The Busiest Time of the Year

This always busy season is even more so this year because our daughter Katherine has been very ill fighting an infection. After her brief hospitalization, she was sent to yet another doctor and is being treated at home. Unfortunately, her usually excellent insurance will not pay trained personnel for this treatment. If it were not for her husband at night, her beloved morning aide, and her dear and highly qualified friend Michele Otto, who happens to be on “vacation” until we ruined it, I do not know what we would have done. We have gone through a series of being told one thing by those in charge and having things be another way. Yet we are very hopeful that this excellent doctor will find a way to end this infection. Gerald will be taking her to Carbondale on Tuesday to see how well these at-home infusions have worked.

After months of more surgery and therapy, we are thrilled that granddaughter Erin has conquered the scary infection caused by her summer knee surgery. She is all smiles these days when she drops in without crutches. She is working out to make that leg as strong as her good one.

Erin and her dad both were among those softball coaches in Los Vegas last week for conferences during their “dead” non-recruiting period. And I guess our great niece Tracy’s husband Cody Brown was there about the same time winning the World Series of Team Roping with his partner Tyson Campidilli. They split the $200,000 prize money. Tracy’s family members here in Southern Illinois are as involved in roping as our son’s family is in softball. I find it interesting but understandable that families seem to gravitate to the same fields and competitive passions. Our daughter Jeannie’s family is our music-drama bunch.

Gerald took our grandson Sam up to Assumption today to meet his Uncle Brian who took him onto Waggoner to participate in the first ever Homecoming at Lincolnwood High School. Lincolnwood’s basketball game was last night, but Sam could not go up then since he was playing with the pep band at the high school basketball game here in Marion. Tonight is Lincolnwood’s coronation, and he will be there to represent our family as his cousin Brianna participates as a member of the court for the junior class. I can’t keep from wishing I were there. Brianna has Sam fixed up as a blind date with one of her friends at the dance afterwards.

Gerald enjoyed visiting with Sam on their trip and then visited a John Deere dealer up there—always a pleasant outing for a farmer. He was home after 3 p.m. and said he realized after he got here that he had forgotten to eat lunch. (He and Sam had plans for a late breakfast in Mt. Vernon, so I imagine that he why he forgot lunch.) Kindly he found left-over pizza in the fridge and had fixed his own lunch before he told me anything about it.

I made some very good beef-veggie soup Wednesday morning, so that is what we are having for supper tonight. For my lunch, I had finished the left-over plate of the spaghetti that I’d made for us and the Cedars on Thursday night. With left-overs in the fridge plus things bought at Senior Citizens Day at Kroger Wednesday, the fridge has been overfull, so I am glad we can use the leftovers.

With no cooking today, maybe I can have Gerald get down the big boxes of Chirstmas decorations in the guest room closet and I can start going through them. Earlier this week, he got down the two boxes in our closet, and those swags and accessories are already in place. The two trees must be unboxed also and put together to hold all the pretties in the boxes, and I hope that can be accomplished early next week.

Part of my Christmas shopping is done, part is ordered, and part is still to be done. None is wrapped. My sister’s little birthday present was mailed yesterday to Amarillo. Oh, yes, I also really want to send out the Christmas cards that are waiting. I bought the stamps this week. These are all fun things that in the grand scheme of things will not matter whether I accomplish them or not. Being busy is part of the holiday tradition, and I am glad for the good part of the busyness—and praying that her time-consuming medical treatment brings better health to our daughter.