Almost five years ago after a day on my own in the park, I browsed through some shops in Estes Park. Not the ones that inexplicably sell salt-water taffy a thousand miles from the ocean, but the giftish ones. I found a cabochon iolite ring for my right ring finger, and well-timed because my moonstone Tolkien ring was really about to die. After we determined on Saturday that there would be no more snowshoeing on Sunday, I said I wanted to window-shop a little.
In the Glacier Gorge parking lot, a car leaving one of the a perpendicular parking spaces that line the north side must have swiped Cassidy's right front fender, helpless Cassidy patiently chewing its cud in one of the parallel spots lining the south side. The parking lot is icy and snowy and we did the same thing four years ago, giving Cassidy its first (and until yesterday only) dent. But we left a note on the car we'd struck with our phone number because we are not cowardly gits.
I mention this because in the course of making out an accident report at the station, the ranger noticed that RDC's license was expired. This meant that, since I'd definitely do the rest of the weekend's driving, I could make sure one stop was a touristy jewelry store.
What is wrong with me, or with Denver, that I can't find what I want in town? Sterling silver, cabochon iolites or amethysts or maybe moonstone or garnet or turmeline, substantial. Even though I didn't replace the five-year-old iolite on my right ring finger that is now beat to shit (the top of the stone is severely scratched, the sides also but not as badly), I did find a ring for, this is new, left index finger. Six little iolites surrounding a seventh in a little flower pattern.
My wedding set is allegedly white gold but it looks fairly yellow, and the sapphire's setting clashes with my usual, so another left-hand ring has been hard to find. Now I have decreed that one whole finger between yellowy white gold and sterling silver is adequate metal-separation, and the hexagonal setting is somewhat closer to the sapphire's traditional setting. I still want (need) a sterling silver bangle and want other right-hand rings. But whee! I have a new ring.
Here, in approximate order, are books I have read aloud to RDC:
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
Richard Adams, Watership Down
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth
Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried
Various mostly American short stories
Steven Levy, Insanely Great
James Howe, Bunnicula
Authur Ransome, Swallows and Amazons
E.L. Konigsburg, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
Roald Dahl, Danny, Champion of the World
Joan Aiken, The Shadow Guests
Jane Curry, The Bassumtyte Treasure
E.L. Konigsburg, The View from Saturday
Robert O'Brien, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
Katherine Paterson, Bridge to Terabithia
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling
Sharon Creech, Walk Two Moons
Louis Sachar, Holes
Ellen Raskin, The Westing Game
Zilpha Keatley Snyder, The Egypt Game
Mildred Taylor, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
David Sedaris, Naked
C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
Penelope Lively, The Ghost of Thomas Kempe
Jean Craighead George, Julie of the Wolves
Most of the adult books have been during road trips. The first, the Lewis Carrolls, I read using e-texts and his first laptop as we roadtripped to Pittsburgh for a wedding, because the idea of an English major who hasn't read Lewis Carroll makes me shudder. Then my two favorite books, To Kill a Mockingbird and Watership Down, and short stories to roadtrip to Florida with and Stephen Levy to move to Denver with. And then vital children's books. Bunnicula isn't as vital to children's literature as it is to understanding my insurmountable fear of white asparagus.
Recently I finally bought myself Thomas Kempe, which, like Aiken and Curry, combine those apparently irresistible elements of being set in England, in a very old house, with a ghost. It's fun, but, like Swallows and Amazon, fun to no purpose. During Ransome RDC kept asking when they were going to get a keg, and seriously, these kids didn't even walk around barefoot. After we finished the Lively I asked if he would rather be a hermit in Alaska or in the Pacific Ocean, and both choices had Canine Mortality. It was only this morning as I was brushing my beak that I remembered Julie has Avian Mortality too.
I tried the first page of The Giver and that didn't work; I am not going to try The Blue Sword on him because he was never a 14-year-old girl; I think no one should live ignorant of Gram Tillerman but we have already failed with Jackaroo and Bad Girls so I might not attempt more Voigt.
But after this, Island of the Blue Dolphins, and probably My Side of the Mountain, I am not sure what to read to him next. Hmm. The Slave Dancer, definitely. Maybe Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Horse and His Boy. Oh, A Day No Pigs Would Die. Maybe Ghosts I Have Been and The Cat in the Mirror. And The Machine-Gunners.
Good gracious, look at the proportion of male protagnoists. All the pets in Bunnicula are male, but, as Mo said of Watership Down, it's bunnies, whatever. Swallows and Amazons stars the Walkers, but there's no denying Nancy's ascendancy. Maybe Lucy is the protagonist of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but really it's Aslan. The View from Saturday is three-quarters male. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is narrated by and stars Cassie but the story is Stacey, Taylor's father's. Likewise--and unlike Bunnicula--Mrs. Frisby is the central character but the book is about mostly about Nicodemus and Justin (and Mr. Ages and Jeremy and Timothy). Alice is merely a spectator to Carroll's opiate dream.That leaves The Egypt Game, carefully balanced by race and sex but focusing on April, and Claudia Kincaid, Salamanca Tree Hiddle, Turtle, and Miyax Julie Edward Kapugen, six girls, to seven boys: Cosmo Curtoys, Tommy Bassumtyte, Jesse Aarons, Jody Baxter, Stanley Yelnats, James Harrison, and Danny. Does Danny have a surname, or is his epithet enough? I had to look up Jesse's, and I wouldn't've remembered James Harrison if I hadn't just read it, and I needed to ponder on Jody and Penny before I recollected Ma Baxter.
The to-be read pile is two-thirds boys: Karana, Erin Gandy, and Blossom Culp to Sam Gribley, Jesse Bollier (another look-up), Eustace, Cor, Rob, and Chas. Maybe I should read him some All-of-a-Kind Family or Laura Ingalls Wilder just to bump up the chick count even though they don't really belong to the theme.