The recap: Part 3.

Before the miserable end of the World Series, before Halloween, before the weekend even started, we had a hurricane.

Not much of one, of course, and believe me, Patricia's visit was nothing in the Hudson Valley compared to her visit in Mexico. But then she got on a bus, snuck over the border, hitched a ride, and made her way up here, and last Wednesday night we had a hell of a rain and fierce wind. The trees that were still in full brilliance on October 28 were wet & naked as a newborn on October 29. And, Hurricane Patricia tried to kill me.

Back up:

A few weeks ago I wrote about a tree that was being choked to death by a pokeweed vine. After that I realized that in my own backyard, just outside the boundary of my property, a tree that has been dead for some time was covered in the same tangle of vine, that the vine might have killed it, and now might be the only thing holding it up. But beyond a few comparisons to the situation in Europe, I didn't give it much thought.

Had the storm blown the tree down a couple of degrees toward the north, it would have been off the grass and I would have left it alone to rot. But it landed in my yard. I didn't want the dog getting at it, so I plotted to drag the wood into the tall weeds outside the boundary. It was not very hard to do, since it had broken into chunks when it came down. Had to chop some of the vine off, though.

Just a wee bit snarled.

The labor was not intense enough to require a second shower on the day. Unfortunately.

Because the next morning I was showering up, and I found that something had stuck to my chest. A mere pass with the soap didn't pull it off, as you might with a wad of lint. Nope, it was buried into my flesh. I had to get the tweezers and pull the frigging tick out of me. It had its disgusting little head as far into me as---well, as a German politician has his head up his own ass.

It was less than 24 hours since I'd been at that tree, exposing my delicate writerly self to nature, so it is unlikely I could have caught any of your usual tick-borne illnesses. Unless the little bastard left parts in there. I can assure you it was dead by the time I got it out, and that required some effort.

So the leftover hurricane knocked down the trees, which caused me to deal with dead wood and high weeds, and now I have to watch for symptoms, just to be sure. The main symptom I had after pulling the thing out was pain, a spot of pain that lasted for days, and felt like I got stabbed by a pixie. The CDC doesn't mention that.

So nature sucks, the Mets let me down, someone tried to steal my identity, I have to eat all this candy, and I'm still tired from helping the dog survive trick-or-treating and adjusting to the clocks going back an hour. Basically I'm just still tired and grumpy.

It was a tough weekend. Was it a Halloween curse?

Area restaurant with window painting of Harry Pumpkin casting a Cruciatus Curse at me.

Halloween sucks. But at least I have all this candy to eat.