Another day where we all kicked around the house. Jackie and Jillie did so literally. Every now again a spurt of frantic chasing about, upstairs and down, their little paws thudding furiously. Especially if we went downstairs to the studio to see what my husband was about. Being down there seems to energize them. They seldom otherwise venture to the nether regions of the house.

Jackie will do a quick spurt into my husband's workshop if he's busy in there, check to see that everything is to his satisfaction, whatever that happens to be, then bursts right back out again and upstairs to the main floor. Button used to come and visit with my husband if he was busy for hours working on a stained glass panel, for example. There was a comfortable bed left there for her comfort and there she would stay, as long as he did. Little Riley preferred to avoid going down to the basement; it wasn't his sphere of comfort.

For all of us no outdoor activities yesterday to speak of. Other than the occasional dash out to the backyard, in the pouring rain; a dash of necessity. Jackie leaps up on the towel-overlaid cushion of the English settle to await having his feet dried when it's really wet out. Jillie does her version of that; not leaping up onto the settle as Jackie does but settling below it on one of their beds until her feet are dried off.

The house was dark, the rain incessant, and the temperature refused to nudge above 3C. We thought that since it was so inclement out the hordes of Hallowe'en costumed children would be much diminished this year. As the early evening wore on toward six though, the rain turned to a light drizzle.

We had our dinner early in preparation for the potential onslaught, judging from other years' experience. And right on 6:00 p.m. the doorbell rang for the first time. Giving Jackie and Jillie the opportunity to exercise their barking performances. Alarm at first, graduating to annoyance that the peace of their evening was being disturbed. And we wonder, are we sending out those signals to them?

Just as well we prepared. We had bought one of those boxes containing 100 miniature chocolates for that very purpose. My husband set himself up in the foyer with a large bowl of chocolate treats to dispense, and a book to peruse while awaiting the arrival of children. And they did arrive; obviously the weather was no deterrent shoving away thoughts of edible sweets, theirs to be had by chanting "trick or treat".

We ended up shutting the glass doors between the family room and the foyer so Jackie and Jillie were confined, their madcap barking restricted to the family room where I was myself installed, at the computer. It's unfair, I know, but my husband insists he's perfectly capable of manning the door on October 31; a kind of family tradition.

So the sweet treat of seeing toddlers dressed in minute costumes, their mothers alongside, themselves dressed for the occasion to make their adored infants feel supported in their mendicant pursuits, along with older children brazenly appearing at the door in frightful costumes demanding their due, was his alone. As usual, he's struck by the personality differences he detects in the genders; the girls talkative, bright and inquisitive, the boys silent and seemingly emotionless by contrast.

By 8:00 p.m. traffic slows measurably and it's time to shut the exterior lights. Almost nothing is left in giveaways. As usual there's a rag-tag late-appearance group of two or three older children, sometimes teens, coming along for their second or third go; perhaps part of a friendly competition to see who manages to bag the most of those tooth-enamel-eroding treats that come their way in turn for avoiding tricks.