Visitors -- large, canine and perhaps small

Helen and Jay are coming by tonight to drop Buddy the Dog off on their way to Milwaukee for the weekend. I have a beef stew in the crockpot, and I made an apple dump cake for dessert. Buddy the Dog will have to be satisfied with his Pedigree for older dogs. I am the one who will be dogsitting -- Tom being very busy with political shenangians at the moment -- but Helen says he (Buddy, that is) doesn't do much but sit around these days.

I mistakenly had thought that Helen and Jay were planning to help her folks with Halloween tomorrow night in Chicago. Helen's parents live on Harper, a street that is locally famous for its Halloween decorations, and tons of kids come from all around to trick-or-treat there. Because it is such a mob scene with lots of parents milling around, people feel quite safe. George and Sarah are about 80, so family members and friends usually come over to assist them for the evening.

I went over in 2005 (I think) to help pass out the candy, and even limiting it to one piece per child, we gave away over a thousand pieces of tooth-decay-accelerator before closing up shop. That was some time before the kids stopped coming, but we had run out of candy. Tom had gone to try to get more, but even the stores in the neighborhood had been pretty well stripped by then. The rule of thumb was that kids did not go to houses that did not have the porch lights on, and what with the parents still milling around, there was little risk of any pranks. Not totally risk-free, of course, but pretty much so.

It being a Hyde Park neighborhood, there were also a fair number of University of Chicago students in costume. My favorite was a group consisting of one guy and six women, dressed quite nicely as Henry VIII and his wives. The poor wives curtsied very nicely after getting their candy.

Here on Berry Road, on the other hand, this is our third Halloween and we have yet to have a trick-or-treater come to the door. Of course, this is a rural road and there are only a couple of very young children who live here. Maybe this year, their parents will bring them along to show us how adorable they are, dressed like pumpkins or peas.

Although we live between two largish golf resorts, most of the people living there are retired and grandparents, and their grandchildren live elsewhere. Nonetheless, I laid in a small supply of Snickers, just in case.

I did see some cute costumes for small dogs, and I thought one that included an ermine cape and a royal crown would have been appropriate for either Sundance or Cassidy. It would fit their feline self-image, anyway. Or even better was one that looked like a wiener in a bun. A cat disguised as a hot dog. What could be better?

Tom, for some reason, saw no reason to waste money on such foolishness.