The Wonderful Thing About Fall

Began the morning of my first day off in exactly a week with a morning laundry run. I was up earlier than I expected, which turned out to be a good thing. I had a lot of things I wanted to do today, including empty a full laundry basket (more full than usual, thanks to bathroom towels and dust cloths).

Since the laundry was going to be in the dryer for a while, I decided to get some errands and chores done. My first stop was the bank. It wasn't a bad day for a walk, either. On-and-off cloudy, windy, chillier than over the weekend but not bad for this time of year. After the bank, I combated the return of the cold with a hot chocolate from a busy WaWa.

I went straight home from WaWa. Ran a few chores around the house. I swept the porch, which desperately needed it. The trees around my apartment are now turning their usual November shade of brilliant gold and are falling at a tremendous rate. It's been so wet lately, I've been trying to keep the porch swept just so it can dry faster.

After I finished with the sweeping, I went back inside for indoor chores. The big one was taking down the Halloween decorations and putting up what little I have for Thanksgiving. Most of my Thanksgiving knick-knacks are paper hangings bought from dollar stores (and one set from the Acme), but they do make things look festive for my second-favorite holiday after Christmas. I will add, however, that I'm almost kind of sad to see Halloween go this year. I'm not really crazy about Halloween, but I did have a nice time on Saturday. It was certainly better than all the lunacy with that Phillies parade last year.

(Which they may not repeat if they don't get their rear-ends in gear against the Yanks tonight...)

I returned to Dad's to retrieve my laundry, then came home for lunch and to put everything away. Headed right back out again after lunch for this week's Haddon Township Library volunteering session.

There were stacks and stacks of DVDs to put away this week...and it took a lot longer than usual. Someone had rearranged the adult DVDs. M through O had been moved to the back racks behind what was now A through L. It took me a while to figure everything out. The non-fiction DVDs had been moved and rearranged, too. It took me even longer to figure out where those went.

I returned books today and took out books and DVDs. The books were another book on job hunting, a book of tips for bread bakers, and two mysteries, the third Blackbird Sisters novel Cross My Heart and Hope to Die, and one I'd never heard of before, a novel about an interior decorator, A Job To Die For.

I also rented three DVDs - The Tigger Movie, the 1948 Frank Sinatra vehicle The Kissing Bandit, and the 1982 Julie Andrews musical Victor/Victoria. I have vague memories of seeing Victor/Victoria as a child, but have only seen bits and pieces of Kissing Bandit, including the memorable "Dance of Fury" with Ricardo Mantalbahn, Cyd Charrisse, and Ann Miller.

Made two quick stops on the way home. The first was at JoAnn's Fabrics. I wasn't going to stop there, but I saw these really cute little felt scarecrows on bells in 70% off bins outside. I had to get one. (It's now hanging on the door to the bathroom.)

The other stop was Super Fresh for cake flour. The pumpkin chocolate chip loaf cake I made the other day used up the last of my cake flour. I also bought a marble cake mix that was on sale for a dollar (I use cake mixes to make large cakes for family get-togethers) and a package of Chocolate "Mousse" Peeps, ie, cocoa-flavored Peeps shaped like reindeer, complete with red noses. They were really good, very chocolatey.

(I was also very happy to see the return of two of my favorite Christmas candies, both of them relatively low in fat in small quantities. Barely a holiday has passed for the last decade that hasn't included a bowl of Candy Cane Tootsie Pops. They're what the package says - Tootsie Pops that replace the usual chocolate or fruit candy with stripped peppermint candy. They're the only Tootsie Pops I'll eat now. The Candy Cane Hershey's Kisses debuted two years ago, and I've made sure to buy them ever since. They're crushed candy canes in Hershey's Kisses, and they are soo good.)

Went straight home after that. I sat down with home-popped popcorn and watched The Tigger Movie. The first of three Disney Pooh films released theatrically between 2000 and 2003, I was very impressed. Tigger is upset when the rest of the 100 Acres Woods gang doesn't want to go bouncing with him, so he sets out to find others like him who will want to bounce all the time. Adoring Roo tries to help, but his efforts only make things worse. It takes a major snow storm and words of wisdom from his friends to remind Tigger that family is wherever we are...and even when they aren't exactly like us, they're still there for us.

Who knew that perpetually cheerful Tigger could be the center of such a heartbreaking tale? This is one of the sweetest things I've ever seen done for the Disney Pooh. Other than the big action finale with the raging avalanche seemed a mite out-of-place for the low-key 100 Acre Woods, this was a fine addition to the Pooh universe. Nice Sherman Brothers songs, too, probably their first Disney film in decades.