Yet Another Journal

Nostalgia, DVDs, old movies, television, OTR, fandom, good news and bad, picks, pans,
cute budgie stories, cute terrier stories, and anything else I can think of.

Contact me at theyoungfamily (at) earthlink (dot) net
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» Sunday, April 12, 2009

In Spring the Easter Bunny Never Sleeps

For James having to be away all day, I haven't had a bad time. A good sleep-in was first. Then I finished a birthday card for a friend and packed it up in a box with the gift. While I was working on the card, I burned a DVD that I was planning to send to my cousin Debbie. To my frustration, I couldn't find her address anywhere. She moved not long ago and I only had her old address in my mom's address book. Finally I went searching for her husband's name on Google and found the address of their shop. I addressed the DVD there. Fuss and botheration!

So about 11:30 I was tooling my way to the post office with the radio playing XM Pops and enjoying the scenery. When it's nice the way it was this morning, the temp in the low 60s with a little breeze, I can almost forgive spring for coming: the dogwoods and the azaleas in full bloom, the leaves still pale green. Almost every yard had a flowering tree, some of them two, and/or azaleas in pink, red, magenta and the occasional white, all accompanied by Vivaldi and Mozart and Pachebel. One yard, on Old Concord Road, has a dogwood tree that was evidently grafted, as both white and pink branches twine together into one large tree.

It was so nice at that point that I didn't go straight home, but stopped at Walgreen's for a moment. A couple walked in with a tiny dog: the man had it in his hand, a little black Chihuahua puppy, not two pounds yet! He was so cute; his little paws were the size of my thumb-tips! Then I drove home via downtown Smyrna.

I kept busy all afternoon. First I had the rest of my fried rice and watched The Easter Promise. Now knowing its technical faults, I tried to look past them and did get a little more involved in the story. I do love the sleepover scene with Addie and her friends (and the subsequent scenes when they are decorating the Easter eggs and teasing Terry), and also the scene on the worksite where Addie brings her dad the cake and lemonade and they talk about Constance's father.

Over the course of the afternoon, I tidied up the craft room and vacuumed, and put up a small French bulletin board for photos we have collected, so now Nicki and Neil and Colin are smiling at me from next to the bookcase. Also used some wire shelving to restack my floss containers so I don't have to pick up all of them to get to one.

In the spare room I got rid of the box with some things in it to donate, and tucked the bag with our low-fat vacation snacks in a corner. It really should go in the closet, but can't fit. We really need to get rid of all those Xerox paper boxes full of floppy disks of computer programs we no longer use! All that's left in the middle of the room now is the JoAnn bag full of cookies and crackers we are taking to Atomicon, and the basket I need to return to Alice and the Lawsons' Christmas gift, since we didn't see them at Christmas.

I also hung up a metal decoration I got for the gate to the back yard. It's a leaf green and doesn't show up as well against the fence as I hoped. Downstairs I finally hung up the vintage reading poster that Rodney sent to us months ago. I also found something to do with the beautiful autumn wreath that I bought for a song when Linens'n'Things went out of business. On the cut corner where the plant table and the candle is (where James' airplane tree was at Christmastime), the wall was bare above. I thought about buying another Ken Jenkins print the next time we go to Gatlinburg, but then I looked at the wall, and the wreath, and put them together. It is a fall flower and twig wreath, rather than one dominated by autumn leaves, and is scarlet, orange, and brown with slight yellow highlights, and looks lovely above the little colonial candle with its tiny lampshade.

Also took Willow out and said hi to our neighbor, who is a minister. He looked as if he had just come back from services.

And then it was time for Here Comes Peter Cottontail. "You've never heard of Peter Cottontail? Great chattering chick-chicks!" This is a 1970 Rankin-Bass special with some wonderful songs, including my favorite, the optimistic "The Puzzle of Life," and also "Improvise," which I love to sing when I'm making something work "outside the box." It's the story of Peter Cottontail, about to take over the stewardship of Chief Easter Bunny from Colonel Wellington B. Bunny, when an embittered rabbit named January Q. Irontail challenges him. Irontail uses trickery to gain the post and turns April Valley, the home of the Easter Bunny, into a muddy morass. Seymour K. Sassafras, a traveling peddler, gives Peter the means to go back in time to win the contest, and the remainder of the story chronicles Peter's odyssey through the rest of the year's holidays along with the pilot of the "Yestermorrowbile," a caterpillar named Antoine. Sassafras, Antoine, and Col. Bunny are all voiced by Danny Kaye, who is delightful, especially as the offbeat Sassafras, but the star of the adventure is the villainous Irontail, played with relish by the late, great Vincent Price. In a great inside joke, Irontail's henchman is a bat named Montressor, also the name of the protagonist in Poe's short story "The Cask of Amontillado." Price played in so many films and adaptations of Poe short stories that having a Poe name involved in Irontail's machinations was especially fitting!