Bouncing Checks

...as in Bounce fabric softener. Today I was taking laundry out of the dryer and found an entire checkbook. Not just one check folded up in someone's pocket, but the whole checkbook -- washed and dried. Chad had a good laugh. Turns out he was the one who put the load in the washer. "That's what I call laundering money," he said. It could have been worse. Have I mentioned all the ink pens we have washed and dried and all the clothes we've ruined as a result?

So I go to have lunch with Julia today and they have a tornado "drill." I put that in quotes because they were trying to make the kids think it was a drill when there was actually a tornado headed towards Baytown. Then they let the kids come back in to the cafeteria but then they had them leave again. "They're doing this a lot for just a drill, aren't they, Mom?" Julia says. I'm in a hallway with 100 kindergarteners trying to figure out if Jenna would be safer in my arms or in her carseat if the roof gets torn off of the place. Then they let us go back to the cafeteria. The danger had apparently passed. Reminded me of the time in Abilene when Julia was about a year old and I had to rush from Highland to Rainbow School in the middle of a tornado. This huge, dark green cloud was rolling across Abilene. My goal was to get Julia and get her home -- about four blocks from Rainbow School, but I didn't make it. When I got there it was already hailing and the teachers were putting the babies in playpens in an interior room. Everything turned out OK, but young mothers don't need this.