Spooks out

A month home and I've already ticked off four holidays: Sister, Dad, and Brother's birthday and Halloween. Plus the brother's birthday was also kind of a stag. It went really well too. The engineering/rock climbing types all came up from Calgary. Amazingly, Little Ken and I ruled the pool table! Also, the farmer/cattle ranch types were also there from town, a couple of cousins, the bride-to-be, sister and sis's injured boyfriend.

Dad went into the hospital by ambulance on Hallowe'en afternoon. We were very pleased once he stopped throwing up and started feeling fine. He felt guilty for taking up a hospital bed but apparently you have to call the ambulance twice in a week and throw up some blood to get the doctor to actually open both eyes while he's speaking to you.

Today we get to go for the long-awaited MRI. I'm really starting to believe the problem is a drug side-effect. He's been off his meds for the last two weeks and I now catch him wandering about a bit. He even went up the stairs twice yesterday.

For Hallowe-en i skipped the costume party in the city and stayed home with Mom. We had enough candy for fifty kids but only got two, so now we have to eat the rest ourselves. My tricker treating was dressing up as a rig pig in a puffy vest, work gloves and rubber boots and running around the farm with a flashlight, nicking keys out of all the vehicles - at least 15 including two tractors, a combine, the swather, two grain trucks, a few rusting half-tonnes, a quad and a riding lawn mower. And it was chilly!

This is all to thwart would-be joy riders. Does this actually happen? Probably about as often as someone puts razer blades in apples - which has never, ever happened. But 40 years ago, cousin Sandy and the Morrison boys put a bale of straw in the car and cut the twine. And sixty years ago, the same crew of renegade cousins took the Bennett Buggy apart and put it back together on the roof of the barn.

So, you just never know.