My thumbs up has always looked broken.

I missed you, Open Diary. I could never leave you, even if I do ‘cheat’ on you with prosebox. Where I have been working hard, writing every second day, trying to get back in the habit of writing. This counts as my entry tonight, because I am tired and lazy.

Reader, I hope all is well with you.

I have a double jointed thumb, so the top bit always points backwards when I do a thumbs up. Actually holding the whole thing straight up is kinda painful and weird. I am weird.

My car was gone for 24 hours. I have had to park 3 times since we got it back this morning. Apparently I can no longer park without my car being on some ridiculous angle. Which is funny, because I normally drive on the weekend and that’s it, so I have done MORE driving this week. What the.

I dropped the car off Thursday morning, and walked home in the below-freezing iciness of 8am. It was actually quite nice, other than my ears starting to hurt halfway because they were so cold. The footpath had just enough snow on it to provide traction. And I felt good all day because I got some nice morning exercise! Well, as nice as I can with stress-tummy associated with waiting for a phone call.

Pete called at 5pm, so Ash and I walked over to the mechanic this morning to get the car back. Actually she made me carry her for most of it, except after I slid a tiny bit she let me put her down and she walked next to me, on the slippy icy part. I was quite impressed with her calmly walking over the ice. She kept telling me "I walking on ice." I was more stable without her in my arms so it worked out great!

This evening we went to dinner with Jake’s Dad and stepmother – Gale and Nancy. Just to the little Italian place up the street, but it was so nice. We fed Ashley her dinner here, then told her it was time to go see Pa and eat pizza, which she kept repeating all the way there. Oh, pizza, I have missed pizza. Currently for my 101/1001 goal list thing, we are "not buying any ready-to-eat things for 3 months" so no sushi or wraps from the store next door, no restaurants… no pizza. But we didn’t pay tonight, so it doesn’t count, thanks to the word BUY. Hahaha. So good. Ashley ate one of my crusts, and a buttload of oyster crackers. She shook hands with Gale at the end of the meal, leaned in for a kiss on the cheek from both of them… such a good girl.

We came home and a few minutes later Kristen and Matt showed up because they wanted to borrow some Dexter DVDs. So they hung out for about half an hour. Kristen played in the ‘house’ I had built Ashley with her foam letter puzzle pieces, and taught Ashley what Santa says. It is so cute hearing her say "ho ho ho", especially because she tends to leave the third one off. They left when Ashley showed us that she needed bed (she burst into tears because I wasn’t sitting on the couch), and thankfully the little cutie fell asleep quickly tonight. Actually she usually does if I take her to bed when she says it is nigh-nighs time, rather than waiting for 8pm.

Busy weekend. We couldn’t do any errands last weekend, and we actually had a LOT to do last weekend, so we have all that piled on top of this weekend’s tasks. Thankfully it should be warm (for the season) which is a million times better than trying to do things when it is freezing out!

I transferred over the last few entries that were missing here, so you have much reading to catch up on. Read!