'can your name be mutton-chop or crooked knees?'

Tonight, Pic and I eased back into a couple of books we haven't delved into in a while. Actually, our entire leisurely reading time routine has been somewhat nonexistent for enough months that I don't want to think about it. Mainly, we've been doing late, late night, very tired reading. (I might always and forever be questing for balance.)

We read some poetry, 'City Mouse and Country Mouse,' 'Rumpelstiltskin' and 'The Little Match Girl.'

I have never understood how 'Rumpelstiltskin' ends up well for the miller's-daughter-turned-queen. I always imagine that, sooner rather than later, the king will want more gold thread from straw. How long until he demands his wife stay up for three days straight to quell his greediness? And, now that Rumpelstiltskin has been swallowed by the earth (or whatnot)...well, there's going to be no more queen.

As far as 'The Little Match Girl,' I remember being about eight or ten reading this story, tucked into a spot on the floor between the end of the couch and the bookcase in the family room. I read and reread it mainly because it freaked me out. I suppose the story ends on a high note, which is totally what Pic got out of it, but I could only ever focus on that fact that the girl froze to death and was finally noticed only when she was a frozen corpse. There's the hunger and cold leading to her delusions, and then death. Geez.

As for my other reading, I'm very slowly making my way through One Hundred Years of Solitude. Very slowly. I should probably already have finished it yesterday, but I still have a hundred and four pages left. I'll get there. I was reading it aloud in the car today and Cardo cracked up every single time I read 'Jose Arcadio Segundo' after the first time. So, that made a war sequence much more amusing than it should have been.