Around the Town: Family is the answer to Loretta’s blahs

By Loretta Humble/Around the Town

If you have sometimes read my columns here, you may have noticed some of them have been kind of blah lately, and sometimes there isn’t one. That is because I haven’t been doing much of anything interesting, and where I used to be able to see something funny or fun in nearly everything, and then tell you about it, not much has been seeming funny lately.

I’ve been wondering what to do about that, and it finally hit me: I need a vacation. I need a real change of pace, something to help me wake up and see things fresh.

That is one thing that hit me, the other one is this: My life is passing by and I don’t know my kids and grandkids nearly as well as I wish I did. As you may know, we’ve been in the healthcare business since we got Cedar Lake Nursing Home 48 years ago. Our three kids grew up in it, and still work here. So do several grandchildren. After the kids grew up, we still worked so closely, and saw one another all day, we didn’t feel the need to socialize a whole lot otherwise. But gradually we grew and then we opened the Cedar Lake Home Health and Hospice, and we got more compartmentalized, and then I sort of half-way retired. And then we weren’t seeing one another all that much. And I kind of subconsciously thought they probably liked it that way. But the other day my three kids and I were having one of our rare visits, sitting around out at Tina’s house, and somewhere in that visit the idea formed. I expressed my blahness, and that I needed to get away for a while, have a change of pace, and they started offering guest rooms. Sonny keeps a room set up for his dad when he comes to town, and Liz and Tina both have upstairs guest suites that used to house my various grandsons. They all convinced me they seriously like the idea of my taking turns hanging out with each of them for a while, reminding one another what a great cook I am. (That is a bunch of nonsense, but I let it stand.) No problem about the farm, as Carl can easily hold things together there while I am on my vacation.

So, we started immediately. I’m staying with Liz right now. She and husband Gary have the only one of my grandchildren still living at home. Her name is Taegan, a high school freshman, cute as a button, smart and active in everything. I’ve already got to meet her boyfriend and a bunch of her cute giggly friends. One of those friends is ShayLea, her second cousin and my great-granddaughter, who I wrote about a while ago, telling you what a great kid she is. So I got an extra grandkid visit there, though admittedly there wasn’t too much visiting going on in the midst of all those kids. Then another treat, grandson Landon, who travels around the country doing something about concrete on air force bases, surprised us by showing up for the weekend. It is a party house at Liz’s house this weekend.

Also this weekend Liz and I revived an old hobby we used to enjoy. We used to love going to garage sales and flea markets, bringing home all sorts of one-of-a-kind treasures. Often we brought home way too many treasures, and gradually quit doing it. But now we’ve found a practical reason to do it again. Our Corsicana Cedar Lake Home Health and Hospice office needs a little sprucing up. We decided we would try “decorating on a dime,” giving us an excuse to express our thrifty hunter-gathering instincts, and maybe also save some money while we pretty-up things. So Saturday we looked all over the place, and came home with some absolutely gorgeous yard furniture—for the nursing home. Nothing for Corsicana yet, but that means we can go hunting some more.

Now Tina isn’t much into garage sales, but she has been known to accept something Liz finds for her, as Liz has super decorating sense. Yesterday we found a huge picture for one of her very large walls, so Liz called to see if she wanted it. She did. We were laughing with her about what we were doing and all the treasures we were finding. She could tell we were having a big time. But then she asked Liz, “When Mom comes to stay with me, do I have go garage sale-ing with her?” We all burst out laughing at that, because we knew she was joking. I yelled No Indeed! Liz and I took her with us once years ago, and it wasn’t pretty.

I’ll think of something else for Tina and me to do. Tina and Randy have a lot of animals—cows and horses and stuff. And my garden needs a lot of fertilize. Maybe Tina and I can gather fertilize together. Or maybe, given that option, she will suddenly decide one or two garage sales might not be so bad.