The Not-So-Deep South
December 2003
Greetings
Holiday Fans, Fiends and Family…er, make that…Holiday Greetings to Family and
Friends, both two-legged and four,
Tis’ I, Duchess, ferociously
friendly and loyal Numero Uno member-in-good standing of the Miller-Younkin
clan, wishing you all the beast and happiest of Holidays! As is my wont to do, I shall start this
epistle with my favorite subject—ME!
From thence we shall move on to the less interesting members of the
household, and last, and most certainly LEAST, I shall provide an obligatory
mention of the lowlife cats.
But first, casting aside my usual
humbleness, I believe all of you out there in readership land should appreciate
the Herculean (wow, spelled it right the first time—is that impressive?!)
effort it takes a canine to write (or type) an epistle of this magnitude. Sure the Model 2002 Canine Keyboard (see
last year's letter) lightens the load slightly, but still, consider the fact
that, being a dog, my schedule is already more than full as you can see from
the following list:
Sleeping
– 16 hours
Going
in and out of the house including scratching door to get let in and out of the
house –1 hour
Taking
care of canine necessities such as eating and smelling interesting scents – 2
hours
Daily
walk – ½ hour
Barking
at visitors, neighbors, other dogs, strange cats, meter readers, mailmen, etc.
– 2 hours
Chasing
squirrels and digging for moles in backyard – 3 ½ hours
Tunneling
under the backyard fence – 1 ½ hours
From
this you no doubt have drawn the following conclusions:
1. my finding time to write the annual
Christmas letter is indeed no less than miraculous, and
2. dogs are not especially gifted
mathematicians. But I digress.
Moving on to the year-in-review,
last December the family headed north for an early Christmas celebration at
cousin Josh and Melissa’s new house in Frederick. Note that I was NOT
invited (first the wedding and then the Christmas party!), even though one of
my favorite humans, Grandpa (Grandpa and I always cooperate on midnight raids
on the fridge when he visits), had come all the way from Florida to
attend. Okay, Josh and Melissa, if no
invite this year—no Christmas letter!
Take that and cook it up in your fancy pastries and penguin treats, and
may you be cursed with CATS! Just
joking. I just put that in to see if
any of the humans proof read these letters.
Apparently NOT!
Anyway, we had a great Christmas
even though no family came to visit (or maybe it was we had a great Christmas because no family came to visit?) During Christmas break, Derek assembled the
100,000+ piece, life size Lego Star Wars Imperial Star Destroyer (I may be off
a little on the piece count, but see note above about canine mathematical
abilities), while Devon tried out her new compound bow (for some reason the
neighbor kids have stopped taking short cuts through our backyard where the
archery range is located). As usual the
winter months found everyone busy with Jean and Devon taking art and quilting
classes, Devon continuing to wreak havoc on the lower class belts in Zen Judo,
and Derek working on building the school robot (perhaps therein lies the
explanation for the disappearance of several engine parts from the Vice
Principal’s car). SuperBowl Sunday
found Derek skiing with the Scout troop (and this time he didn’t get evicted
from the slopes), and the following weekend saw Devon working on her science
project on the iron content of breakfast cereals. For some reason Derek’s science projects always seemed to center
around weaponry (trebuchets, rockets) and Devon’s food.
“The Curse of the One Act Plays” hit Derek’s school, as the plays
were cancelled five times on account of snow or freezing rain. Finally all the
plays threw in the towel except for the one Derek was cast in which was finally
performed in May (fortunately before the hurricane season—see Isabel
below). To celebrate Derek’s 17th
birthday, the family treated themselves to a performance of David Copperfield
who, to the disappointment of many, was unable to fulfill Derek's request to
make all the politicians disappear.
March found Derek and his school
robotics team in heavy competition at the Regionals while Jim skipped town to
attend the Solar Guard Academy Reunion in Williamsburg (don’t ask—as Derek put
it, “they’re sort of like Trekkies, only older and more obscure). Then Jim’s old (old?) high school classmate
Ray paid us a visit to reminisce about how much better the 50s were. Devon won first place in the county
Reflections competition for her poem “Curse the War” (or was it “Give War a
Chance"), and Derek was stage manager for the school play—stages being
easier to manage than actors.
On April Fools day, Jim and Jean celebrated a
quarter of a century together—and here’s to a couple of quarters more! The humans then took off for a day at Kings
Dominion with Cousin Jennifer and Logan to see Sponge Bob. (Let's see, we now have a cartoon character
from the Phylum Bryozoa—I’m beginning to see what Jim and Ray meant about the
50s.) Devon added homemade soft
pretzels to her many culinary talents (hint, hint!—haven’t seen any for a
while). In May Derek played the Well
Watcher and Thisbe in the school drama club’s annual Elizabethan Rout (?) (I
don’t have a clue—do you?), and the humans attended the local comedy club’s production
of Musical Matrix over and over again (nothing like hearing "Neo"
performed to the tune of "Rio" to warp any mind). Derek skipped the Junior Prom and instead
went to the all-night post Prom party.
Makes sense to me. And to add to
the family honors, Jean won a blue ribbon for one of her watercolors at the art
class show.
The highlights of the summer (none of which included me, of course) were: 1) Devon, Derek and Jim attending a Weird Al Yankovic concert (come to think of it, weren’t both accordions and polkas popular in the 50s?), 2) Devon breeding germs during a summer microbiology course (Jim attended the session which he thought was going to be Wine Tasting, but it turned out to be Wine Testing instead), and 3) a visit to Cedar Point, Ohio, the Roller Coaster capital of the planet along with Aunt Donna, Cousin Jennifer and Logan. No sooner did the kin leave, then Jim’s old high school classmate Jerry and son Ben showed up to ride the coasters some more. Then they were off to the Maryland State Fair for more robotics competition along with Aunts Donna and Ginny Lee and cousins Logan, Jennifer, and Shannon. (I wonder why kin keep showing everywhere but here. Must be the cats.) And wow, no sooner does school start then along comes Isabel (named after one of Jim’s great aunts?!) and no power for twelve days. It was really neat—board games every night by flashlight, listening to the radio instead of watching TV, neighborhood cookouts, and no school for 11 days!
A busy fall as usual with Friday night high school football games just like in the 50s, only the bands no longer do precision drill, they just sort of wimp around on the field, Jean taking her first academic course in many many years, Child Psychology—oh well, better late than…., Devon returning to Cotillion (it’s a Southern thing), Derek spending 36 hours straight working on a math modeling problem for national competition (the good news is that it wasn’t at our house), and then being inducted into the National Honor Society the next day, which isn't easy when you’re asleep. Last weekend Derek performed in the school play of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure where one of his roles was mostly sleeping on stage in a drunken stupor while all sorts of lascivious and bawdy behavior took place around him—which is why this is probably one of Shakespeare’s least performed works (you certainly didn’t see school plays like this in the 50s).
Oh, yeah, the cats. We’re down to two, Zeus and JB, as Angel moved out to find some peace and quiet. When they're asleep at night, I eat up all the cat food. Heh, heh, heh. They blame each other. No one suspects yours truly. And as space again grows short, may we wish you and yours all the best for the Holiday season and the new year, and do take the time to reflect on profound truths such as God didn’t put any constellations of cats in the heavens, just dogs.
Place paw prints and signatures here.