I�ll keep it brief today as the E.C. has paid me a return visit and I am once again sounding like a miner with emphysema. My only consolation is that the weather is absolutely gorgeous here today � a warm and sunny respite from the fall weather. If you�ve got a cold, nothing feels better than lying in the hot sun drinking hot tea.

When I was 9, my family moved overseas and I was sick a lot, presumably due to a new continent�s worth of viruses. During one particularly grim period where I was subsisting on dry toast and bouillon, my mother brought me a battered copy of L. Frank Baum�s The Magical Monarch of Mo (a forerunner of the Oz books). Twenty-something years later, I can�t remember much about the book, but there was one vignette that stuck with me and I seem to recall it every time I�m feeling ill. In it a family of foxes were all ill with very bad sore throats. They consult a doctor who tells them to take off their throats, turn them inside out, and lay them in the sun to cure. The advice was followed and their throats were quickly cured and reattached. This idea always sounds appealing when my throat feels so scratchy that I think seriously about clawing it off.

I did manage to get out a bit this morning to take AJ to the local costume/magic shop to do some Halloween shopping. I love this store, because it is located at the turn-off of a major road on the way to our house, and it�s a useful and distinctive landmark when giving directions to our house. It�s also completely surrounded by a graveyard, so it�s a particularly great place to shop for Halloween. Although I thought this was conceivably the last year AJ could get away with dressing up as something cute and fuzzy, his father won out in the costume decision this year, so he�ll be going as a cowboy. We found a pint-sized brown cowboy hat, a miniature bandanna and some ersatz chaps and a vest. We also got him an enormous Sheriff�s badge which will probably cover at least half of his chest. The latter object is AJ�s favorite and he fell asleep in his car seat on the way home still gripping it tightly in his hand. After we�d settled on our purchases, we wandered around the store and tried on any number of silly hats, admired the stuffed cats and rats protruding from the walls in an alarming manner, and set off the motion-detector skeletons several times. Sometimes it�s a great thing to have a two-year old.

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