Mrs. Ava Helen Pauling,
3500 Fairpoint Street,
Pasadena, California,
U.S.A.
17th March, 1964.
Dear Mamma,
I am very sorry not to answer your letter requesting permission about papers for the Mercedes Benz. There is a Bill of Sale and a registration book which I sent you when the car came over and I think that Daddy had them in the small steel box for important papers that was kept in your desk or in the closet behind the bed in his study. I do not know if they are still there and I am not sure that that is where they were, but there was this Bill of Sale and the transferred British registration book which is a thick brown cardboard. The Bill of Sale was just a piece of paper saying received £400. Perhaps you should not produce that to the prospective buyer, he aught come over and buy his own here.
I also did not say anything in my last letter to you about your comments on Anita's marriage. I knew when we were in Oslo that she was married but did not think it was my business to say so particularly. Linus knew too and if he wanted the information spread around it was really his business. I did mention the fact to Linda because the subject of Anita came up in conversation.
Our house is coming along reasonably well, though still fairly slowly. I am afraid it will go slowly because neither I nor the builder can afford to put too much labour into the job. I have paid him too much money already and must stop paying anymore and he has to complete my job on the proceeds of his other jobs. Consequently he must keep them going at a fairly good rate in order to keep the pot turning over. Julia and I are planning to move in to the top floor and most of the first floor on March 21st, along time. I certainly will be pleased to be in it. The top floor is beginning to look reasonably finished, though the fittings still have to be put in. We have put down a new floating floor made of compressed chip—board to serve as sound insulation from the tenants to ourselves in our bedrooms underneath. We shall live in the flat on the top floor for a month or two until the rest of the house is available. We shall use the big room on the first floor as storage space and as working space for our work on the rest of the house.
What we need now mostly is a plasterer to complete plastering the walls and to do the sand and cement screed in the basement.
I have been working very hard on the house myself. Due to the Builders difficult financial position I have been doing all the technical work recently.
I have been waking up early every morning and working very hard and am very tired in the evening. It is good to work hard and I feel reasonably well but will be a little happier when things are more nearly completed. I am also trying to get a lot of things written, a number of papers need to be beaten into shape and be sent off and I am trying to write a laboratory manual for my laboratory in this department and a series of notes for my lectures later next term.
I hope you are well and look forward to your coming and staying with us in our house.
Love from,
March
17, 1964
