the
Engstrand chronicles, issue 3
1997
Greetings!
The year started off with a
bang--or, more accurately, with a drip.
Lots of them. Winter came early
and hard in November, 1996, with a lot of snow alternating with periods of bitter
cold; then on the first weekend in January, it got warm and rained
heavily.
I mentioned last year we were in the
midst of construction. The
"midst" did not include a completed roof in early January, so much of
the rain water soaked through the uncovered second floor down to our bedroom,
study, living room, and dining room. We
spent a Friday night and Saturday morning (January 3-4: Happy New Year!) racing around with buckets
and towels catching the water dripping out of light fixtures and down walls,
and draping plastic over the uncovered floor.
Then the temperature plummeted again, so the water all over the project
turned to a coating of ice. And our
pipes froze (but, fortunately, did not burst).
We felt sorry for our poor general contractor; he was a very, very nice
guy and more distraught than ever. This
had become "the project from hell" for him--first he was beset by
delays because of cold and snow, and now he had to repair extensive interior
water damage.
I shouldn't forget to mention that
the Thursday night before, when I was doing a load of laundry, the sewer backed
up into the basement and created a small lake.
Fortunately, there was no significant damage. Then on Saturday--the same morning we were
running around with buckets to catch the water--the furnace conked out. This is the 60-year-old furnace that we had
removed the following Wednesday as part of the remodeling. All in all, a wonderful introduction to 1997. Things could only get better, right?
* * *
In mid-January I had a conference to
attend in San Diego. I decided that in the midst of the lousy
winter, I'd give the kids a break, so I took them out of school and on a Friday
night we flew out to Los Angeles,
6 days before the conference started. We
stayed with my cousin Pam--the same cousin Krystin and I had stayed with in the
summer of 1996, seven months earlier.
The weather while we there wasn't that great--mid to high 50s and
overcast and rainy--but it actually worked to one good purpose: when we went to Disneyland
and Knott's Berry Farm, there were very few people there, so the kids got to
ride and ride and ride all day without standing in long lines.
We got to Disneyland
just before it opened, so were standing behind a rope barrier, with the Disneyland staff on the other side. Elliott somehow got to chatting with one of
them, and told them it was his first time in California and how excited he was to be in Disneyland.
Well. They took him, along with
Krystin, Pam, and me, inside the barrier, and took Elliott inside an adjacent
building to "open" Disneyland. He had to reach into a cupboard and push a
button, which started all the music.
Then they gave us a pass good for letting us to go the head of the line,
once, and gave us about 30 seconds head start on the rest of the crowd! Elliott was thrilled; we were surprised but
pleased.
We also managed to get around to see
the Queen Mary, the LaBrea tar pits, Forrest Lawn, and the Nixon Birthplace and
Library. Forrest Lawn is the first
cemetery I've seen that has an exhibition hall and movie theater (about the
American Revolution), a small museum about Central American civilizations
(Olmec, Aztec, etc.), and an outdoor plaza dedicated to Hispanic culture. We in Minnesota
have cemeteries for burying people; apparently we are somewhat unimaginative in
the uses we make of them. (But we have much
fancier headstones and grave markers, if one appreciates that sort of thing;
Forrest Lawn only had the small, flat, in-ground markers. How dull.)
The Nixon center was interesting. After going through all the display rooms, I
concluded that if one thinks Nixon was a good or great president, the displays
are appropriate and confirming. If one
thinks he was a scoundrel, they are appalling; Watergate was all a media plot
and Nixon didn't do anything wrong.
In the middle of the week Pat flew
out to LA, and the next morning we drove down to San Diego.
While we were there (and I was in meetings off and on), the weather was
of course beautiful. So Pat and the kids
all got to go swimming in the heated pool, go to Sea World, and go to the
beach. But at least we got a short
respite. (In the conference sessions,
people would often begin remarks by expressing sympathy for people from Minnesota and the Dakotas--at that time, western Minnesota and the eastern Dakotas
essentially disappeared from the map, under piles and piles of snow. In Minnesota--as
many at the conference noted--the Governor had closed the schools on the day we
drove to San Diego
from LA, because the wind chills were predicted to be -70.)
The only drawback to this trip was
the flight times. Flying out was OK,
leaving Minneapolis
after dinner and getting into LA about midnight. Coming home we had a schedule we will not be
repeating, leaving LA at midnight and arriving home at 9:00 Monday morning--at
which time Pat went to work. Elliott and
I went to bed. Krystin was up and about
all day, just like normal. But not again
for us the bargain "red eye" specials.
*
* *
By spring and early summer, our
lives had been consumed by our eternal construction project. When I first wrote these paragraphs, it was
early June and we were not done. We did,
finally, get to move upstairs in mid-May (I believe the date, May 18,
will remain etched in Pat's brain for the rest of her life, because it was such
a relief!)--and having our new bedrooms and the additional space was a godsend,
after living in half of our downstairs for six months. I think Krystin valued her own space more
than anyone; after six months of sharing the living room as her bedroom with
Elliott, she disappeared into her new room for about three days and just
enjoyed her own quiet and music and books.
Meantime, in early summer, Pat and I
were applying liquids of various kinds to different surfaces: stripping and repainting the salvage doors we
bought (to match the existing doors in the house); priming and finishing all
the walls and trim; stripping and staining and varnishing some of the interior
door frames that had been previously painted.
(I decided that since we were doing all this, we might as well go whole
hog, so added considerably to my own list of tasks.) We arranged from the beginning that we would
do the painting, because we didn't want to spend the money on painters when
painting was something we could do, and because we are the pickiest,
neatest painters we know. We're slow,
but we're exact. Even our finishing
carpenter--who was no mean perfectionist himself--complimented us on our paint
job, and said he appreciated the good work, since he put so much effort into
getting his work done well.
All this painting and stripping and
varnishing, however, turned out to be far more of a project than we had
anticipated; I had no idea we had so much trim and so many walls to paint. It basically took the month of May to
paint--almost every moment of our spare time, and I took a fair amount of
vacation time as well. But by the last
weekend in May, we finished up the vast majority of it. Once this was done, I decided I may never
pick up another paint brush in my life.
Even by early June--seven months
after we started--we were still awaiting such things as tiling in the kitchen
and breakfast area, carpeting in the family room, knocking out an existing wall
to enlarge the living room, stucco, and the deck. (We had struck a bargain with our
contractor: if he would make paint-ready
all the interior walls and ceilings damaged by the January rain, for which he
was responsible for repairing and repainting, we would paint them--if he would
build us a deck outside the back of the house.
He agreed.) It was our fond hope
that this entire project would be done by the end of June. We were not--correctly--sanguine, however.
During all of this, I think our kids
believed they lost their parents; both Pat and I felt kind of bad about
spending virtually no time with them. We
were constantly around the house, of course--applying brushes and obnoxious
liquids to walls and doors--and could talk with them. But we weren't exactly doing fun things with
them.
* * *
As anyone who lives in, or is from, Minnesota knows,
Minnesotans are always dwelling on the weather.
I am told by colleagues that Minnesotans talk more about the whether
than people in most other places. I do
not know if this is true. The
proposition sounds like one a sociologist or linguist could study. I would not want to deviate from the
perceived norm, however, so I must report that we didn't have the pleasantest
of springs in Minnesota. It was much colder than normal. I usually bring the houseplants outside in
mid-May; this year, I brought them out, then I brought them back in at night,
then I brought them out, then I brought them back in at night, I brought them
out, then I brought them back in at night--because we kept having frost and
frost warnings well into May. We also
didn't get any of the annuals planted this year until late May, for the same
reason. We ordered a bunch of impatiens,
begonias, and geraniums through a fund-raiser at Krystin's school--and, as with
the house plants, I carted them in and out and in and out for much of the
month.
Finally, however, Memorial Day
weekend was absolutely glorious. Pat and
I both took Friday
off--and, of
course, we painted. By Sunday morning,
when we were mostly done, and sick and tired of being inside when outdoors it
was sunny and about 80 degrees, we played in the dirt all the rest of the
day: we gardened. Our back yard was a disaster area, from the
dumpsters and the construction trucks driving in and out all last fall and
winter, so there was little grass. We
had much work to do, and started by building three new flower beds. We were going to substitute flowers for
grass, we decided--the yard was so uneven, and we were so lacking in ability to
get it levelled, that we decided on gardens instead of lawn. If the grass paths between the gardens aren't
even, we won't notice. Neither will the
lawn mower.
Pat's parents finally sold their
house this summer, so left Richmond,
VA, to come to Minnesota.
Their ultimate plan was to live at Becketwood, a (fairly posh) seniors
condo complex about 3 blocks down the street from us. But the waiting list to get in was long, so
we didn't know when they'll actually move there; in the meantime, they rented
an apartment in Richfield. Living in Minneapolis put them within an hour or less
of 3 of their 4 daughters--rather than 4 hours from their closest one. [At the end of the year, after getting
settled in a seniors apartment in Richfield,
it now appears unlikely they will move again; it would be too much work and
hassle for them.]
* * *
With the kids back in school the
first week in September, it hardly seemed possible the summer was all but
over. What summer? After finally getting nice the first part of
June, it rained just about the entire month of July (it was only the second
wettest July on record, with about three times the normal rainfall, but this
year did see a record in the number of days of rain; I think it was 21).
One of Elliott's chief joys in life
is drawing (mostly monster-types from Power Rangers and Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles movies); whenever we travel anywhere, we must bring along paper and his
markers. It is his respite from the
world as well as a source of entertainment and satisfaction for him. This year we put him in three art classes at
the Minneapolis Art Institute; he really liked them, but didn't seem to have
translated to his home drawing any of what he learned at the classes. He did, however, do some drawings and pieces
that we were extremely impressed with; one of them we framed and hung on our
main floor. (When I brought it home with
him, one of his cousins from Virginia
was visiting, and he refused to believe that Elliott had drawn this charcoal
sketch of a group of bottles.)
We were then gone the first half of
August. Week one we went to Austin, TX,
for the wedding of my sister Holly's daughter Beth. Krystin was a junior bridesmaid, and loved
it. She had her hair done up like she's
never had it done before, and a long dress, and fake nails--the whole
routine. We grumbled to ourselves
somewhat about investing $200 in a dress that she would never again wear, but
that's the price of weddings, right?. In
the pictures, she looked to be quite the young woman.
It was hot, hot, hot in Texas. I didn't realize that the humidity, at least
in central Texas,
is as high as it is in Minnesota,
so with temperatures in the mid- to high 90s and humidity near the same level,
we did little outside. We had a good
visit with my sister Holly and her family--whom we have seen little of over the
past several years. My grandmother (95)
flew down for the wedding with Pat on a Thursday evening; the kids and my Dad
and I flew down the next morning. Pat
and my grandmother were there for the rehearsal/groom's dinner and for the
wedding, and then flew back on Sunday.
The kids and I stayed for the rest of the week and vacationed, with
Holly serving as surrogate mother (she hasn't had smaller kids around for some
time, but seemed to have a great time with Krystin and Elliott). We went to a gigantic outlet mall (bought a
bunch of stuff), to the LBJ ranch (interesting bus tour, but it would have been
more interesting if they had let us into the house, which they do not because
Ladybird Johnson still lives there on occasion), to a cave (mostly flooded from
early spring rains), and to a water park (a complete waste because it was so
crowded).
Upon returning to Minneapolis Friday night, we all got in the
van and drove out to western Minnesota
to Pat's annual family gathering. The
gathering has alternated between the east coast (last year we were at Nag's
Head, NC) and Minnesota;
when here, it has been held at a resort on Green Lake,
just outside Willmar. It was generally an uneventful week; it was
cool (in stark contrast to our preceding week in Texas), so the seven cousins didn't get to
go swimming very much. But they managed
to play video games, watch movies in the rec center, and otherwise ding around
together.
Pat and I engaged in our biennial Green Lake
tennis games; boy, am I both out of shape and a lousy tennis player. But we ran around the court and acted like we
knew what we were doing. We also did a
little antiquing, and picked up a few things that seemed like decent
deals. We were buying things for our
"new" house, and discovered, without any conscious decision on our
part, that our decorating taste over time has moved from the spartan
contemporary to the more busy Art Nouveau decor of the 1920s and some of the
Art Deco of the 1930s. So antique stores
and auctions are great fun--and our house is much more "cluttered"
than it has been in the past. (I am also
sometimes dumbfounded at what people will pay for things at auctions, but
that's another story.)
In a lifestyle that suited her
completely, after two weeks of travel, Krystin left for week-long camp the day
after we got back from the resort. This
was the fifth year she had attended the camp, sponsored by the Minnesota chapter of the
American Diabetes Association. She
always had a good time, and it's the one period of the year when she doesn't
have to worry about testing her blood or taking insulin or eating
right--everybody has diabetes and in each cabin everyone does everything all
together, so there's no reluctance or embarrassment or worry. She took up sailing at camp this year, but
the days were windy, and she ended up spending as much time in and under the
water as on the boat; she confided to us afterwards that she may not be too
excited about sailing.
* * *
The subject of our house became a
sore one late in the summer. It was not
done (although it was 98% done, and we occupied and furnished all the
space). There were putzy little things
to do--fix the last gutter, get the laundry chute covers on, hang the storm
doors, reconnect the TV antenna, etc.
Our contractor seemed to be utterly unable to bring himself to complete
the job. This inaction was rather
stupid, because we finally invoked the penalty clause in our contract,
effective July 2: he had to pay us $50
per day for every day the project was not complete. That was, in early September, beginning to
amount to a fair amount of money. We
were less interested in having the money, however, than in simply having the
project done. We told this to our
contractor repeatedly, but the message seemed not to have gotten through.
I must say that even after all the
travails, we were extremely pleased with the results; it was like moving into
essentially a brand new house, with the smell of paint and new carpet and crisp
white walls. We were glad we made the
decision to retain the style of the house, down to the baseboards, light
fixtures, doors, and bathroom tiling. We
think it added a small element of style that would be absent were we to have
put on a much-cheaper-but-obviously-1990s addition to our 1930s house.
In mid-July we visited my brother
Tracy and his family just outside Barron,
Wisconsin; they live on a lake,
and we go boating and swimming and whatnot.
One of Tracy's
and my favorite activities is going to auctions; on this trip, I bought (for
$2!) one of the ugliest table lamps I had ever seen (it is understandable why
no one else bid on it). I thought it was
exquisite--it's hard to find anything quite that tasteless--and Pat loved it. When we went back to visit them again over
the Labor Day weekend, Tracy
and I went to another auction. I tried
to get another, sort-of-matching ugly lamp, but this time the bidding went up;
I quit at $25 (there's only so much I'm willing to spend on ugly). So instead I got a 1930s oil print of
flowers, which I really liked but which Pat wants me to hang somewhere where
she won't have to look at it very much.
Oh well.
After deciding sailing may not be
for her, Krystin finally decided to give water skiing a try when we were at
Tracy and Joan's over Labor Day. She had
hemmed and hawed about trying it all summer.
After about a dozen or more attempts, going head over heels into the
water each time, she finally got up and stayed up twice. Now the summer was over and she wouldn't have
any chances to go skiing again for about 8-9 months, but I assured her that it
was like riding a bike; once you know how to do it, you won't forget. (I just hope that's true.)
The kids both had big changes in
school this year. Krystin left her
elementary school two blocks from our house, after seven years, to begin
attending (Anwatin) middle (what used to be "junior high") school all
the way across town. Now she rides the
bus, and begins the practice of changing classes and teachers with each
subject. After day one, she liked the
experience. My suspicion was that she
was going to be shocked at the amount of work she would have to do; Krystin
glided through grades K-6 with little homework, because she would spend time
during the school day doing it. Now that
won't work. We considered several middle
schools (all Minneapolis
publics), and selected Anwatin because of the curriculum: for one thing, it is the only one that
required science year-round. (We were
appalled that science is only optional in the other schools; in our view, anyone
who comes out of K-12 schooling with no understanding of some basic elements of
science and how it works simply cannot claim to be educated.)
Elliott, meantime, went to first
grade, so he's in all-day school now. He
has the same first-grade teacher that Krystin did; we liked her. After day one, Elliott announced that he had
had a good time--although he was completely unable to tell us what he did in
school during the day. (He could, of
course, remember quite clearly what he had for lunch.)
* * *
The weather in early September was
glorious, by far the nicest of 1997.
Sunny, warm days, cool nights, and the leaves were not yet turning. It made up for the crappy spring.
Elliott tendered to me (a couple of
weeks before I wrote this, in early fall), what, in my opinion, was one of the
nicest compliments that a child can offer a parent--although he had no idea he
was doing so. In the course of getting
ready for bed one evening, he asked me which I liked better, being an adult or
being a kid. I told him that there were
parts of being a kid that I liked more, and parts of being an adult I liked
more--it was some of both. He said he
really liked being a kid more, that you get to play a lot, and you have your mom
and dad to help you and do stuff with you, and it's more fun. What more could anyone want for a child than
to be happy in the role? I figure we
must be doing OK with him.
Pat and I figuratively rejoined
civilization on September 19: I had a
surprise 40th birthday party for her. It
was also about the first time in a year that we had had company outside our
immediate families, with our house having looked like a demolition derby site
for so long. And I was sure Pat had
figured out that I was doing something; her actual birthday was the day before,
which went very uneventfully--she went to Krystin's soccer game and I gave her
a card. Big deal. I thought for sure she knew things were too
quiet, and I had spent the week before racing around doing little cleaning and
house-finishing projects (after having done very little of that in the
preceding month or six weeks). But nope,
she was surprised--got home Friday night, while I was at the grocery store, saw
glasses on the kitchen table and plates on the dining room table, and asked
Krystin what was going on. Krystin I had
primed; she just said "a few people are coming over." So a few equals 25 or 30.
Pat admitted later that she had been
distracted all that week because her mother had been in the hospital for heart
bypass surgery. She was in the hospital
longer than normal, because of fluid build-up and kidney problems, but came out
fine. But Pat and her sisters were out
visiting continuously, so she wasn't paying attention to my industriousness. Normally I would be upset by the lack of attention
and deep gratitude. . . . [As of early
December, Pat's mother was continuing to do just fine.]
We still weren't done with
the house, and I fired the contractor in late September. So then I had to find somebody to finish up
the (literally) eight little things that had not been completed. What a pain.
The
Twin Cities, at least, had a glorious autumn, with days more like June than
September or October. Even into early
October, we were wearing shorts and t-shirts; I even had to turn on the air-conditioning
in early October, because the temperature hit 90 degrees. I am thus chagrined to report that after an
absolutely gorgeous 3-4 weeks in late September and early October, Elliott and
I were running errands on an evening in mid-October--and were driving through a
ferocious snowstorm. Fortunately, the
temperature was high enough that the snow was melting as it hit the ground, but
it was demoralizing to see snow this early in the year. Elliott was enthralled with all this white
stuff blowing all around us.
And on November 3, winter came. Actually, it came the day before. We had measurable snow the evening of the
2nd, and (I can attest from personal experience), the roads were glaze
ice. We drove from Owatonna to Minneapolis last night, after visiting Pat's
sister and family on their farm, and the normal one-hour drive took nearly two
hours. About every mile or so there was
a car in the median ditch or off the road.
We watched a police car spin into the median. This was not my idea of a fun drive home.
We got through the birthday season
for the kids. With birthdays right
around Halloween, and both families more or less in town, they have more
parties than is rational. Krystin had
four parties: one with the Engstrand
side, one with her friends, one with us--we took her to Planet Hollywood for
dinner at the Mall of America--and one with the Stephens side (in Owatonna
during the ice storm). Elliott had his
four parties as well--with the Engstrands and the Stephens--with us, and with
friends the Saturday after his birthday.
Phew. (I missed the party with
Elliott's friends; I went to a Gopher football game instead. We lost, as usual. Elliott had a better time.)
* * *
As the end of the year approaches, I
am struggling to finish writing a book.
I spoke in January in San Diego;
the topic was faculty tenure and an horrendous fight about it at Minnesota that almost
tore the University apart. The
University became the center of national attention in higher education (and
repeatedly got on the front pages of the local newspapers--as well as the New
York Times and the Washington Post), and the attention was not
positive. (The reason I was invited to
speak at the conference was because of the notoriety of the fight.)
I am now trying to recount those
events, both by tracing the paper record and by interviewing many of the
leading participants. It is a daunting
task. On the one hand, there were
fundamental and critical issues involved, including the future quality of the
University and academic freedom. On the
other hand, my job is complicated by the fact that many of the participants
remain unwilling to speak frankly about events.
A number of the people involved still feel damaged by what happened to
them and by what was said to and about them; motives and ethics were impugned
and the integrity of several was cast in doubt.
Emotions were high and tempers occasionally flared. The political and socio-economic leadership
of the state and the Twin Cities was drawn into the conflict. I do not recall experiencing, or reading
about, a convulsion of such magnitude in any U.S. university in recent years; it
will no doubt be a case study for years (which is why I'm writing up the
events).
* * *
Year-end family and other notes:
Pat and I spent several weekends
this summer and fall getting my grandmother's house cleaned out/cleaned up,
after she moved out in early summer to an assisted-living residence in Edina. She is doing extremely well in her new
residence. Although she is physically
frail--she does not walk without a cane or walker--she remains socially
active. We sold her house in November,
and she was just glad to be rid of it, after the general travail of selling off
stuff and moving out of a home in which she had lived for over 30 years. She goes out for lunch, has her meals and
cleaning provided, and at age 96 no longer has to perform all the ubiquitous
daily chores with which the rest of us are burdened. Except for those who live on estates and have
staff, the rest of us still have to do laundry, clean house, buy groceries,
prepare meals, keep the cars maintained, do the house and yard work, and so
on. She is now lucky enough not to have
to worry any longer about these things.
She can read, socialize, watch TV, go out for meals, and generally enjoy
herself. I should live so long.
Many weeks into the school year,
Krystin has taken to middle school like a fish to water. She loves changing classes and is doing
extraordinarily well; on her first report card, she had only two "B"s
and all the rest were "A"s.
(She's doing better than either her mother or father did at the same
point!) She got to choose four electives
(two each semester); the only one we insisted she take was keyboarding
(or, what it was called when Pat and I took it, typing). Twenty years ago I would have told her not to
take typing under any circumstances, because it would have led her to being
routed in life to being a secretary, but in this day and age, when everybody
has to be able to use a computer in the workplace, we told her it was essential
she know how to "keyboard."
(Apparently this is a new verb in the English language. I type; she keyboards.)
Forgive the boasting, but we're
quite proud of how Krystin is doing.
She's in what is called the "pre-IB" program; IB is
International Baccalaureate. If she
sticks with it, she'll go into the IB program in high school, and if she does
well in it (gets at least a "B" in the IB classes), she comes out of
high school with a considerable number of college credits under her belt. Her pre-IB classes require considerably more
work than regular classes (in math, she's already getting algebra, and in
English she has to write much more). One
pre-IB class is Spanish, and she's also doing pre-IB science, so she's studying
cells and the study of biology. (We
spent much time this fall trying to gather the leaves of 30 different kinds of
trees, identifying each of them, and finding both their common and scientific
names. What a production! What Pat and I know about different kinds of
trees, apart from the usual elms and maples and oaks, you could stick in your
eye and not notice. And as it turned
out, we didn't even know our elms and maples and oaks, either--there are more
varieties of those kinds of trees than I ever imagined!)
Elliott is doing first grade; I
don't know how else to describe it. He's
going along. He sometimes resists doing
his homework, but when he does agree to do it, he does fine on his spelling and
math. He likes it OK, and seems to be
doing very well, but he's indifferent to being in school--it's not anything
that he's impressed with or opposed to.
He still draws pictures daily (which he and I routinely talk about at
bedtime) and play with the (what seems like) 50,000 Legos he has, but likes as
much to play his Gameboy and watch movies.
He remains, however, the good-spirited and good little kid to be around,
almost always cheerful and inquisitive and a delight to be around.
As is probably normal for all
households with more than one child, however, I can attest that it seems to be
a genetically- or sociologically-driven imperative that siblings fight. All of us who grow up in families with more
than one child must learn, at some point, that oral argument is for lawyers,
not for family. We, however, do not yet
have personal evidence that this learning occurs. There are times when I would like to strangle
them both, when they get into these oral exchanges that neither can win--but
which serve extraordinarily well to irritate both of their parents. I am sure there are many child-rearing guides
that inform parents how to teach their children to avoid this verbal warfare,
but we obviously haven't read them. And
then at other times (happening even as I composed this paragraph), they play
and rough-house together in a way to gladden the heart of any parent. No doubt we could go find out how to lessen
the annoying times and increase the fun times, but that requires more research
than we've been prepared to do. So
they'll grow up like almost all of the children on this planet who preceded
them or who are now alive.
My dad was diagnosed last year with
Parkinson's disease. It's more obnoxious
than debilitating, at least for him.
He's physically become more unstable (to his annoyance), but other than
that, he's doing fine.
As not-quite-the-end of the story,
we are now probably going to sue our contractor, because he won't pay us the
penalty clause money that he owes us, and we're still trying to get somebody to
finish the downstairs bathroom. Never
again will we do this. We're going out
of this house on stretchers.
Christmas this year, for the first
time, will be at our house. We now have
the space to accommodate the family, both for dinner and for gathering to open
presents. We are even going to have two
Christmas trees! My dad gave us the
artificial tree that my folks had had; we also cut down a tree at one of the
local tree farms.
It is perhaps best that I finally
stop writing, make copies of this letter, and get it ready to put in your
cards. Our best wishes for the season
and for the new year!
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