Christmas letter from Stork

No more procrastinating.  This won’t be as good a letter as the one I wrote a couple years ago, but it’ll have to do.

Good news.  Hmm.  We have a young man living upstairs.  He sometimes comes down to socialize, and that is good.  His aunt recently gave him a new pair of basketball shoes, so he is pretty happy.  He’s also gone to visit his dad from time to time and they have gone hunting, successfully getting deer.  I don’t hunt, well, I went once, but I haven’t gone since.  It’s a long story.  I never liked venison very much.  Or lutefisk, of course.  I’ll make some lefse today with Jon, my nephew.

Gunther is a damned good dog, but he started drinking lots of water, then urinating in the house about a year ago.  I took him to the doctor who diagnosed diabetes.  Now I give him two insulin shots a day of special veterinary insulin.  Gunther comes when I ask him to get his shot.  Isn’t that sweet?  Afterward he likes to sit on my shoulder and cuddle.  He doesn’t urinate in the house any more, but he vomited and shit on my rug a couple days ago. Unusual for him.

Gunther is sick more often than P. or me.  He still likes to eat garbage and roll around on dead squirrels. Not us.

We are healthy.  We visited Todd and his family in Minnesota, Clara and her kinfolk in San Diego, and we spend time with Robert and his familiars here in Billings.  We’re through traveling until next spring.  We put the camper van in storage.  

We have developed strict morning routines.

Typically we get up early, grab our phones, do “Connections,” “Wordle,” and “Spelling Bee” puzzles.  Only then do we dress and eat breakfast.  We spend part of our time volunteering here and there.  We will have been in our house 40 years January first.  We’re used to it.

I love singing with my friends.  Recently I had a small part in a play, a musical “A Christmas Carol.”  It’s available on Youtube. I like theater folks a lot.

Clara is helping me write a memoir about my topsy-turvy life when I joined the Marines.  I was a pretty poor soldier, in truth, but I met up with a few people who helped me cope.  I joined when Vietnam was raging, but I never went there.  Instead, I spent years in California fixing Volkswagens and delivering newspapers.  Eventually, we saved enough money to leave California and return to Montana.  

Boring, but okay, really.  We learn new things from our fellow citizens daily.  It’s only snowed once or twice in Billings this year.