but not necessarily one in which you’d want to hunker down with a laptop (in case this was your thing) or have an intimate conversation. It’s a bit rough around the edges in some ways here, but it’s hard to know if it’s because it was a Sunday afternoon or whether this is a regular state of affairs e.g. garbage on the floor and an overflowing bin of dirty dishes.
All in all, although this was a bit of an eat-and-run situation it was a delicious coffee date. And I’m hungry for more! Ottawa friends, which independent coffee shop should we visit on our next date? I’d really like to make this a regular thing and would love to hear about your favourites.
