By Loretta Humble/Around the Town
My knee has been fixed. I am released from therapy, and I am a new woman. I fought replacing my knee for a long time, but I am very glad I finally did. If you are having a lot of knee trouble, I highly recommend you consider it. And if you want to know who did mine so well, just ask me. Now, I promise to shut up about my knee, as well as “O’Keeffe”, the Bartlett House, and my Cedar Lake companies, which, as I have been talking about exclusively for nearly half a year. Now I will start talking about my grandkids.
Okay, just one right now, and I’ll keep it short. I have a bunch of gorgeous and brilliant grandkids, and I know you would love to hear about each one, but this week it is all about Pepper Norwood, who graduated the from Cross Roads High School last Friday as Salutatorian. That girl is something else. She has finished more than a year of college while in high school, and is now headed to SMU this fall, thanks to a ton of scholarships and loans. She got a Cornerstone Scholarship, whatever that is—I know it is a big deal. Pepper isn’t just a bookworm, though. She loves basketball. Her mom said I couldn’t say she was a star, but I thought she was. But what do grandmas know. Anyhow, she loves it, played a lot, and she is totally delighted to have landed a job as a manager on the SMU team. That is a big deal, too. And besides that, she is just cute as a button, and best of all, a really nice person.
Pepper graduated from the school I went to until it burned down the summer after my freshman year. I played basketball too, because they made me—that was all the PE that was offered. I was terrible, and almost never played in a game, and as a result, I got whatever suit was left, which was always about to fall off me. I loved Cross Roads, but hated my basketball experience. Pepper has made it all up for me, and then some.
I feel great! I can finally drive, and get into all kinds of stuff. I have fixed up my town apartment pretty cute. Shoot, I may try to get a parade of homes going, so I can put my little digs on it. I’m having a lot of fun playing with the nursing home people. I have become the official fresh fruit getter. If I shop around and drive a bit, we can afford to have lots more fresh stuff. I always did like to buy groceries. They told me today to not bring any more watermelons, as they are out of room.
Today a bunch of us are ordering pizza for lunch just for fun. Nothing wrong with our nursing home food, but we haven’t figured out how to make pizza like the pizza place does. Then tomorrow night we are going to load up the van and my car and maybe another one, and we are going to the dress rehearsal of the current Athens Little Theater play. It is not real dull out here, and we are always trying to stir up more action.
I’m spending a little time at the farm this week. Carl, who usually tends to things, mainly the dogs, has gone off to do his annual Native American weeklong thing. So I’m going out to see to things. It really is nice out there, except for mice and the occasional flea. I am doing my best to evict both.
I can walk in my woods now and I just love it. I am so fortunate to have two great places to live.
I wasn’t really through with this, but have run out of time and space. I guess the rest of what I wanted to say will be lost in the space-time continuum.