Saturday, November 7, 2009

Swine Flu, Halloween, and Charlie

Pete and I have been down and out with swine flu (H1N1) all week. Luckily, we didn't have any of the intestinal symptoms. It was all in our heads. Haha. It hit me hard a week ago Friday, then Pete's symptoms started on Sunday. He coughs a lot on a good day, so we didn't realize he was sick until he got a fever. Unfortunately for me, I ended up with an ear infection, and after 4 days of antibiotic, I still feel like I'm under water. And I hate being under water.

Julia hopes to stay healthy long enough to get her vaccination in school on Monday. Bill has been working long hours, which is keeping him away from our germs. Pete and I are on the mend, and I plan to get out of the house today for some sunshine and vitamin D.

To recap the past week, Halloween is huge in our neighborhood. 100 houses, close together, means kids from all over town come here to trick-or-treat. I buy enough candy for 400 kids. We think there were fewer than that this year, maybe 200-300. Julia's friend Genevieve came over to help Julia and Josh pass out candy, and she was shocked by the swarms of trick-or-treaters.


You can see our pumpkins on the porch. Not our best effort. Julia planned to carve Cinderella's coach, and Pete used the Woodstock logo to celebrate the 40th anniversary. We've never done any scraping, and we didn't have the right tools, but they made a good effort. Josh gutted my pumpkin for me (thank you!), but I didn't have the energy for my usual elaborate carving. So I asked Bill for the electric drill and the biggest drill bits we own. Using power tools on a pumpkin is a blast! The flesh was flying!


This was my view of the world from the couch late Thursday afternoon. The light was eerily beautiful, which was hard to capture with our point and shoot camera.


Pete went out on the porch to take this one. I like the way the flag looks translucent. As he came back in he took a deep breath of fresh air. After being cooped up, it's the little things that matter most.


Today is the day my mother will have to bid farewell to her beloved Charlie. Her apartment will seem so empty without him. She has been so funny with this bunny. She brought him to her exercise class at the senior center last week to sell raffle tickets, and just happened to run into a couple of reporters from the small local newspaper. She said, "Have you met Charlie?" Here they are, ON THE FRONT PAGE!


Take a deep breath of fresh air today!

2 comments:

Becky said...

OMG! Charlie is the cutest thing I have ever seen! Did she make him? Wow!
Sorry you are suffering from swine flu. My daughter was out for the whole week before and during halloween...and she was really sick. So my apologies that you are sufferring with it. Hope you get better soon!
God Bless!
Becky

Unknown said...

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