End of Vacation

Actually, I ended my vacation very quietly. I don't have much money, and it doesn't look like I'll be earning any for a while. I slept until nearly 10 and didn't get going and out of the apartment until almost noon. Spent what little of the morning I saw having breakfast and watching a few last Backyardigans episodes, including "Movers of Arabia." One of the show's stranger spoofs has Tyrone hiring movers Uniqua and Pablo to haul his stuff to his palace. The catch is that his stuff is magic, and among the objects is a bottle containing Austin the Genie. Austin grants the movers three wishes...but will they be enough to help the kids get past Tyrone's magical objects?

It was a beautiful day for a ride to the Haddon Township Library. Once again, the sun was shining, the breeze was soft and cool, and the sky was blue. It goes without saying that there were quite a few people out and about, and the playground was busy with kids and parents enjoying the lovely weather.

The library was surprisingly busy too, given the nice day. I shelved and organized all the DVDs I could. The kids' titles and foreign titles are overloaded to the point where there's just no room for all of them, even after clearing out anything that doesn't belong. I took out DVDs for the first time in ages, a Scooby Doo Halloween-themed episode set, a 2009-version Angelina Ballerina set, and the movie The Mysterious Mr. Moto with Peter Lorre as the title detective. I also grabbed a couple of books on crocheting and Saucepans and the Single Girl, a re-release and updating of a popular 60s cookbook for single women looking for inexpensive recipes for parties and boyfriend visits, and Molly's Cookbook, one of the series of kids' cookbooks based after historical characters American Girl released in the 90s and early 2000s.

It was well past 3 when I finally made it out of the library. I bought dried fruit to try a recipe in Molly's Cookbook at Thriftway, and they have better prices on generic cooking spray than the Acme does. I was very disappointed that Dollar Tree no longer had the little jars of fruit spread I'd been using and only had the too-sweet squeeze bottles that were impossible to get to the bottom of. I left there with nothing.

I debated going out to eat all afternoon. By the time I got out of Dollar Tree, it was 4 PM. Between the late hour and my lack of cash, I just ended up heading home. I finally had leftover mushroom-pasta soup before jumping into a short but warm and much-appreciated bath.

After my bath, I made Merlin's Magic (Baked) Chicken and my favorite sauteed spinach and mushrooms with the last of the leftover sweet potatoes and apples for dinner, then baked up those Fruit Bars of Molly's for dessert. Ran Angelina and Scooby during my meals. My favorite episodes of this musical-themed Angelina Ballerina set were the last two. Angelina and her pals hold a Motown-themed dance-a-thon to raise money for a local club to plant trees in their town, but an overzealous Gracie accidentally recycles the paper with the list of donations!

The final episode is especially sweet. Angelina and the others create their own opera in order to help them remember facts about their town's history and its involvement with cheese better. It reminds me of how we did similar projects in elementary school to learn Cape May's long and storied history.

Scooby and the Mystery Inc crew are too busy running from ghosts to be singing opera or learning facts! In the holiday special Scooby Doo and the Spooky Scarecrow, the gang find themselves saving a town's corn festival from a vengeful straw man who may have more than dodging crows on his mind. Two classic episodes of the original 1969 series also dealt with traditional horror icons. "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Werewolf?" has the kids on a camping trip that gets scary when they run head-on into a greenish, furry creature who comes out when the moon is full. "A Gaggle of Galloping Ghosts" goes into full-on Universal horror territory as Mystery Inc are chased by Dracula, Frankenstein, and another, more animal-like werewolf while trying to figure out what's going on in a scary castle.