I love weekends!!

This is the first weekend in a long time where I actually have time at home! No running around from family member to family member, no shuttling people anywhere, no having to get up at some horrific hour in the morning to be somewhere...I'm home, able to do some serious laundry, and catch up on Tivo while grading papers. The poor Tivo was maxed out this past week--70 hours of tapes stuff that I haven't been able to get a handle on. I'm getting better with that though.

Paul and I have an appointment with a new fertility doctor (Dr. Rinehart) on November 14. We both feel so much more informed than we were before (stands to reason, since we've been through this once already) so I think we know all the right questions to ask. I've heard this doctor is short on personality, but he's been doing this for a long time. We've had a ton of recommendations so we'll see what this guy has to say and go from there. We may end up meeting with a couple doctors before making a choice. Regardless of who we choose, we won't be starting anything until March. I can't go through this process again while in school. It's way too stressful, so we'll wait until I'm done teaching MWF before going at it again. Not really what either of us wants, but I think the process will be easier if we wait.

My mom is back home after 10 days in the nursing home. She actually liked it there (except for her awful roommate)--the people who worked there were wonderful with her and the food was pretty good! She's home in the condo now and finally has cable TV and internet access, so that should help tremendously during the next few months she's homebound. She can get around pretty well and we drive her to appointments, plus she has therapists and nurses come in to help as well. I think this will work out well for her. Hopefully, she won't be pulling her hair out after a few weeks of this though. The only major problem she has to deal with is the crazy guy in the building (some of you may remember him from when I lived there). He's once again off his medication and wreaking havoc throughout the building with other condo owners.

Work is going pretty well. I've had a couple tough students to deal with this semester, making it really hard to want to go into work everyday, but I only have 2 weeks of classes left (plus a week of finals, so I'll be done by Thanksgiving). My Monday night class is going pretty well--I really enjoy the students in there! The vet clinic job is also going well, though my hours keep getting longer and longer as time goes on. This will only go on until about Thanksgiving, when the technician starts full-time. In the meantime, I get to help with lots of operations! That's the coolest part to me.

Paul and I are going away for a weekend in December. He booked a room at the Hilton in Chicago for the first weekend in December. I'm so excited! It'll be nice to get away with him. I feel like we hardly see each other anymore, especially during the week. Last night, I cooked dinner and we both ate at the table for the first time in months! I miss that....and him.

Hope everyone is doing well! My friend Lisa is due to pop out a little girl in a couple of weeks. It's amazing how far we've come from our days in Japan!