The Not-So-Deep South
December 1997
Holiday Greetings to Friends of the Miller-Younkin Clan,
Duchess, the one-and-only Miller-Younkin canine, here again. Little did I realize when I got "talked into" writing last year's Christmas letter that I would be stuck with doing it again. About the only pay back I've gotten since last Christmas is that occasionally (and I do mean occasionally) Devon gives me some canned dog food. (Bless her kind, lovable, big-as-all-outdoors, puppy size, slurps and hugs heart.) Otherwise, not so much as a table scrap. This family needs to eat more liver. (Come to think of it, they never eat liver). So now unless I get a doggy treat I refuse to go outside and will instead threaten to poop in the house, but I mean, hey, the cats go in the house all the time. But other than that I have yet to see any great reward for last year's efforts. And let me assure yo&, typeng w*th paws is no e@sy tr!ck.
Originally I was told to make the above greeting to "friends and relatives" but I pointed out that that salutation seemed to place relatives in a group separate from friends. "That's true," said Derek, "so leave out the 'relatives' part." So if you're a relative and you haven't gotten one of these letters that should tell you where you stand with this bunch.
And speaking of cats (see first paragraph above), right after we mailed last year's letter we lost Spice. For two glorious weeks I had to contend with only one feline, but on Christmas Eve up pops another one named Angel. Worse yet, unlike Tiger, Angel never leaves the house. Rumor has it that after the humans return from vacation next summer, we may even see a third cat around here. If you don't find all this alarming, I suggest you go back to last year's letter and read the part about cats being aliens. Also, get this, when I try to just nibble at the cat food, you would think that I just took a dump in the pantry. There's all sorts of yelling and screaming and getting thrown outside with no treat. But Tiger is allowed to eat as much of my food as he wants--as matter of fact he usually gets to eat it first! While I'm standing there watching the little furry varmint crunch away at my dinner Jean usually makes some comments about what an easy going mutt I am to let a cat eat my dinner. They must think I'm really stupid. Now I ask you, what do you think would be the consequence if I did what I really want to do in such a situation which is to aerate Tiger with a few choice tooth marks! Besides we're talking aliens here and I've seen enough movies like Canine Encounters of the Feline Kind to know what happens when you cross aliens.
Now we come to the part of the letter where I bring you up to date on what everyone's been doing this last year except I was told to leave me out. Yeah, right! I would just like to say right now that any slight distortions from the truth you may read here were entirely intentional.
Devon is now in the Third Grade at school, in her second and, she swears, last year of piano lessons, and starting her third year of Indian Princesses where she's only one requirement away from getting the coveted Beaver patch. (You would think that the highest rank an Indian Princess could obtain would be the Canine patch, but can you believe it they don't even have a Canine patch! Then again, they don't have Cat patch either, so I guess that's okay.) Devon's favorite actor is Arnold Schwarzenegger. Jean keeps weeping about whatever happened to her little baby whose favorite movie used to be Bambi. Devon also likes beanie babies (I tried to make Tiger into a beanie baby once but it didn't work out). She's also one tough kid. Had a bicycle accident last week with blood and gore from head to toe and not even a whimper. ("You should have seen the other guy," was her only response.) Piano lessons and brushing her hair are a different story.
Derek got kicked out of elementary school last June (they told him to never come back) so now he's taking Drama Club with 6th grade as an extracurricular activity. He auditioned and made the school play which they performed a couple of weeks ago downtown at a statewide school drama festival. Fortunately his school went first so they got to perform their play before the police raid closed down the festival--then again maybe it was their play that caused the raid. By some miracle he got through two more soccer seasons this year without (hardly) a scratch. Only a Boy Scout for eight months and he's already First Class (again no canine ranks--what a dumb outfit). He's in a tough troop--they camp in snow in 5 degrees weather. This summer they got to camp a whole week with black widows and copperheads but only had a couple of fatalities and those occurred in the mess hall. He's now following in his Uncle Gary's footsteps by playing the trumpet. (Let me tell you, to a dog the trumpet is the instrument from hell.)
Jean is still teaching preschool at the Baptist church. For some reason she still hasn't accepted my offer to give a presentation to her classes on "The Alien Cat Threat to Life on Earth." She's also been to the doctor a lot lately as she suffers from the number one affliction of middle age American homemakers--tennis elbow.
Devon and Derek were watching "Bill Nye the Science Guy" on TV the other day when lo and behold they discovered what their dad really does for a living. All these years he's been telling them he's doing research for the Dilbert comic strip, when in reality he's a computational fluid dynamics engineer. I mean like most kids around here have parents who are doctors or accountants or teachers or Clinton apologists and other mundane things like that but a "computational fluid dynamics engineer"--that's like wow. Of course they still have no idea exactly what it is he does except Devon says he just sits around all day filling out papers.
Then again Derek doesn't understand why his "Advanced" science class teacher doesn't know anything about Einstein's theory of relativity.
Jim's been in the doldrums lately. After years of playing war games he just can't seem to be able to beat Derek in any of them. Worse, Devon is starting to whip him at backgammon.
The humans have been hanging around the house more than normal this past year. Apparently they've been saving up for a big trip out west next summer. Jim checked the thing out last June when he flew out to see Uncle Gary and Aunt Pat for a weekend. He said that unfortunately his brother Gary still hasn't gotten over the fifties (whatever that means) and has yet to grow up. Wow, perpetual youth. Neat!
Cousins Sean and Shannon still haven't learned their lesson and so came down to visit again last summer. We all went to Busch Gardens, and when I say "we" I mean "we". Dogs aren't allowed in amusement parks, and I've always wanted to go while Devon would rather stay home so they dressed me up like a human and left Devon home alone with the cats (good deal I'll say). I had a great time there. Sean, Derek, and I did the Drachen something-or-other upside-down roller coaster 7 times in a row without throwing up (okay, I threw up the first time through but after that it was all academic). Let me tell you it was the highlight of my year although people kept giving me sympathetic looks and mumbling something about "that kid's even uglier than Janet Reno."
The humans are out of here the weekend before Christmas to visit relatives up north so all you northern kin who never come to visit, this is fair warning. Once again we all wish you all a great Christmas and fabulous New Year, even you northern kin who never come to visit.
Place paw prints and signatures here.
P. S. Don't forget your favorite canine when it comes to spending lots of money on expensive, useless gifts this holiday season (premium canned dog food is always in good taste as well as authentic cat hide chews).