28 June 1999: Step into a Gorge

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Wanna see my tooth? Maybe not? Okay, I'll just describe it. No, I won't describe it; I'll draw a parallel. Ever see a tree grow around an obstacle, so that a trunk you know would otherwise be round has a rock- or brick- or whatever-shaped gap? Well. No wonder the dentist didn't want to risk the other tooth. This molar has a nerve-shaped hole through its root. I don't know if the dentist chiseled out a nice channel to spare the nerve or if the nerve and tooth grew together thus. Does the wisdom tooth grow after the rest or is it just a wisdom tooth because it emerges from the gum at such a late date? Anyway, looking at this thing, I am damn glad to have full sensation in my jaw.

I forgot to mention the restaurant RDC and I went to Tuesday night (two days early for our anniversary while I could still chew and be coherent, relatively speaking on the latter, of course). Vesta's Dipping Grill on 18th & Blake. Vesta because they, tragically, credit the Romans for a goddess the Greeks invented (unless the Greeks stole her from whom, the Phoenicians? Whatever). Dipping is the key word. Sauces are but mediums for conveying fat and salt--and extra flavor--and this grill lived up to its promise.

We started with shrimp satay with a honey, peanut, and sesame sauce. I think. Really scrumptious. I wanted to dip and suck the shrimp while still preserving the little dude as a dipping device, eschewed that as rude, and resorted to my fork. Then RDC had a western kabob and I a braised tuna something or other. It was mostly raw, a good thing, cooked slightly on the outside, a less good but still tasty thing, and each entrée was served with three sauces. You could be wimpy and order the recommendations on the menu or be bold and tasteless and choose your own; I was 66% wimpy and 33% daring (or 33% flouting the chef's recommendations.

Anyway, it was yummy, but the next time I go want a selection of sauces to drink and eat. No messing about with solids.

Walking back to the car, which we'd left at the opposite end of the mall, we passed a street musician who had paused his clarinet playing to pick his nose. He was still tap-dancing, though (seated, however). I wondered what the appropriate accompaniment for that would be.

I should clarify what I mean by "the mall" in Denver. The 16th Street Mall is a pedestrian mall about 15 blocks long; it has shuttles but other vehicular traffic is prohibited and even the cops are (mostly) on horses instead of in cars. Confusion now arises because the Pavilions, also called a mall, has sprung up near the Broadway end. At the other, northwest end is Lower Downtown, with higher street numbers but closer to the South Platte, filled with urban renewal, galleries, cool restaurants, the Tattered Cover Lodo, and the Colorado Rockies stadium.

There was a game last Tuesday night, which means that ordinary $3.00 evening parking was $12.00 or more unless you could bear to walk a mile or more. Insert anti-sport diatribe here.

In the mail today were a late anniversary card from a friend of DMB (who is the only person regularly to remember the day, including us), a letter from KMJ in Toronto with an amusing article from Utne Reader about the high-tech back-to-nature movement (which made me blush), and a package from Amazon addressed to RDC. He didn't remember buying a book recently and I remembered that it had recently emailed about finding the last of my OOP books, which I began searching for long enough ago that I hadn't yet set up my own Amazon account.

I tore open the package.

Mary Anderson, Step on a Crack. My childhood pantheon is complete. No, most of Arthur Ransome is in print but Picts and Martyrs is not. Well, I didn't discover Ransome until I was 20 so he doesn't count. Amazon, Powells, and ABE have found me Step, The Shadow Guests, The Bassumtyte Treasure, The Changeling (which I didn't find until I was 24 so it counts even less--ha! it's the best), and Mandy. And I had The Towers of February from when Phoebe discarded it: right over the card pocket the former children's librarian wrote "Save for Lisa." Heh.

The Shadow Guests and The Bassumtyte Treasure both concern a child's arrival in England from a (former) colony, ancestral homes, family legends, and old books. I read both of them to RDC, who at 8 years old was reading Portnoy's Complaint or something. Step on a Crack is intensely Freudian but a good story nonetheless. A 15-year-old girl has occasional lapses into kleptomania and she has never been figure out a pattern to neither the urges nor the stuff she takes--until her mysterious aunt Kat appears.

No, one more. The Cat in the Mirror by Mary Stolz. Sarah in Step likes Alice in Wonderland but Erin in Cat does not. They're both wealthy Manhattanites with unplumbed pasts and traveling fathers but otherwise quite different. Hmm.

So much for Wicked until my reread of Step on a Crack. Then I'll get back to Identity or For Whom the Bell Tolls or For the Time Being or Penelope Fitzgerald.

I managed 2/3 of my regular walk today. Tomorrow I hope I can wear a helmet enough to blade a little and Wednesday I'll swim and Thursday I'll go back to step and Friday ride to work, if not before. I hope.

RDC suggested acetominephen when I first refused any more Percocet because it's not an anti-coagulant like ibuprofen or aspirin. It didn't touch the pain (whine whine whine, and did I mention I got my chemically regulated period today too? Can you say "poor planning on Lisa's part"?) and apparently it destroys your liver. But I'm not bleeding (at least not from the mouth) so I've reverted to stomach-rotting, liver-safe, blood-thinning products. Two hours after my first dose, I am more comfortable than I've been since my wasted Friday.

And in a way the day was wasted, not just me. It was nice to have no moral obligation to enjoy the marvelous weather or to exercise--the penicillin forbade the first and my surgery excused the second--for the day, but by Saturday I felt stupid about Friday and spending another day indoors was just out of the question, even if outdoors was just sitting under a shady tree with a book.

Sunday we did more car touring since I felt fit to travel if not to walk. I found more places to live. Buena Vista: a real western town. Long stretches of unincorporated counties, a bizarre concept to me. I first heard of them during the Branch Davidian thing when the newscast would come from "Near Waco, Texas." Near Waco? Was that a town? Salida, a liberal outpost in the middle of nowhere. Anywhere along the Arkansas River, which we drove from its headwaters to the Royal Gorge (only a 1000 feet down instead of the Grand Canyon's mile, but still impressive, plus narrow enough for a bridge so you can get right over it!) and so eastward, to the river's flatter, milder stretches. Upstream is where we will find some rafting to do!

We emerged back onto the plains near Cañon City, which is on the plains, despite its name. That's about the last place I'd want to live: flat + casinos. The drive from there to Colorado Springs was lovely, despite one whole side of the route belonging to the Army for its wargames. And speaking of "Wargames," we passed NORAD too. It's under a formidable mountain around whose other side we watched Pike's Peak emerge. It's funny: from southwest of Colorado Springs to well north of there, Pike's looks like a mountain among many. From Denver it looks like one solitary eruption from the flats to the sky.

 

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Last modified 29 June 1999

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