I have a stove again! Yay! That was an ordeal. Now the furnace is protesting having to be on. Yes, Gilda, it's always something.

Last weekend I went back to Iowa for a visit. A little bit hard to see all of my former co-workers and the kids. I told the kids I would visit, so I wanted to make sure to get in there at least once. It was really hard, though. I miss them all so much. While I was in the library looking at the renovations one of my kiddos came in to pick up something from the printer. When it wasn't there, he just automatically came over to tell me it wasn't there and to get some help. I had to point him to the new librarian... It was also really hard because Teri's mom is really sick. We were up at the Iowa City hospital on Friday. I'll be sending a truckload of prayers their way. Teri and her mom both need them.

I'm excited that John Green, nerdfighter/ author/ blogger, will be in KC a week from Monday. Jill just told me that he's doing a gift exchange. Because he gets so many little gifts that he can't keep, he'll accept it your gift, but he'll give it away at his next stop. So she's going to give him something when she sees him in Ames and ask him to give it to me in KC. I'm just going to go up to him and demand my present. Oh, and I'm going to tell him that I'm the one who got Judy Blume to send him a birthday email. Oh, and I'm going to give him a signed copy of my photo of Spencer eating his nerdfighter food. He can pass that on to somene at the next stop.

I'm tired now. I'll have to watch Top Design some other time. I don't think I can stay up any longer. Plus I went to the library and have good books to read.

My house is a mess. I can't wait to clean this week.

Stress apparently has a positive side. I went to go buy jeans on Friday and got to get a size smaller. During the week I don't really have an appetite at all. I eat some hummus on half a pita at lunch every day. Back in Iowa I usually ran out to get something almost every day or ate leftovers. I haven't been cooking (see gas leak/ stove not fixed yet), so I don't have any leftovers. Plus, I usually don't have much more than 20 minutes for lunch anyway. The hummus is easy and I just take it on Monday and eat on it all week. Very convenient.

I went shopping with Karen and Lisa today. I need a floor lamp and some more seating for the living room. I was looking for ottomans. I didn't find anything, but we had fun anyway. We're looking into taking a trip to St. Louis around spring break time. There's a super cheap bus that Lisa found. If we book early, it can be less that $20 round trip per person. Isn't that insane?

This will be a tiring week. I have meetings on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.

I'm waiting for Max to get home from a trip to Iowa. He drove there by himself this weekend. Mom just called and said that he had overheated and almost ran out of gas. Good thing she's his halfway stop. This letting him be independent stuff is sure nerve-wracking.

Minor home-owner freak out yesterday. After going to the Fall Fun Fest to watch the parade with my girls, I was going to take a nap while I did laundry. Luckily I didn't fall asleep because the drain hose from the washing machine came loose and there was water all over the floor. Also lucky for me all the dirty clothes were down there, so I just threw them all on the water to keep it from spreading. I borrowed Lisa's floor cleaner and got it cleaned up. So all in all, as far as freak outs go, it wasn't too bad.

This is going to be a hard week. Two meetings after school and an evening thing at school. All in one week. On the plus side of that, I don't have to get up early on Wednesday. I love that! I've been getting up at 7AM and that seems to be about perfect. I used to have to get up at 6:30 and this extra half hour makes all the difference for some reason. I wish I didn't get home so late, though. The combination of getting done at work later and living farther away from school means I don't get home til after 5:00 most days. I used to get home at 4:30 at the latest unless I purposely stayed to work on something. That was the beauty of being 5 minutes from school.

We had tornados on Friday night. One touched down briefly a couple miles from my house. Another one touched down in DeSoto. The one close to my house didn't really do anything, I don't think. We were headed up to Fall Fun Fest, but as we were walking in, everyone was walking out. They shut it down. So we went back to Lisa's and played charades. I can't remember the last time I played charades. Simple fun. It was a great night in spite of the weather.