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April 15. 1958
Dear Mother and Daddy,
Thank you for the list of shower goodies. I will get the notes off as soon as possible. Thank you also for the check for the Avon things. Something is holding up the shipment, as I was supposed to have gotten it around the first or middle part of last week. I am phoning a friend of mine to find out procedure, but she isn't home, so I will just keep trying and watching her kitchen window.
Spent the morning trying to keep up on the roses and sundry flowers that have survived from last year. We really have calalilies, in and outside the house now. I was just messing around, though, since we're going to do the really heavy post-winter reorganization this coming weekend. We're really hep on grass and calalilies, but as for the other stuff, we plant, dig up, pick, and pinch back whatever and whenever Jim's sisters tell us it should be done. This year we are going to plant tomatoes and sweet peas, however. The weather is so nice that I just like to get out and mess around in a pair of shorts. It's a good example for Jeff, too, since he thinks that going outside is pretty plebian. That, and having to eat dog food out of a dog dish are two of his main gripes. He doesn't seem to object to dog bones, however.
The three of us spent the weekend up at Jim's uncle's place near Yuba City. He's got about a thousand chickens and an orchard. Jim's mother loves to go fishing with them and we usually go too, though this time, we spent all our time giving the orchard its first spring discing with a homemade tractor and a converted horse-disc. We do it every time we go up there, and we've just about finished designing our own tractor for the acreage that we're going to have someday when we escape from the tract-builders. Poor Jeff had to stay home and guard the machinery, since three in a Thunderbird is plenty, without a fat beagle jumping around. Next time, we're going to try and take him, since he could use the exercise that all that space up there allows.
The rain has delayed it for four weeks, but racing season finally gets underway this coming weekend. They always end up starting late, because they are usually too optimistic about the weather. The weather was all right last Friday night, but they didn't have time to work the tracksurface, since most of the equipment was under water during the worst of the rain.
Well, today is the big day for sending in the missile money. Considering the fact that we have not been keeping joint records for the whole year, and that we have undergone
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considerable enlightenment in the last few months, we feel pretty good knowing that we were still able to get a good deal on deductions. We refigured the CPA's figures for the sake of becoming learned, and now we know what and how he did things to arrive at the most advantageous figure. The way we have our 1959 expenditures planned, we hope that the Internal Revenue fellows will be sending us missile money next year
Together with Mike and Chick we are plotting how to be pleasantly unhospitable. They have a worse problem than we do. Whenever we have the luxury of staying home and plunging into our projects together, somebody shows up, usually someone we haven't got any particular reason to be impolite to, someone without anything to do, who feels like a cup of coffee. Jim charges for all the work he does on peoples' cars and bikes, so we don't have too much trouble with those who wish to sponge, but the problem of the time-consuming bore who wish to be coffeed and entertained is yet to be solved. We haven't yet told anyone just to leave, nor have Mike and Chick, but it is not outside the realm of possibility. People with crummy marriages just can't seem to understand that we like to stay home and work on building things together.
Thank you for your Easter gift. Having a little more time I have finished reading Denny's book, but Jim is still in it. I can certainly understand why it is a critical success but his subject matter could have been a little richer. I hope that's not the only topic he's got, as it has been a long time germinating. It is essentially the same story he told me in the form of a personal anectdote over three years ago. His next book should give a more rounded picture of what Denny the author really consists of. Cosmopolitan though he is, I would not be at all surprised to find that he has some pretty wide gaps and limitations in the gamut of emotions at his command.
Hope that your Easter was dryer than ours. We gave up on drainage and Jim started installing a pump to keep the water out of our garage. We did manage to take some time out from our little flood control problems to get down and eat Easter dinner and admire the new baby.
Must take time off from admiring the sunshine and get out and do some Avon-ing. Will order you some rich moisture cream and take the hand cream off of your order and credit it to the next on the moisture cream.. The mascara was a mistake in my catalog, as cake mascara does not come in light brown, just plain brown.
Love, Marcy
