It's easier for me to meet Amanda at Oaklyn's City Hall than where I live, so I headed there next. It's really feeling like winter now. It's gotten bitterly cold over the past few days, and windy, too. It was cloudy all day, though thankfully it never rained. Amanda was slightly late. She finally picked me up for brunch at 10 after 11.
We've done brunch at the Legacy Diner the past few years when we've been together. They were incredibly busy, busier than I've ever seen it. Not only is it Sunday, but the diner is a block away from a church. Many people probably go straight from church to brunch. It took a few minutes, but we were finally seated in a relatively quiet booth in the back. Amanda had hot tea and the Brooklyn Dodgers omelet with onions, peppers, mushrooms, and Swiss cheese. I had the apple cinnamon pancakes, three large pancakes filled with what I believe to be canned apple filling. Not bad. We both ate most of our meals, anyway.
Amanda drove us down Atlantic to avoid lunch rush hour traffic on the White Horse Pike and into Oaklyn. She's a big coffee fan, so got hot beverages at Common Ground. I had a chai latte that was a little sweet but not bad. She had a peppermint mocha latte she seemed to enjoy. We chatted for over an hour about her job as a kindergarten teacher in a private school near Vineland and about my trouble finding a job. She likes her kids, but they can sometimes be a handful, and the school is older and in the woods and is frequently beset by mice and bugs.
Instead of getting dessert at Common Ground, we decided to pick it up to go at The Puddin' Palace. I hadn't gotten anything there in ages. They were out of chocolate pudding, but they did have crushed Oreos. Amanda got an Oreo pudding parfait, and I got strawberry shortcake - vanilla pudding layered with dried strawberries and graham cracker crumbs.
Poor Amanda spent a lot of the time coughing, even more than me with my allergies. She says she's just getting over bronchitis and is still tired, plus she does have work tomorrow. Not to mention, we talked for so long, there wouldn't be time for her to do much else before she headed back anyway. We just exchanged gifts in her car. She bought me a gourmet scone mix, tea in a beautiful wooden box, a candy cane-shaped plastic holder filled with Hershey's chocolate pieces, and the most adorable Hallmark ornament of a kitten trying to get to a cardinal in a bird house.
The kitty went right on the tree when I got in. I spent the next two hours putting the ornaments on the tree and listening to some of my older Happy Holidays LPs. I have so many ornaments, it takes me two hours or longer to get them all on. There's teddy bears, the shopping Cherished Teddies and ceramic bear with a long scarf and an angel Pooh eating honey and Yogi Bear with a pic-a-nic basket full of candy canes. I have beautiful ornaments Mom bought from the Winterwood Christmas Shop in Rio Grande, a glass heart with Victorian-style flowers, a beautiful heavy magenta ball with a creamy white ribbon on top, a ball with a beautiful hand-painted Santa and Mrs. Claus, a glitter-covered glass strawberry, a traditional pickle, a gingerbread man with dangling legs.
There's characters of all kinds - Pusheen, Lucy Ricardo in a snazzy green dress, a stuffed BB8, Shaggy and Scooby out sledding, glass versions of Mickey Mouse and his friends, Rudolph with the residents of the Isle of Misfit Toys. Even the star on top holds fond memories. I thought the silver tinsel garland-trimmed star was so cute and retro, I bought it from the North Cape May Family Dollar long before I had a tree of my own.
I've collected Happy Holidays albums from True Value Hardware for a long time. I bought my first one in 1993, when it was the only Christmas music I could afford. I loved that first cassette so much, I would return to the Cape May True Value to buy my annual Happy Holidays cassette or CD every year until they finally converted into an Ace Hardware in 2001. I've been going back and replacing the cassettes with CDs and picking up earlier and later albums in the series for the last few years. The Philadelphia Orchestra does "Angels We Have Heard On High" in Volume 16, joined by "Christmas Is Here Again" by Roger Whittaker, a rollicking "Sleigh Ride" by Ella Fitzgerald, and Lorne Greene's version of "The Night Before Christmas."
The collection I have the fondest memories of is Volume 23 from 1988. I seem to remember Mom picking this up during an otherwise routine trip to True Value that December. We used to listen to it while decorating the tree in the late 80's and early 90's. It was the first time I heard Bing Crosby sing "White Christmas" somewhere besides the radio. Other good (or very 80s) songs here include "Merry Christmas Baby" by Chuck Berry, "This Christmas" by the Jets, "Jingle Bell Rock" by Brenda Lee, and "Greatest Little Christmas Ever Wuz" by Ray Stevens.
Thankfully, the Eagles-Ravens game was on Paramount Plus. I switched to that when it started at 4:25. The Eagles once again began slow. They didn't score at all during the first quarter. That changed quickly early in the second when they scored two touchdowns almost in a row. The Ravens picked up again in the last quarter of the game, but it wasn't enough to beat the on-fire Eagles. The Eagles finally won 24-19 on Baltimore's home turf.
Continued with the decorating after I finished the tree. Dad gave Mom a big white stuffed bear in a knitted hat and scarf from K-Mart in 1987. Mom dubbed him Chester. She put him on her hope chest, grabbed other bears to go with them, and dressed them all in old hats, scarves, and baby clothes. We'd play with the bears throughout the holiday season, even putting hats and tiaras on them at New Year's.
By 2001, Mom had gotten tired of putting them out every year, and there was only Keefe left to play with them. When I moved on my own, she turned Chester and the remaining Christmas-only bears over to me. I added many of my own, both from my regular collection and purchased or given to me over the years. I don't have a hope chest, so they hang out under my tree. Amanda gave me the stuffed Charlie Brown and Snoopy in a chef's hat, and I bought the adorable 50's-style Snoopy with a candy cane in his paws from CVS. Found the three McDonald's Christmas Muppet Babies stuffed toys, in their original bags with their hats and tags, over a decade ago at a thrift shop. Jessa gave me the goofy egg-shaped stuffed Disney characters with dangling legs. The Webkinz Starlight the Peppermint Puppy and Clarence the Reindeer I think came from Hallmark.
Took down the laundry, then pulled out the rest of the miscellaneous items after the stuffed animals were under the tree. During the month of December, I replace my usual coasters with red and green squares I crocheted myself a few years ago. The only place I could fit my huge nativity was in back of the DVD player and next to the TV, but it was worth it. It's old and grimy, but I like to think that's what the first Christmas looked like. My artificial greenery garlands are too big for these rooms, so I draped the window in a tinsel garland and big stiff ribbon bows instead. Put all of my new CDs into books so I could have room in front of the CD player.
Took a badly-needed shower, then put the laundry in the dryer. Had dinner and finished out the night with a marathon of Greed: The Series on YouTube. Chuck Woolery hosted this short-lived but well-remembered Who Wants to Be a Millionaire imitation in 1999. Five people are called to answer a series of questions. One will decide which answers work with the question. The captain (later, the first person called) decides whether the answers are right, or needs to be changed. They go up a ladder until they reach $2 million (or 4 million in Super Greed).
At random intervals, someone will be chosen to be "The Terminator." They can opt to keep the group dynamic, or choose someone to challenge. If they win the challenge question, they get $10,000 and stay on. If they get the question wrong or their opponent answers the question right, they're the ones who drop out.
Honestly, it's too bad this only lasted a year, and no one ever won that million-dollar prize. (One man did advance to the last question, only to get the answer wrong.) It's a fun show, one of the earliest and best of the many game shows that debuted in 1999 and 2000 to grab some of Millionaire's thunder. Woolery has a great time hosting it, and some of the contestants were hilarious. Despite it pulling in respectable ratings, Fox had no respect for it whatsoever. Apparently, it was dropped not due to ratings, but due to new management at Fox wanting to focus on scripted programming.
Get greedy with Woolery and ride up the ladder to the big prize in this heart-pounding neon delight!
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