By Loretta Humble/Around the Town
True to the resolve I expressed here last week, I am still happily hanging out with family. I helped celebrate Hunter Norwood’s 22nd birthday, embarrassed Sonny on the Internet while he cooked me pork chops, went to granddaughter Taegan’s choir concert, (she was the best one there, of course) and went with Liz to a huge baby shower at a huge and wonderful home. I think along the way Liz and I went and bought something else, but maybe I lost count.
In the meantime, I have found a great side benefit of staying at Liz’s house. (I’m still there, by the way, haven’t moved on to the next kid’s place yet—this vacation of mine may take a while.) That benefit is that I pass by real close to my niece Margaret O’Brien’s house when I leave Liz’s house and head to town. So the last two Sunday mornings I’ve called and asked if she had some coffee to share. Both times I ended up getting breakfast, and a great visit out of the deal. Margaret and I are a little bit closer in age than her mother and I are. We have always been good friends, though we haven’t always visited as much as we mean to.
Margaret just recently lost her husband Pat, and is still dealing with the shock of his sudden death as well as now busy struggling with all the red tape that happens when your mate dies. I’m happy to see what wonderful support her kids and grandkids are to her.
Every now and then I do slip back to the farm to see if Carl is taking good care of the farm animals.
(The farm animals include a cat named Cat, Bingo the runaway blind Shi tzu, his one time wife Maggie, the Jack Russel, and their offspring, Bruno the Jack Schitz. Also, Deuce, a former neighborhood dog who found the doggy door and moved in, and one other neighbor’s dog who luckily has not found it, but nevertheless never goes home.) The hummingbirds have all gone south, so he doesn’t have to worry about feeding them. So far Carl is handling his responsibilities pretty well.
Tonight after I checked on Carl, I stopped and had those aforementioned pork chops with Sonny. I was afraid he wasn’t getting them done enough, but sure enough, he knew what he was doing, and they were great. While I was there I got on his computer and pulled up an article about how to make some really beautiful flowers. I wanted to be able to find them again, so I hit “share” to put them on my Facebook page. A little later, when Sonny got on his computer he had a message from Margaret O’Brien, saying “Make me some.” I had put those pretty pastel flowers on Sonny’s page instead of my own, making it look like Sonny had suddenly gone crafty. Sonny’s friend Laura posted that his mother had hacked his computer.
Oops, I’m already running out of room and I haven’t told you that we had a great time celebrating Hunter’s birthday out at Tina and Randy’s, or bragged on Hunter and Jon who are now graduates of North Texas University and are pursuing careers in Hospitality Management with important jobs in a big fine hotel in Dallas. Hunter is managing in the food end of it, and Jon is managing in the hotel side. You can tell they are having a big time being out on their own making their own way. Pepper was in from SMU, but was busy researching the good qualities of Snapple for a marketing class assignment. You can tell she is enjoying herself largely, too.
I also don’t have room to tell you about the great baby shower I went to for the soon-to-arrive William Keith Adams, grandson of Liz’s BFF Cheryl Tidmore and Milton Adams. The food and decorations were out of this world, and of course he got more cute little clothes than he can ever wear. And I saw a bunch of wonderful old friends. The shower was at Christy Hutson’s gorgeous home. I’ve got to stop right here and tell you this, since I just mentioned both their names. Since last week’s column, I have two more invitations to visit after I go through all my kids. One of them is from Milton—he says we will go do something really fun, and the other one is from Christy, who would let me stay in her beautiful pool house that looks like a fancy resort itself. They better have meant it—I’m taking them both up on it.
Liz has gone to Killeen to babysit grandbaby Tristan while parents Jonathan and Natalie paint their house so they can rent it so that they can move closer to home. That is pretty exciting and I’d tell you about it, but I’m out of room. I’ll save it for another week.
I’ll also save the story about how Liz came back from her weekly round of delivering Meals on Wheels dragging a boat to use for our Christmas float.
That’s it. I have pushed this space as far as I can get by with. Maybe further. If you see all this you will know they let me by with it one more time.