Growing kids and Saying goodbye in A Life Uncommon

I am officially, totally, completely, 100% ready to be done with January.

The week began with a cluster of appointments - well childs for all the kiddos and finally getting Jack into his (our?) new PCP so he can get the ball rolling for the various shenanigans he has going on (namely the back pain, hernia, and THE "V"). Busy bees!

Joshua and Gavin are both sitting at 31lbs. I can't recall the heights, but Joshua is taller. There, that solves that. ;) Nich is at 61lbs, which seems tiny and impossible at the same time. I didn't weigh myself, although I was tempted. Honestly I'm too afraid to see the numbers keep dropping.

Everyone is stellar. Gavin 'sure does" have a milk allergy (NO SHIT?!) - Joshua is spookily smart, and Nich doesn't present obvious ADHD symptoms but if it persists I am welcome to make a return visit. I don't really know waht to do abotu that last one. It'll require more writing and mulling, and I'm looking for books to read up on things. I never said it was ADHD, but I am missing SOMETHING. That's for sure.

The appointments went so well thanks to the weather being BITTERLY FROZEN and allowing Jack to stay home. With the cold, though, comes frozen pipes and alas, I have laundry to wash but no running water to the washer. This means I have to manually fill it every wash and rinse. Which means I am back there basically all day long. Boo.

I've gotten a lot of laundry accomplished though!

Another notable this week is the announcement that Opendiary is finally, finally, finally shutting down. A year of crashing, server updates, etc etc have left me wondering when this day would arrive, and here we are. I downloaded my diary to a txt file, because I really don't know what else to do with it. But it means too much to me to have it disappear forever - so it's sitting in my documents, awaiting a new purpose.

It's strange to think about it, really. I made a lot of great friends over on OD, and wrote about a lot of important things over there. I grew up on OD, and you can see it in my diary entries. I started writing there as a preteen, when the site was just brand new. I had a first diary that I abandoned (and has since been lost), before I created the one I kept. It was there before Nicholaus, through my parents' disastrous divorce, through my miriad of boy troubles, and right through my meeting Jack and writing very cryptic posts about "the man who stood in my doorway". (Then again, i also wrote very candidly about our defining moments, and sultry nights.) Oh, OD. It's so sad to see you going.

I feel a lot like a friend is dying, and I am supposed to write grand memories and talk about all the amazing times but really...you all understand. Whatever the emotions when we left and travelled over here, or another site, or gave up writing completely...we all went to OD for a reason - and so you understand. It was my home, my safe spot, my outreach in a dark world.

I wonder how long i will try to log in and be met with the error. I wonder how long before the website no longer directs. I wonder how long before the wiki on OD is just a relic of a past time. I'm glad I was a part of it, whatever the answers are.

And Bruce, if you read this,

(What? This is TOTALLY appropriate.)