Throwing on your winter coat, you bound out the front door and jog to your mailbox. Your heart races from excitement (and from the effort of running down your driveway). Pausing in front of the mailbox, you wonder if today will be your lucky day. With trembling hands you open the door and reach inside. Has what you have been anticipating all year finally arrived? You rifle through the stack of bills, festive flyers and Christmas cards until you reach that last envelope. Your eyes dart to the left-hand corner of the envelope, to the return address. “YES!” You shout gleefully. Yes, it has arrived! This is your lucky day for in your hands you hold . . .
THE 1998 HUNT-DIPPOLD HOLIDAY FORM LETTER
Another year. Another career. Another chapter in the saga of the Hunt-Dippold family.
The cast of characters remains the same: Sean Dippold, Kathy Hunt, Max (lean, rambunctious Shepherd-Husky), Andy (fat, lethargic tabby), Stub (fat,lethargic Calico)
When we last heard from Kathy and Sean, Sean was slaving away at Merck as a project manager. New year. Same situation. (As you will recall, Sean is the consistent person in this story.) Over the past year Sean attended meetings throughout the US – Atlanta, Colorado Springs, New Orleans, Miami, Tampa and Puerto Rico. He also received two achievement awards that we squandered rather quickly. Last month he moved into his new office. For the first time in his career he has . . . a window!
Intrigued by the field of medicine, in January Sean entered a six-month Emergency Medical Technician program. Among the handy medical procedures that he learned to perform were delivering babies, pumping stomachs, taking vital statistics and using an automatic electronic defibrillator. He received his EMT certificate in May 1998. Since then, Kathy has plagued him with innumerable medical complaints. “My neck is stiff. What do you think that means? My side hurts. Do you think it’s serious? My head aches. What should I take?”
Besides venturing into the world of medicine (and hypochondriacs) Sean made a serious move into the land of fine woodworking. Refinishing furniture, building Mission-style tables and country kitchen benches were some of Sean’s finer accomplishments. Look for hand-crafted gifts under your Christmas tree.
As usual, life with Kathy is far from static. In January I followed through on a long agonized decision and left Salvation Army to finish my master’s degree. In May I graduated from PSU with a Master of Science in special ed. Unable to stay away from Philadelphia (and that 35 mile commute in standstill traffic), I accepted the position of social services coordinator at Overbrook School for the Blind. Overbrook is a 440 person agency serving those who are “dually diagnosed” as blind, deaf and mentally retarded. The position offers a tremendous amount of flexibility and autonomy. Unfortunately, it does not hold the emotional appeal that SA and foster care had for me.
Volunteering at Cluster Outreach, a nearby food bank, somewhat satisfies my desire to aid the needy and neglected. It also gives me a cheap thrill whenever the food recipients mistake me for a client of the agency! KATHY IS ONE WITH THE PEOPLE! (Guess I should dress a bit nicer when I go there, huh?)
After years of penning short stories that I “wrote off” as hack fiction, I finally submitted one of my pieces to a literary magazine. Much to my delight, in September I was published in The Sun. Sean is continually encouraging me to bag the traditional work environment and spend my days writing. I have yet to feel 100% comfortable with this idea.
What would a form letter be without a section on traveling? (Not a form letter from Kathy.) From January through May we went on hiatus from vacations; I was embroiled in my thesis and a creative writing class at Ursinus College. In June, though, we were back in the air, back on the road. This summer I accompanied Sean on two Merck trips; eight days in New Orleans (where it was 98 degrees, 100% humidity) and seven days in Puerto Rico (where it was 98 degrees, 100% humidity). Summertime also meant shore time. In July I was a part of GCC alum Chris Fagley’s annual vacation in Ocean City, NJ. In August Sean and I spent a long weekend in Rehoboth Beach, DE with my childhood friend Jen and her husband, Craig. In October I cashed in my graduation gift from Sean – two weeks in Great Britain. We spent eleven and a half days in England, two and a half days in Wales. It was a lovely vacation, one of which I had dreamed since my early teens.
That about wraps up “The Hunt-Dippold 1998 Holiday Form Letter”. If you’d like to purchase the unabridged version, stop in at your local independent bookstore (if it hasn’t been forced out of business by that coffee peddling, pulp pushing Barnes and Noble) or visit our website at www.Seanisyellingatthedogagain.com.
Happy Holidays!
