covid in the house: my daughter brought it home from school one day last week; my wife got it for a couple of days, and i got it for a little longer. feeling really crummy this morning, i had my wife call in about some praxamid, or whatever that stuff is, but on the phone she alarmed the hospital with an oxygen reading of 80 and a general report of how crummy i felt, and they told her to bring me in.

so we shuffled off to the er, where i felt a little frumpy and overall more healthy than most of the people i saw there. the doctor, who could see that the low oxygen reading was simply faulty, since i was now producing good ones, didn't even check for pneumonia outside of listening and looking at me breathe. they decided i was ok and sent me packing. they have their beds full with people who are in much worse shape.

all this has made me grateful to come home and sit my chair in the gentle afternoon sun. the hallowe'en experience last night wiped us all out though my daughter, who'd had covid since like thursday, finally went back to school; now my son might have covid. My wife is feeling better. i feel like i can let her cover the urgent things and take my time getting back in the groove.

last night we felt that with the sun going down, the hallowe'en trick-or-treaters were coming out. We had two enormous bags of candy to give away that we'd got for that purpose. I was the sickest of the four of us, but with three known covid cases, we didn't know how to go about giving away the candy. finally i put it on top of the steps and sat away from it a bit so kids didn't have to walk right up to me. i didn't rake the leaves from the walk, though, so they had to brave their way across big orange leaves all over the path; this was enough to keep some of them away. still we had a steady stream until both bags were gone. likely more than a hundred or two.

it proved to me that hallowe'en is still alive and well, at least on the north side of galesburg. i'm sure we got the rest of the town's youth and quite a few from the countryside as well. i'm sure they considered this the best neighborhood because relatively nice houses are not too far apart. i'm sure that some neighbors met the challenge with major electrical displays and a spook house on their porch. but i'm also sure it was too much for others, and they had to just give up after a while because there were just too many kids.

the costumes were interesting, different from what i'm used to. the new thing to me was the blown-up dinosaurs, maybe seven feet, somewhat realistic looking balloons - also some costumes that had little lights going off in the faces. another balloon costume invovled having an alien carry a person up to the steps looking for candy. the alien is the balloon, in the back, but the feet come out the front so that the person does look like he or she is being carried.

the good thing was seeing a couple hundred, as if we had all of western illinois in our neighborhood. cars were parked up and down the street. the sidewalks were full. it was the place to be.

too bad i had covid, or i might have been able to meet a few people.