"Life Is Like a Box of Chocolates..."

I awoke to an absolutely gorgeous morning. It was sunny, breezy but not as windy as the last few days, and already in the 60s at 7:30. I ran the American Top 40 as I had fried eggs and a grapefruit half for breakfast. Casey moved back a decade to 1974 with a round of folk music, R&B, bubblegum pop, and hard rock. Hits included "Bennie and the Jets" by Elton John, "I Won't Last a Day Without You" by the Carpenters, "Dancin' Machine" by the Jackson Five, "The Entertainer" from the Oscar-winning comedy The Sting, "Tubular Bells" from the horror blockbuster The Exorcist, "Band on the Run" by Wings, "You Make Me Feel Brand New" by the Stylistics, and "Oh My My" by Ringo Starr. That week's number one hit got the whole country up and dancing - again: "The Locomotion."

My front tire has been deflating again, so when the Top 40 ended, I went downstairs and pumped it up, just as I did last week. I pushed it around front to put the copy of the New York Times on the porch. The moment I started back towards the bike, I heard a huge POP! I thought something had fallen off a train or someone shot at me. Then I saw the air ruffled around my front bike tire and how flat it seemed.

Yes, the tire was flat. I overinflated it, and it blew. I couldn't believe my rotten luck. It was my own fault for not changing the darn thing ages ago. That tire is five years old. I bought it from Ace Hardware in 2008 when the one I had before that blew on me. Now I had to waste a morning changing a tire instead of going to yard sales.

My luck improved when I saw my neighbor Richard next-door. He heard the shot and my yelling at the bike. I ended up borrowing the front tire from his (barely-used, according to him) bike so I could run my errands.

I did finally make it out to the Collingswood Farm Market and Haddon Township's Town-Wide Yard Sale around 10:30. It was very busy at the farm market when I got there with people buying food for barbecues, Sixers parties, and Mother's Day brunches. All I needed was asparagus, strawberries, green Swiss chard, radishes, and small white potatoes for Lauren's visit (she doesn't like sweet potatoes).

The Haddon Township Town-Wide Yard Sale is really more like an area-wide yard sale. Haddon Township includes Westmont,West Collingswood Heights, the streets around the Ritz Theatre on the White Horse Pike, and the neighborhoods between Westmont and Cooper River Park. I stopped at a yard sale on East Holly near the Ritz Theatre first and picked up four CDs:

Don Henley - The End of the Innocence (cassette replacement)

Billy Joel - Storm Front (cassette replacement), Piano Man (turns out I already have this one - I'll donate it to a library)

R.E.M - Out of Time

After I left the Farm Market, I checked out some yard sales on either side of Cuthbert Road, near Walgreens. My only find here was a really interesting book, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. I feel like there's a wild woman in me that I keep having to tame in order to earn a paycheck and keep my apartment. I want to let her out and still make a living. Maybe this will help understand why I've been so restless lately.

Made a quick stop at Ace Hardware while I was in Westmont. A sales clerk helped me retrieve the right size tire from a high shelf and showed me the aisle for the bike items, including tubes. I looked at some porch furniture, but it was too expensive. I saw some I liked at a yard sale, but the owners weren't able to deliver it, and I don't know anyone who can. Rode a few streets down to a sale near the train tracks and picked up a much-needed bottle of water and a Powerpuff Girls DVD, The Mane Event.

I picked up four videos from two yard sales in the development behind Haddon Township High School - Roman Holiday, the original The 39 Steps with Robert Donat, Quadrophina, and Blazing Saddles. Found a pack of two round lights for closets at a sale a few streets down. Only one worked, but that's fine. I also found the rare America Cares Care Bear who was sold in the early 2000s. I spent a lot of quarters trying to win him when I lived at Wildwood, but he was always at the bottom of the crane. (There must have been something big going on at Haddon Township High School, too, maybe some kind of track meet or sports event. There were tons of people milling around on their grounds and lots of colorful striped tents.)

Haddon Township High wasn't the only school holding a major event today. I was looking for an estate sale in Oaklyn when I ran across something far more interesting. The Oaklyn (Elementary/Middle) School was having it's annual Spring Fling this morning and early afternoon. The Fling is the PTA's big festival for the kids; it usually consists of a couple of game booths, a bake sale, and a bounce house or two.

This year, the PTA had grander ideas. In addition to the usual game and bake sale booths and bounce house, there were craft tables, fire trucks to explore, three midway-style rides, carts selling non-baked-goods, a booth selling Chick Fil' A sandwiches, and a mini-car show on West Clinton. I grabbed two sugar cookies and a Chick Fil' A sandwich and chatted briefly with Mrs. Doria, who was selling sodas and hoagies outside their store with her family. My Uncle Ken had brought his beloved pale-blue Corvette, and there were other cars there as well. My favorite was the gorgeous turquoise 50s car with the white fins.

I finally got home around 1:30. Turned my bike over to Richard to get the new tire and tube on (and so he could have his back), then went inside for my sandwich and some slightly mushed strawberries. Went right back out after that; I still had a lot to do. I scrubbed the porch furniture. I went under the porch to wash out the indoor trash can and recycling canisters. (It's easier to do this with the hose.) I picked up branches and sticks and took them out back. I raked the front lawn. The grass is still pretty long, but Andrew's been too busy to do it, and I don't know how. (And Andrew says Miss Ellie's lawn mower doesn't work anyway - he'd have to bring his own or borrow Richard's.) The only thing outside I didn't get to was raking the side path going to my apartment. It doesn't take that long. I'll do it tomorrow.

When I got in, I made Cornmeal-Coated Chicken Thigh Nuggets with Spinach-Pear Salad, steamed asparagus, and Banana Honey Muffins for dinner. I tried dubbing Roman Holiday, but it didn't work. Ended up doing Forrest Gump, which I picked up last week and never got to, instead.

Tom Hanks won an Oscar as the title character, a simpleton growing up in Alabama with his strong-willed mother (Sally Field) and troubled best friend Jenny (Robin Wright). He and Jenny find themselves scattered pel-mel by the tumultuous events of the mid-late 20th century. Through it all, from football stardom to Vietnam, from shrimping in the Louisiana Gulf to running across the country, Forrest's only thoughts are to the women he holds dear - Jenny and his mother. Jenny, however, is a flighty creature who runs from fad to fad - from early 60s folk to late 60s protests to 70s glam to early 80s single motherhood. Forrest and Jenny's paths intersect, but life always seems to pull them apart...until Jenny's hedonistic lifestyle catches up with her, and they both admit that there are some things you just can't run from, like life and death.

A lot of people have complained that Forrest's views of life are overly optimistic and that a lot of the events of this time period have been simplified. Not to mention, self-abusive Jenny doesn't seem to have ever noticed Women's Lib happened. I agree with the ladies of the Cinematherapy books that she seriously needed to talk to some kind of therapist, or at least grabbed a copy of Ms. Magazine somewhere along the line.

I think the simplicity is the point. Yes, these were rough times for a lot of people. My biological father and uncle lived through everything here; my mother and stepfather were born around the time Forrest was showing a certain young Memphis rocker his dance moves. I would have been a kid in the mid-80s, presumably when the movie ends. Ok, so some of it, like the thing with "Have a nice day!" towards the end, is a little too much. Most of it is very moving - Jenny and Forrest running towards one another on the Mall in Washington DC is the best-known moment, but I've always loved the touching sequence where an angry Jenny throws stones at the home where she was abused as a child, until she collapses in the dust in tears and frustration. Forrest sits down with her, commenting that "Sometimes, there just aren't enough rocks."

"And that's all I'm gonna say 'bout that..."