Emma's Webs

It was just too darn warm when I got up this morning. It was a little cloudy and breezy... and almost in the 70s. That's just not right in late November in southern New Jersey. It didn't even feel right when I ran the holiday-themed Cricket On the Hearth during breakfast.

Cricket is one of Rankin-Bass' most unusual specials. Danny Thomas introduces and stars in this tale of the insect of the title, Crocket (Roddy McDowell, who also narrates) who helps out a set of young lovers (Marlo Thomas and Ed Ames) when he is believed lost at sea and she becomes blind from the shock. He turns up again the day before Christmas, but she's set to marry an ugly old miser (Hans Conried). Crocket does his best to make sure the pair learn the true meaning of love...and of the Christmas spirit.

That this is based after a Charles Dickens short story doesn't make it any less strange. The psychedelic animation (not to mention the prominence of pop singer Ames and comedienne Thomas, the latter then appearing in the sitcom That Girl!) marks this as a 1967 production. Some of it isn't for younger kids, either, including at least one death that occurs off-screen and a lot of the melodrama. Try it with older kids who find some of the simpler Rankin-Bass specials too mawkish, but start the little guys with the original Rudolph or Frosty first.

Headed out to get my laundry done after Cricket ended. Perhaps due to the very warm day, the laundromat wasn't busy. I was able to get in and out within an hour, despite a large load that included several towels and dust rags.

I put everything away when I got home, then threw open the windows. The apartment was too warm to leave them closed! Maybe it was just as well. I've discovered over the past week that I seriously needed to dust around the woodwork and behind furniture. There were huge cobwebs and dust bunnies all over the place. It was horrible and very dusty! I finished with just enough time for a quick lunch of leftovers and some Hello Kitty Furry Tale Theater shorts before heading for work.

Work was quiet when I came in, but picked up during rush hour and was just starting to slow down when I finished around 8PM. It's the beginning of the month, with all the annoying customers that often come out then in full force. One woman would pull an item out of her cart, sniff at it, smell it, then hem and haw over it for five minutes or so, before finally deciding to drop it on the conveyor belt or in a basket. After ten minutes of this, I got so fed up, I turned her over to a manager. (I was on my way to to my fifteen-minute break anyway.) Not only did she end up returning more than half of what was in her cart, but she carried her credit cards and money in a huge sock and took forever finding it.

Later, I had a couple of those older women who give five hundred orders on how to bag, but refuse to lift a finger to help...and when they do, they rearrange everything that I've done because I gave them too many bags. Of course there's going to be a lot of bags! If the bags are light, with only a few items, there's going to be a lot of them. That's life. Thank goodness there was plenty of help, and it was quiet enough by 8 that I was able to leave quickly with no relief.