Sunday Night Chit Chat: Pity Party Of One

Hey Humble Readers...

I know it's been a while.  A long while.  I've been in a bit of a funk lately, and haven't really felt like I've had much of anything worthwhile to say.  But now, after a week of sunshine and warm temps that have the huge mounds of snow in retreat, I'm beginning to feel a bit better about things.  My eagerness for spring to get here always makes the dregs of winter a bit unbearable. 

We seemed to have a stretch of bad luck for a while that didn't help my overall outlook.  My Beloved and I were in a car accident (no one was injured, thank Heaven) that caused more than $5000 damage to Tilly the Toyota.  I've had issues with AF, coming both late and early, with extended stretches of my PMS symptoms which makes things very uncomfortable (seriously, this month my PMS symptoms started right after ovulation and have just gotten more and more intense each day).  My back and bo.obs are killing me, I've had a lot of IBS flares, and I'm not the most pleasant person to be around.  And then to top it all off, on Friday night when I was doing my grocery shopping, I dropped my phone (only had it since December) and the glass totally cracked and spidered.  It's going to cost almost $300 to fix it.  The touch screen still works, but I'm hesitant to use it much until we can afford to fix it. 

Things, however, are not all bad. 

Pippin is a part of what has me feeling better about things in general.  While he still isn't talking, there have been some great steps forward.  He used his first hand sign (he said "No" to my Beloved just over a week ago), and often will actually say "buh-buh" and wave when one of us leaves.  He claps a lot, does this funny little stomp-shuffle thing whenever I say "dancin'?" to him.  He now can point out his ears and his toes when asked, and he is generally a lot more vocal than he was a month ago.  Still a very long way to go, but it gives me hope that the road might not be quite as long as I originally thought. 

Ginny also had a big accomplishment this week.  She has been a thumb-sucker almost from the get-go.  I remember when she was very small she would put her thumb in her mouth, with her palm to her nose, and tap her fingertips on her forehead.  It was adorable.  But a three year old who sucks her thumb isn't quite as adorable.  We have been working on 'no thumbs' for a while now, and this past week she went all week without sucking her thumb during the day (at night will take longer, I know).  As a reward for working so hard, she and I had a date-day yesterday.  We ran some errands together, went to a 'grown-up' restaurant (Denny's) where she got to have pancakes for lunch which she thought was amazing, did a little shopping (got her some rubber boots so she can splash in the puddles), and then went to a little cupcake bakery for a treat. 

Yum!  Mint Chocolate!

On to this week's chit chat.  Here's what I'm...  (Ooops... I wrote my post before Carla posted her's and she has new all questions this week.  I'll jump on the new questions next week.)

Reading - Right now I'm reading a Downton-esque novel called "The American Heiress".  I only just started it, so I have high hopes for it.  I just finished "The Dressmaker", a novel which follows the aftermath of the sinking of the Titanic.  The main character is a wannabe designer who works as a pseudo-secretary for Lady Duff Gordon (infamously the one woman in the lifeboat with only 12 passengers when it could have held 50).  The story about the inquiries and the public outcry after the Titanic sunk was fascinating, but the romantic parts were a bit weak in my estimation (3 out of 5 hairy hobbit-toes). 

Watching - Being Sunday, and no Downton for a very long time, I will be watching Once Upon A Time.  I may also record Resurrection. We'll see what happens. 

Listening To - Pippin is playing with his remote control car that keeps saying "I'm a little racer."  Over, and over, and over, and over, and... you get the idea. 

Cooking/Baking - Lots of good things on the menu this week.  Tonight is Italian pot roast with mashed taters, roasted green beans, and Yorkshire puddings.  Tomorrow night is true Shepherds' Pie (made with lamb!) and mint chocolate chip ice cream pie, in honour of St. Patty's day.  Later in the week I'm making chicken paprikash (my special 1/2 birthday gift to myself). 

Happy I Accomplished This Week - Got in 5 days of work outs.  Yay!  The scale hasn't moved in a while, but I know that AF's prolonged announcement of her impending arrival is a part of that.  I'm retaining a lot of water.  Oh, and I was able to donate blood again!  Yay!  That's two donations in a row where I had good iron counts (and I had really good blood pressure too!). 

Looking Forward To Next Week - My Beloved is going to take Friday off, using some of his banked overtime.  The wee-ling's are going for haircuts, which is always fun.  And I WILL make some progress on my spring cleaning. 

Thankful For - Being able to go out with the girls.  I really needed some good conversation and wine this week, and last night I was able to get both.  We went and saw the Hobbit at the discount theater (we had all seen it together on opening night, but we were sitting so close to the screen that it wasn't a great experience), and then out for drinks and nibbles.  It was really nice. 

What's on your wish list right now?  A new enameled cast iron dutch oven/soup pot.  Mine is woefully stained from doing coffee braised roast beef, and the handle on the lid broke ages ago so it makes things a bit tricky when removing the lid.  I seriously long for Le Creuset. 

*****
This was posted as a part of Carla's Sunday Night Chit Chat.  Please pop over and check out what the others are chatting about tonight.