assortment of items

above is a letter from camp, written by me circa 20 yrs ago. i both amuse and annoy myself in the present as i read it so i can only presume to guess the level of amusement the addressees enjoyed.

finally, we sold our car. it had been sitting on our curb for over a year, the kind of task neither mm or i are really equipped to navigate. at one point we were going to just give it to C & J b/c they need(ed) a car but we needed the money. long story longer, our neighbor bought it from us unsolicited. he came over and gave us half the money on tues (the other half to follow). we are dead broke right now (b/c of upcoming yosemite trip!) so we desperately needed the money. good. great. it all worked out like it should...

except of course
that max just got one of his annual hot spots, wherein he chews on his underparts until they're raw and red and infected. mm brought him to vet and they said it was the worst case they've seen for years. awesome. the plan was to shave/trim the fur to better gauge the hot spot but max - in pain - would not allow it, hence we had to leave him there and have him anaesthetized (!) so he could get shaved and then we (well, mm really) could return and pick him up and 2 bottles of pills and a bottle of spray-on steroid. ugh. point being, the $ from the car sale evaporated. like that. gone. that's the joy of pets.

we've had good work on the book lately. it is near impossible for us to look at it w/ proper persepective or gauge how well it is (or is not) working but it's felt good. in a similar way as the above letter makes me feel, reading over things i wrote just three years ago in the middle of diagnosis, surgery, treatment etc is strange, surreal, delicate. also, i was drinking a lot that year. wow. you'll see when you read it. it's kind of embarassing actually but it happened and it's part of how i (and we) made it through the year so we've elected to leave it in.