The day is lovely but not as warm as predicted. I suppose I ought not to complain, but I was expecting a bask in the sun sort of day.

Miss Gracie woke me up at three this morning when I heard her swallowing over and over. I figured she didn’t feel good. Sure enough, she got off the bed and went downstairs. A few minutes later, the poochie bells on the back door rang so I went downstairs to let her out. I waited a bit but got cold so I went upstairs to get some warmer clothes on. While I was upstairs, she came inside so I had to trudge back downstairs and shut the door. Around 4, I heard her again get off the bed and go downstairs. Then I heard something fall. I went to look and found Gracie had tried to eat one of the plants, and it had fallen on the floor when she pulled at it. What to do? What to do? I decided to cut off some spears of my spider plant to feed to her. I tried to leave them on the floor, but she couldn’t get at them. There I was at 4:15 feeding my dog spider plants to quell her queasy stomach. She finished around 4:30, and we both went back to bed and neither one of us woke up until 9:30. I would have thought the least she could have done was make the coffee.

My mother used to give us each a bowl for our Halloween candy. We’d dump the candy in it then go through the haul and check every small treat bag to see what could be traded or what we didn’t want which we’d then toss in the trash. Apples and some candy corn were among the rejects though my mother usually grabbed the apples. Yellow candy corn was just too sweet, even for a kid. I was a brown candy corn fan. Popcorn balls were tossed as was loose popcorn.

There was a hierarchy of Halloween treats. Once in a while I’d find a penny or a nickel, and it was prized above all else. Next in the hierarchy was the nickel candy bar. A Three Muskeeters bar was common back then. Last in the hierarchy was all the rest.

My mother let us put the bowls under our beds, and we could munch whenever we wanted. The day after Halloween we never had school so we’d munch treats most of the day. It was a taste of paradise on Earth before the fall.