i honestly meant to write last thursday (newly minted 17 year old), saturday (dance nationals), and sunday (finally making progress in my writing again, a little, and letting a domain expire), but, well, obviously it just didn't happen. i swear my brain is breaking down from this move. things have just been getting busy in spurts and when the spurt is over, well, so am i. i ended up on the couch after nationals, my knee hated me. somehow it just ended up being a long 6 days.

on thursday my oldest turned 17. lots of new lease on life, a lot less restrictions than before. it's tough to just bite my lip and let her make decisions sometimes, but i'm managing, at least a little. in a few months she'll be living with dad where she'll experience even more freedom and all i can do is hope that the raising i've done is enough to carry her through. falling flat on your face is a part of life, but i worry about her not having the support she'll need when she first struggles with that. here she has a safety net. at dad's? well, to be honest, that man needs his own safety net. on the upside, however, he has managed to change his schedule to days, so maybe that will help when she's living with him. i do need to set up her first obgyn appointment and go with her before we leave. that's just not something dad can do. lol

nationals was interesting. i've never been to one of her competitions before. i do have to say the bleacher seats and my poor knee did NOT agree. and that the judges were idiots. you guessed it, not only did her team not win, they didn't even PLACE. and they were GOOD. so many, in their category and others, were just sloppy, in execution and actual choreography. and only 3 or 4 other teams in her category got my attention and kept it. maybe her team wasn't top 3 qualified (i'm not a dance judge on a regular bases and may have missed something), but they definitely deserved to place in the 12 that were awarded.

i got home and collapsed on the couch while hubby went up to bed to sleep off more of his cold or whatever it was. oh, yea, i am so expecting that monster to get me too. sigh.

somewhere in all that the dragons got packed, i finally started working on a new fl layout after struggling to find anything that would work image wise (do you know how hard it is to locate images for older games?) and is now being an utter pita since i have to clean images and figure out how to blend images and - well, yea, my writing picked up, i finished a crit i need to now type up to post, the figurines got packed, and the newly minted 17 year old started planning a birthday thing. i've somehow managed to keep up on all of it.

then sunday night i discovered, quite by accident that i had let the alden.nu domain registration lapse. oops. fixed that and paid for 3 years and it's back. but i had a few heart stopping moments there.

like i said, this move is eating brain cells.