"Never Jump In a Pile Of Leaves With a Wet Sucker."

Yup, today was raking day...but before I started the leaves, I went for a walk around the neighborhood. The weather was sunny, chilly, and windy, but not out of line with early December in New Jersey, and my walk was quite pleasant. There's leaves all over the place now. Thanks to the storm on Wednesday, most trees are bare, though a few do continue to cling to the last few leaves. The neighborhood is in something of a transitional state. Some people have their Christmas decorations out. Some still have Thanksgiving decorations. Most don't have anything, but that usually changes by the end of the weekend.

When I got home, I went right into raking. It was a LOT harder to rake today than it was two weeks ago! For one thing, there seemed to be three times as many leaves as usual, some as large as dinner plates. For another thing, a lot of them were still wet from the Wednesday monsoon. I started at 11:30 and didn't get done until 1...and then Miss Ellie asked me to put the pruned branches from the bush we did last month in a bag (after leaving them in a recycling canister since then). I never did get to the side path - I'll do that tomorrow.

After I finally finished, I went upstairs and had a hot turkey, spinach, and cheese sandwich for lunch while watching The Little Drummer Boy. An elegant, sweet tale of an orphan boy who hates people who is redeemed by faith, this is one of Rankin-Bass' best and classiest productions. No kitsch here - renown British actress Greer Garson narrates the story, and actor/director Mel Ferrer plays two roles, Aaron's father and Ali Hakim, the wily desert impresario.

Work didn't go quite as well. There were a lot of obnoxious and just plain annoying people tonight, including several of those older ladies who like to give out 500 orders for how to bag without lifting a finger to help themselves, and at least one family who put back half their order because they didn't have enough money. Since when did 120 dollars worth of food look like 80?

And now, I find out that Rose and I might not be going to the West Cape May Christmas Parade tomorrow after all. One of her dogs seem to have hurt its leg, and she wants to stay with it at the vet and doesn't know how long she'll be. I understand how she feels about her dogs, and I have a lot of other things I want to get done tomorrow, too...but I really wish she could have told me this earlier.