1994-06-27 Woozle writes to Grandparents

Dear Grandma & Granddad,

It was wonderful seeing you folks again. You seem to have been through quite a lot recently, but I'm glad to see you seem to be pulling through!

I was cleaning out my desktop the other day in order to make room for my computer -- it was in the living room for awhile, but now we've moved it back to where it used to be; what with the offspring coming and all, we've moved more furniture around in the past few months than in several normal years! -- anyway, what should I come across but a list of things to do. Everything was crossed off except for "write grandparents"... So I have no excuse.

We had hoped to come visit again, but what with time limitations and the things we needed to do, it just wasn't possible. After we saw you, we went to London where I bought several Goon Show LPs and Livia and I traipsed around National Gallery for the rest of the afternoon, after which we were quite exhausted and decided to call it a day (no time to hunt for Jono or Urgy). Sunday the four of us took a trip to Stonehenge, which took a bit longer than we had expected, what with there being 2 changes at Reading and Basingstoke. Monday we went up to see Judy & Bob, Tuesday we had fish & chips in Whitby at the Magpie which was very much as advertised i.e. absolutely delicious, and then headed back, and Wednesday Livia and I took our final gander around Oxford, accumulating a suitcase full of books and records in the process.

We had a slight bonus on the trip back (which somewhat offset having to get up at 5 am to catch the train) -- they were out of seats in budget class, so we got bumped up (!) to Club class, one short of First. Every seat had a miniature TV attached, and there was much more leg room (important for some of us: on the way over, if I extended my legs to the point where I was almost comfortable, my toes would stick out from underneath the chair of the person in front of me).

Glancing at earlier letters, I see a lot has happened since I last wrote. The Observer blew up due to a management dispute; Livia is now working for the Athens Daily News, making very little money and not enjoying it. I am currently doing part-time programming work at The University of Georgia and making about the same rate Livia is; unlike Livia's, however, my work is rather challenging and should be very good for the ol' résumé.

The band I was in also blew up due to personality conflicts, but I seem to find myself in the perhaps enviable position of being the only person that everyone in both factions is willing to work with. We have formed one new band out of the resulting mess, but it seems to be having difficulty getting off the ground. In any case, I am going to be renting some studio space with someone from the other faction and expect to be doing some serious recording work in the near future.

The latest on cats: Four was killed on the highway over a year ago; a stray pregnant cat we named Footsie appeared soon after that, and a few days after she had her kittens in the closet, One also disappeared. So now we have Footsie, her kittens -- Six, Seven, and Eight -- and a wild cat, probably the father, named Hector (he was also Hecate's consort). For some irrational reason, we decided to keep them all, rather than go through all the trauma of trying to get them good homes elsewhere.

We were very much afraid that we would come home to find that one or more of these had become splotches on the road, but they do all somehow seem to be here still -- though we did have an initial scare: Footsie didn't show up for 36 hours after we got back. She somehow managed to get a resperatory infection, and was perhaps trying to keep away so as not to infect the others. We took her to the vet as soon as she showed up, and they say she'll be fine with some antibiotics in her (no improvement yet, but then she's not getting any worse either).

We no longer try to keep them inside (the litterbox becomes absolutely impossible) and instead have settled for trying to scare the living daylights out of them by coming in the driveway at 30mph (and accelerating if they get in our way!). We also try to spend more time in the back yard so perhaps they'll think of it as their territory. The deck which Mubbie (Livia's grandmother) had built last summer really helps with this; it has made the back yard almost an extension of the kitchen.

Speaking of the back yard and Mubbie --she had been mentioning that she hadn't been able to get down to the creek (which runs at the bottom of the hill in the woods behind our house) for over twenty years, and she had just about decided she never would. So Livia and I cut a wide path through the woods, put Mubbie in the car, and drove her down there. Since you don't know the place, this may not sound too impressive; let me compare it to the hills around Whitby: it was steeper and bumpier and the traction wasn't as good. We gave Mubbie the ride of her life (for which she feared at the time), but did manage to get there and back without mishap. Now we are planning another "highway", this time to further back where a disreputable neighbor has cut down some of Mubbie's hardwoods without permission.

Anyway, that's basically it. I could go on about our driveway renovation plans, or the garden, but really not much has changed on the latter since last year, and the former is only started (we'll send pictures).

Dad says you might make it over later this year -- if so, we'll certainly come up to NC and visit!

Take care, and hope to see you soon,

Woozle & Livia