Christmas Letter 2007

Merry Christmas everyone!  We hope this letter finds all of you safe, happy, and secure.

 

1. The fountain you read about two years ago had to be killed.  It never quite worked the way it was supposed to and someone said that either the fountain goes or Marco goes.  So there’s that.

 

2. Kitchen, ceiling, surround sound, windows, patio doors, and third bay on the garage.  So a certain lovely redhead said one day, “You know what?  I don't like the lights in the kitchen.  Why don’t we look at some different lighting?”  Many thousands later, we have a scraped and painted ceiling in the kitchen, family room, and breakfast area.  We also have new lighting, surround sound, and a ceiling fan in the family room, new lights and pendants in the kitchen, and new paint in all three rooms.  We have a new ceiling fan in the master bedroom and new windows throughout the house.  Additionally, we have new hardware (pulls and knobs) in the kitchen, a new refrigerator, and rebuilt cabinets.  ADDITIONally, we now have a third bay on the garage to accommodate Marco’s golf cart.  Now we don’t have to pull in our mirrors, back in the golf cart and do the limbo to get into our cars.   We’ve also changed the back patio doors to French doors instead of a sliding door with a Gerry-rigged doggie door.  Apparently that isn’t very classy.  We also moved the doggie door to the game room so the draft doesn’t blow directly on the thermostat.   So the next time someone says, “what do you think about the lights in the ______?”, unless you have the willpower to stop at one project, the correct answer is, “I like them just fine honey.”  In my lovely wife’s defense, everything looks fantastic and it is all completely functional.  The floors didn’t make the cut this year because someone didn’t want “ANY MORE STRANGERS IN MY HOUSE.”

 

3. Fertility, Friends, and Horse racing.  Have you ever noticed that when you are having trouble getting pregnant, everyone you know is either pregnant, nursing, or their existing children are getting into the gifted program?  So the male perspective is, “no problem, we get to keep ‘practicing.’” He is labeled an idiot, insensitive, and selfish. The female perspective is, “There is something wrong with me and I’m a freak.”  This is apparently the only reasonable way to approach this scenario.  Logic has no place in fertility unless you are in fact THE doctor.  So you start on the testing.  A year later, when you still aren’t pregnant you start in with serious doubts.  By the way, at this point your friends have all given birth by now or are pregnant again.  So you see the fertility doctor and he proposes exploratory surgery for endometriosis.  After a bit of anguish, you decide to do it.  So you go in and your loving husband goes with you.  Here you find out that redheads are more immune to anesthesia than most so they really need to dose you up.  Once you are out of surgery, but not out of the effects you suggest to your husband that you make a break for it, only to find out that the surgery has already been done.  You rest for a couple of days at home and start deciding which of the drugs you will take.  Initially you are torn because you don’t want to introduce new hormones or have sextuplets.  Then your husband proposes you go to Retama Park and bet the horses, perhaps stay on the San Antonio River Walk and have a nice weekend together.  Three weeks later you come bounding up the stairs with a pee stick in your hand.  That, my friends, is how it goes sometimes, I hear. 

 

4. Surgery. In addition to Nita’s surgery Marco went under the knife as well.  Marco got busted pushing on his stomach when Nita asked, “what are you doing honey?”  “Pushing my hernia back in” was the reply.  After the initial fireworks, the conversation resumed in a normal tone.  “Honey, how long has this been going on?”  “About nine months.”  “Uh, don’t you think you should get it fixed?”  To which Marco replied, “But I’ve played in 13 of the 15 golf tournaments this year and I want to win the ‘Iron Man’ award.”  More fireworks, and needless to say Nita made Marco’s appointment for him.  After the visit with the doctor it was decided that he could in fact play the last two tournaments, but the surgery would be on October 24^th.  Everything is fine and he did win the club’s “Iron Man” award.

 

5. Reunion.  Marco’s 20^th reunion was this summer and he was on the planning committee.  It really was great seeing everyone again and a good time was had by all.  Nothing really funny of note although if you’ve ever seen the movie Just Friends, some of those examples do apply.  For example, in most of those reunion movies the geeks are rich… well they are.  Good news is most of them are cool about it.  For those of you on the bubble for your 20^th, the 20 year is WAY less pretentious than the 10 year.  It really is about catching up and trying to party like you did when you were 18.  Key word is trying.

 

6. And now for the Marfa Mastercard moment:

 Gas for 886.4 miles round trip -- $225

 Snacks for six female passengers in one vehicle -- $37

 Deputy badge for Sheriff Lissa -- $3

 Eating breakfast with Wallace Shawn (“Inconceivable!”) from The Princess Bride -- $10

 Experiencing Girls’ Overnight 2007 and living to tell about it – PRICELESS

 

7. No we didn’t win the lotto.  Although I’m still buying tickets and crossing my fingers.  Nita’s company had its best year ever and they are doing great.  They’ve even ventured into real estate. So in addition to ERP consulting they are also slum lords.  We chose not to increase our standard of living, but instead put money into the house, do more for charity, and send a bit to the investment house to maybe sneak up on our retirement before it sneaks up on us.  Just in case babies or twins force us to change our lifestyle/income we’d at least have completed most of the house things that needed to be done.

 

8. Two quick updates from last year’s letter.  Rio tore his other ACL so he is now officially the bionic dog, but he is still chasing squirrels and acting as if nothing ever happens.  Reminds me that humans are the only animal capable of feeling sorry for themselves.  This is worth reading again in case the between the lines part didn’t hit.  A&M beat Texas again so the tradition of flying both flags until the game and the winner gets to fly their flag solo went to Marco.  For the marriage….. Nita 2 Marco 2. 

 

9. Clearly you could sense the excitement in the fertility bullet, but the pregnancy was not to be.  We’re still trying although we’ve taken a little bit of a new approach.  Instead of seeing this as a terrible issue, we’ve decided to look at things through the lens of our blessings.  When you look at how much hunger, death, infidelity, lack of communication, hate, poverty, etc is out there and your biggest problem is the garage project took four months instead of six weeks… life seems pretty good.  When your biggest decision is red wine or white for dinner, you really don’t have problems.  So may you all look at your many blessings as gifts, and find the humor in your problems. 

 

May God bless y’all and Merry Christmas!

 

Love,

 

The Martinez Family

Marco, Nita, and Rio