Seasons of Pooh

Was up way too late last night organizing my pages on Pinterest and overslept this morning. Rushed right into Very Merry Christmas Songs and breakfast after I finished my journal. This is a DVD expansion of one of the original Disney Sing-a-Long videos released in the late 80's-early 90's. Along with the music videos of songs performed by the Disneyland Chorus, "Let It Snow" by Bing Crosby, and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" by Gene Autry, we have a second song by Bing ("White Christmas"), "As Long as There's Christmas" from Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas, "All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth" performed by Goofy and Max, and two early holiday rock standards, "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" and "Jingle Bell Rock."

I barely had enough time for writing. In fact, I squeezed in some after I got home from work later as well. Time passes for Leia, Harold, and their charges. They all enjoy their Christmas together, decorating the house with greens and a tree from the property. Harold writes them poems or instructions for building new furniture, having spent the whole month working on them.

A month later, while he and Leia are watching the girls and frogs play in the snow while sitting together in the library, he once again asks Leia if she'd sleep with him. She says no. She's afraid that sleeping with him may mean betraying her husband. They haven't had the dream in weeks, and Leia's beginning to wonder if what she saw really was an illusion...

Had a really quick lunch of the last of the hoagies from Jodie's party before heading off to work. It was surprisingly quiet for mid-November. Everyone must be waiting for the weekend to do their Thanksgiving shopping. While I did gather trash shortly before my break, I was mostly either putting things away or gathering carts and baskets. It was a nice night to be out with the carts, too, partly cloudy with an amazing molten red-gold sunset.

One of the managers came to me during break and told me I had three personal days that I have to take before the end of the year. Cool. Since I already asked for Black Friday off, I made that the first one. Considering how worn out I was after dealing with my nephews last Thanksgiving, I figured I'd need the personal day. The second will be the Friday after that. We're never busy that week - in fact, my hours are usually severely cut. I could use the extra money. The third will be the Wednesday before Christmas to give me extra time to get ready for the holiday.

Had leftover shrimp, salad, and brown rice with vegetables for dinner as soon as I got home and got changed. Put on Winnie the Pooh: Seasons of Giving while I ate. This "full-length movie" is actually two segments of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh book-ending the Pooh Thanksgiving special, tied together with a tiny bit of new material. The first involves Rabbit thinking it's Groundhog's Day and insisting that Piglet tells them if it's spring yet. The second story has Pooh and the gang coming together for a Thanksgiving feast of haycorns and honey...but Rabbit butts in and insists that's simply not how it's done. He finally learns what we're really thankful for when his "traditional" feast goes wrong. We end at Christmas, with Rabbit relating the story of how he adopted a little girl bird named Kessie, and how hard it was for him to let her go when she learned how to fly.

I'm  not sure why they even bothered with the "Groundpiglet's Day" opening segment. It comes off as mainly filler. The Thanksgiving special is actually my favorite of the Pooh holiday specials and is charming and really very funny. Rabbit and Kessie's heartbreaking relationship in the third segment makes up for it not really being related to the holidays - it's one of the sweetest and saddest things Disney ever did with the Pooh characters.

This is charming if you run into it online or find the DVD for cheap somewhere, or if you or your children are huge Pooh fans. Totally unnecessary for anyone else.

Finished out Pooh after a shower, then put on Babes In Toyland while going online. The second film version of this story was Disney's first live-action musical. Here, the Mother Goose lovers are Mary Quite Contrary (Annette Funicello) and Tom Tom (Tommy Sands). Mother Goose is a bit on the sarcastic side; her hilarious talking goose Sylvester is even more so. (I wish he was in more of the movie.) There is a fat guy and a thin guy, but they're criminals who work for Barnaby (Ray Bolger), who wants to wed Mary for her inheritance. Mary takes care of the "Babes" of the title, who wander off to the Forest of No Return so Bo Peep (a very young Ann Jillian) can find her sheep. Mary and Tom go after them, but they're all captured and sent to the eccentric Toymaker (Edd Wynn) and his forward-thinking assistant Grumio (Tommy Kirk). But Barnaby and his men aren't far behind...

A lot of people aren't overly fond of this one, but I actually think this is the best version of this story on the big screen. Adorable costumes, colorful sets, the cute kids, and Bolger having a ball playing against-type as a silent movie-style villain makes up for the stiff romantic leads and some of the more awkward re-written song lyrics.