Care Packages Quotes

I’m a modern man, a man for the millennium. Digital and smoke free. A diversified multi-cultural, post-modern deconstruction that is anatomically and ecologically incorrect. I’ve been up linked and downloaded, I’ve been inputted and outsourced, I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading. I’m a high-tech low-life. A cutting edge, state-of-the-art bi-coastal multi-tasker and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond! I’m new wave, but I’m old school and my inner child is outward bound. I’m a hot-wired, heat seeking, warm-hearted cool customer, voice activated and bio-degradable. I interface with my database, my database is in cyberspace, so I’m interactive, I’m hyperactive and from time to time I’m radioactive. Behind the eight ball, ahead of the curve, ridin the wave, dodgin the bullet and pushin the envelope. I’m on-point, on-task, on-message and off drugs. I’ve got no need for coke and speed. I've got no urge to binge and purge. I’m in-the-moment, on-the-edge, over-the-top and under-the-radar. A high-concept, low-profile, medium-range ballistic missionary. A street-wise smart bomb. A top-gun bottom feeder. I wear power ties, I tell power lies, I take power naps and run victory laps. I’m a totally ongoing big-foot, slam-dunk, rainmaker with a pro-active outreach. A raging workaholic. A working rageaholic. Out of rehab and in denial! I’ve got a personal trainer, a personal shopper, a personal assistant and a personal agenda. You can’t shut me up. You can’t dumb me down because I’m tireless and I’m wireless, I’m an alpha male on beta-blockers. I’m a non-believer and an over-achiever, laid-back but fashion-forward. Up-front, down-home, low-rent, high-maintenance. Super-sized, long-lasting, high-definition, fast-acting, oven-ready and built-to-last! I’m a hands-on, foot-loose, knee-jerk head case pretty maturely post-traumatic and I’ve got a love-child that sends me hate mail. But, I’m feeling, I’m caring, I’m healing, I’m sharing-- a supportive, bonding, nurturing primary care-giver. My output is down, but my income is up. I took a short position on the long bond and my revenue stream has its own cash-flow. I read junk mail, I eat junk food, I buy junk bonds and I watch trash sports! I’m gender specific, capital intensive, user-friendly and lactose intolerant. I like rough sex. I like tough love. I use the “F” word in my emails and the software on my hard-drive is hardcore--no soft porn. I bought a microwave at a mini-mall; I bought a mini-van at a mega-store. I eat fast-food in the slow lane. I’m toll-free, bite-sized, ready-to-wear and I come in all sizes. A fully-equipped, factory-authorized, hospital-tested, clinically-proven, scientifically- formulated medical miracle. I’ve been pre-wash, pre-cooked, pre-heated, pre-screened, pre-approved, pre-packaged, post-dated, freeze-dried, double-wrapped, vacuum-packed and, I have an unlimited broadband capacity. I’m a rude dude, but I’m the real deal. Lean and mean! Cocked, locked and ready-to-rock. Rough, tough and hard to bluff. I take it slow, I go with the flow, I ride with the tide. I’ve got glide in my stride. Drivin and movin, sailin and spinin, jiving and groovin, wailin and winnin. I don’t snooze, so I don’t lose. I keep the pedal to the metal and the rubber on the road. I party hearty and lunch time is crunch time. I’m hangin in, there ain’t no doubt and I’m hangin tough, over and out!

So I'm supposed to believe you're one of those mythical guys who only cares about a woman's personality, and not about the package it comes in?

The harder you had to work to open a package, the less you ended up caring about what was inside.

The jogger sighed. He pulled out his phone and my eyes got big, because it glowed with a bluish light. When he extended the antenna, two creatures began writhing around it-green snakes, no bigger than earthworms. The jogger didn't seem to notice. He checked his LCD display and cursed. "I've got to take this. Just a sec ..." Then into the phone: "Hello?" He listened. The mini-snakes writhed up and down the antenna right next to his ear. Yeah," the jogger said. "Listen-I know, but... I don't care if he is chained to a rock with vultures pecking at his liver, if he doesn't have a tracking number, we can't locate his package....A gift to humankind, great... You know how many of those we deliver-Oh, never mind. Listen, just refer him to Eris in customer service. I gotta go.

I had to be careful. Nothing from the Otherworld was benign, especially something in packaging this attractive.

Back when I was five, I thought my mom was being mean to me, so I decided to run away. Carried my slingshot with me because I was a big strong man, you see. Could take care of myself. I believe I also took a flashlight and a package of Oreos." Despite my embarrassement, I couldn't help smiling. "I think you packed better than I did." I swaggered out of the house where we were staying and took myself all the way to...the far corner of the backyard. There I made my stand. Stayed out there all day, until it started to reain. I hadn't thought about taking an umbrella." The best laid plans." I sighed. I know. It's tragic. I came back in, all wet and my stomach aching from eating about twenty Oreo, and my mom--who is a smart lady even is she drives me nuts--well, she acted like nothing happened." Lucas shrugged.

She has a target on her back because of what you and I have put into place, but you’d better fucking believe I’m not going to let anything else happen to her or my cousin, the rest of my family or my men. If anything happens to anyone I care about… Those motherfuckers were after my attention, and they’ve got it. Just make sure they don’t hurt anyone else.

Good teachers don't approach a child of this age with overzealousness or with destructive conscientiousness. They're not drill-masters in the military or floor managers in a production system. They are specialists in opening small packages. They give the string a tug but do it carefully. They don't yet know what's in the box. They don't know if it's breakable.

Did you know that when most people get sentenced to prison, they get care packages, money orders, even a phone call on their first day?” She clenched her jaw. “I got divorce papers.” “I told you I’d write.

God seemed to have become a brand, a packaging, and people purchase this trusted brand with such faith and devotion that they no longer care who the vendor is.

The pain that came to you is not always a choice, but keeping it on you is. Forgive. Stop the obsessive thinking related to it, and allow the pain to fade away.

... you only know what I want you to know, you only see what I want you to see."... Wade: " I don't care! I am in love with your mind, with the person you are. I couldn't care about the packaging.

I bought you something" Willows blurts out. "You bought...What?" Willow closes her eyes for a second. She's a little surprised she's going to give it to him after all, but there's no going back now. She has to. "At the bookstore." She reaches into her bag again, and pushes the package across the table towards him. Guy takes the book out of the bag slowly, Willow waits for him to look disappointed, to look confused that she would buy him such a battered, old- "I love it when used books have notes in the margins, it's the best," Guy says as he flips through the pages. "I always imagine who read it before me." He pauses and looks at one of Prospero's speeches. "I have way too much homework to read this now, but you know what? Screw it. I want to know why it's your favorite Shakespeare. Thank you, that was really nice of you. I mean, you really didn't have to." "But I did anyway," Willow says so quietly she's not even sure hears her. Hey," Guy frowns for a second. "You didn't write anything in here." "Oh, I didn't even think...I, well, I wouldn't even know what to write," Willow says shyly. "Well, maybe you'll think of something later," he says. Willow watches Guy read the opening. There's no mistaking it. His smile is genuine, and she can't help thinking that if she can't make David look like this, at least she can do it for someone.

Start ringing things up then. This won't take long." "Which ones?" "I don't care." I push some at her. "These." "These?" She looked dubious. "Why not these?" She glanced at Ray. "'Cause if that's your man, I'd say you can leave these off." "Oh, no, you didn't." Ray said. "What's this shit?" Ray demanded, looking at the saleclerk. "Honey, truth hurts, but ain't no way you're a Magnum." "Well, I ain't no medium!" The clerk smiled. "Yeah, but I was being generous." "What are you doing?" The clerk demanded as Ray grabbed another box. "I ain't rung those up yet." Ray pulled out a foil package and tossed the box back on the counter. "So ring it up." She arched an eyebrow, but didn't bother, maybe because she was watching him unbutton his fly. I caught his wrist. "What are you doing?" "Proving a point." "Not in the middle of the store, you're not." "Ain't nobody here," the cashier reminded me. "And ain't no way he's filling that thing out.

The eyes and the hair were a package deal, the hair was falling across his eyes in a careless way that said “Hey, girl. I’ve got peas on my shoes, but who cares, because I’ve got these eyes and this hair, and it’s pretty fucking great.

We only have a few hours, so listen carefully. If you’re hearing this story, you’re already in danger. Sadie and I might be your only chance. Go to the school. Find the locker. I won’t tell you which school or which locker, because if you’re the right person, you’ll find it. The combination is 13/32/33. By the time you finish listening, you’ll know what those numbers mean. Just remember the story we’re about to tell you isn’t complete yet. How it ends will depend on you. The most important thing: when you open the package and find what’s inside, don’t keep it longer than a week. Sure, it’ll be tempting. I mean, it will grant you almost unlimited power. But if you possess it too long, it will consume you. Learn its secrets quickly and pass it on. Hide it for the next person, the way Sadie and I did for you. Then be prepared for your life to get very interesting.

Closure /klōZHər/ Noun 1. The thing women tell you what they want, but secretly they really want you to tell them why you don’t want them again, so they can try one last time to convince you that you were wrong. 2. The warped mentality that having someone tell you honestly why they don’t want you is going to somehow make you feel peace, so you can move on. 3. The neat packaging of finishing conversations because you have been stewing over it insecurely about the length of what a stalker does. 4. The one thing women don’t give themselves because if they didn’t care about the jerk they wouldn’t still be hanging onto another conversation that tells them what they already know: He just isn’t that interested in you. 5. The anal retentive art of perfecting every ending with meaning, rather than just excepting you went through something rather sucky and he doesn’t care. 6. The act of closing something with someone, when in reality you should slam the door.

Logan, you Cavanaughs are like one-stop shopping. Police protection, legal counsel, dinner and last rites—it’s all taken care of in one neat little package. Unbelievable!

because I was conditioned to think that people would hurt me if they didn’t like what I said or if my behavior didn’t align with what they wanted. Of course, I had to heal and

I am quite scandalous, you see. I come packaged with unpredictable moments, brutal honesty, calamitous outbursts, the ghastly need for love, a fiendish lack of filter, the horrific need to question everything, nauseating affection, offensive kindness, indecent spirituality, obscene beauty, monstrous creativity, barbaric embellishments, contemptuous passion, sinful childhood traumas, unscrupulous hobbies, vexatious caring, abominable sensitivity, reprehensible humor, hideous sarcasm, displeasing feelings, unpalatable confidence, offensive compassion, villainous inspiration and a devilish wit. I am quite grotesque in my imperfectness and I am not ashamed to admit it.

The viewer of television, the listener to radio, the reader of magazines, is presented with a whole complex of elements—all the way from ingenious rhetoric to carefully selected data and statistics—to make it easy for him to “make up his own mind” with the minimum of difficulty and effort. But the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up his own mind at all. Instead, he inserts a packaged opinion into his mind, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player. He then pushes a button and “plays back” the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so. He has performed acceptably without having had to think.

And in that gaze I see it all—birthdays and dinners and shopping trips. Mornings spent watching soap operas in her bed. Nights on the phone. Care packages mailed to New York City. Scraped elbows and fevers and her voice, always her voice. Everything is going to be all right. You’re okay. I’ve got you.

I don’t care that I don’t know what you really look like, don’t you get that? It’s not the package that I’m interested in here. It’s you. The girl who fought off three tellers with nothing but her smarts. And who stood up to the Basileus.

It’s possible you briefly lost that feeling of impending doom in 2008, after the likable, cool presidential candidate defeated the old man who slept through all his flight school classes. But that relief probably vanished in a wave of Wall Street bailouts and drone strikes and a brief Democratic congressional majority that didn’t even bother to pass the card check bill or push for true universal health care. Perhaps once you got a job, you realized that the pay—or, if you were really lucky, the benefits package—was vastly outweighed by what work took out of your soul, as you spent your days white-knuckling it from check to check, feeling like the same idiot failure you were before you had a job.

If you fight for it, I’ll fight with you. If you don’t want to fight for it, then I have to find someone who wants it as bad as I do.   —s. mcnutt

While talking to Darla, another of Scott’s old maxims had occurred to her: the harder you had to work to open a package, the less you ended up caring about what was inside.

Giving love to others and not expecting it back is also a form of self-love.

Fact: people make time for people they care about.

Be completely aware of your pain, but don’t allow it to define who you are. Pain is an emotion that passes.

Make your life simpler by reducing how many decisions you make each day.

Having a Care Package relationship keeps a character from being completely selfish.

The Care Package is a relationship the Lead has with someone else, in which he shows his concern, through word or deed, for that character's well being.

The populations of wealthy democratic societies expect to have total choice over their satellite TV packages, yet think it perfectly normal to allow the state to make all the choices in respect of their health care. It's a curious inversion of citizenship to demand control over peripheral leisure activities but to contract out the big life-changing stuff to the government.

For a moment he could do nothing but close his eyes. Was this a taste of the rest of his life as Billie Bridgerton’s husband? Was he destined to live in terror, wondering what sort of danger she’d thrown herself into that day? Was it worth it? “George?” she whispered. She sounded uneasy. Had she seen something in his expression? A sign of doubt? He touched her cheek, and he looked into her eyes. He saw his whole world there. “I love you,” he said. Someone gasped. It might have been his mother. “I cannot live without you,” he said, “and in fact, I refuse to do so. So no, you will not be going on some ill-advised mission to the coast to hand off a potentially dangerous package to people you don’t know. Because if anything happened to you…” His voice broke, but he didn’t care. “If anything happened to you, it would kill me. And I’d like to think you love me too much to let that happen.” Billie stared at him in wonder, her softly parted lips trembling as she blinked back tears. “You love me?” she whispered. He nearly rolled his eyes. “Of course I do.” “You never said.” “I must have done.” “You didn’t. I would have remembered.” “I would remember, too,” he said softly, “if you’d ever said it to me.” “I love you,” she said immediately. “I do. I love you so much. I —” “Thank God,” Lady Manston exclaimed. George and Billie both turned.

I wish now that I'd valued more the words that tumbled freely out of him before he was taken. I wish I'd collected them and kept them safely in packages that I wrapped up carefully, secured with a ribbon, and stored in a safe place for the future. I wish I hadn't been too distracted to listen to every word he said.

Personally, I've come to understand that I haven't been on a journey to give my house a coffee enema and make it whistle-clean from top to bottom. I take way too much joy in rediscovering all those things that I've been collecting since I was a kid, always searching for the things that felt "real"--things that felt genuine, had stories. I shouldn't have to give up my love of going through old boxes and making discoveries of things I forgot existed or imagined must have been given away years ago, as if I've sent a care package to myself from some distant past I only half-remember. Suddenly, surprisingly, a box full of memories will bring it all back into sharp focus.

I looked above the jeans. Vintage Fugazi concert tee. Green flannel shirt. 10. I looked above the flannel. Two weeks’ worth of shaggy blond beard. Mmm. Country hipster. 11. I looked above the beard. Lips. 12. I looked at the lips. 13. I looked at the lips. 14. I looked at the lips. 15. COME ON. 16. I looked above the lips. 17. I was glad I looked above the lips. 18. The eyes and the hair were a package deal, the hair was falling across his eyes in a careless way that said “Hey, girl. I’ve got peas on my shoes, but who cares, because I’ve got these eyes and this hair, and it’s pretty fucking great.” 19. The hair was the color of tabbouleh. 20. His eyes were the color of . . . 21. Pickles? 22. Green beans? 23. No. Broccoli that had been steamed for exactly sixty seconds. Vibrant. Piercing.

The eyes and the hair were a package deal, the hair was falling across his eyes in a careless way that said “Hey, girl. I’ve got peas on my shoes, but who cares, because I’ve got these eyes and this hair, and it’s pretty fucking great.

In today's culture we take the package for the content, the vehicle for the precious cargo. We attribute reality to physical phenomena while taking their *meanings* to be inconsequential fantasies. By extricating 'reality' from mind, materialism has sent the significance of nature into exile. With the pathetic grin of hubris stamped on our foolish faces, we carefully unwrap the package and then proceed to throw away its contents while proudly storing the empty box on the altar of our ontology.

Jury trials are really nothing more than poorly written stage plays. You’ve got two authors writing opposing narratives and a director who is paid not to care about either outcome. Hired actors sit on either end of the stage, while unwitting audience members strive to remain quiet. No applause should be rendered, no gasps of glory. Witnesses sit agape with fury as they stumble across their rehearsed lines. If only they had practiced just once more. If only they had more time or a dress rehearsal, then they would recite their packaged words with such eloquent delivery that the critics in the jury box would believe only them.

I don’t think of you as a typical beauty. I never once did. To me your hair mimics asphalt more than the lustrous feathers of ravens. Comparing your eyes to heavenly lights seems a stretch when they are the common color of dirt. I can’t imagine you as a tall, pole-slender image; your God-given shape is right bulky. But I never cared about such pointless things anyway. What good have trivial attributes ever done the world? When I look at you, I see you—or in other words, all of you that really matters. I see a kind heart and compassionate arms. I see a patient, gentle spirit abounding with love towards all of God’s creatures. I see the perfect blend of humility and strength of character. I see a wise intellect as well as an endearing sense of humor. I see all the qualities that make you the person I love, regardless of the bodily package you’re bound in. So forgive me if I don’t think you’re beautiful, because I find you to be far superior to that worthless and pointless nonsense the world calls beauty.

Top-Ten Reasons Why I Don’t Care about Your Opinion ​​It has never paid any of my bills. ​​It will not be there when I am sick. ​​It does not give me orgasms. ​​It has never made me a better person. ​​It is negative and egocentric. ​​It doesn’t uplift, challenge, or encourage. ​​It came from you. ​​It will not marry me or carry my casket. ​​It is not based on facts. ​​It does not determine my worth.

When my generation of women walked away from the kitchen we were escorted down that path by a profiteering industry that knew a tired, vulnerable marketing target when they saw it. "Hey, ladies," it said to us, "go ahead, get liberated. We'll take care of dinner." They threw open the door and we walked into a nutritional crisis and genuinely toxic food supply. If you think toxic is an exaggeration, read the package directions for handling raw chicken from a CAFO. We came a long way, baby, into bad eating habits and collaterally impaired family dynamics. No matter what else we do or believe, food remains at the center of every culture. Ours now runs on empty calories.

The only truly wasted vote is the one cast for either of the two deceitful, carefully packaged, hand groomed, corporate-owned candidates who will inevitably enact the same illegal policies. The specific lies and promises are different, but the end results are identical, and we, the People, are inevitably the losers.

I hope you’ll take the next right step today and choose just one way to be kind. Then another. Then another. Then another. Here’s a few ideas to get you started. Write a thank-you note. Extend an invitation. Bring muffins to the office. Offer someone a ride to the airport. Donate blood. Challenge yourself to go a day without saying anything negative. Call your grandmother. Look at the month ahead for birthdays and plan something special for a friend or family member. Send a care package. Send congrats flowers for a friend who reached a new milestone. Make a double batch of soup and bring half to someone who just moved. Wave at kids on a school bus.

He had a little single-story house, three bedrooms, a full bathroom and a half bathroom, a combined kitchen-living room-dining room with windows that faced west, a small brick porch where there was a wooden bench worn by the wind that came down from the mountains and the sea, the wind from the north, the wind through the gaps, the wind that smelled like smoke and came from the south. He had books he'd kept for more than twenty-five years. Not many. All of them old. He had books he'd bought in the last ten years, books he didn't mind lending, books that could've been lost or stolen for all he cared. He had books that he sometimes received neatly packaged and with unfamiliar return addresses, books he didn't even open anymore. He had a yard perfect for growing grass and planting flowers, but he didn't know what flowers would do best there--flowers, as opposed to cacti or succulents. There would be time (so he thought) for gardening. He had a wooden gate that needed a coat of paint. He had a monthly salary.

Look. I will not be told what size to be. I do not care about anyone else’s judgment about my body. I am not interested in anyone else’s ideas of what I’m supposed to look like. I believe everyone’s body is theirs and everyone has a right to love their body in whatever size and shape and package it comes in. I will fight for anyone’s right to do so. I will kick ass and take names if I have to. Your body is yours. My body is mine. No one’s body is up for comment. No matter how small, how large, how curvy, how flat. If you love you, then I love you. But this is not about loving me. I don’t FEEL good. And while part of me means it emotionally, I mostly mean it physically. I don’t FEEL GOOD.

Healing from pain is a choice. You have to consciously decide that you deserve to feel free, that you deserve to let go of the weight that has been holding you down for too long.

Snooping scandal. As serious as the implications are, the media manages to give it a catchy little name. Not so much intruding, trespassing, invading, or spying. Snooping. You know, like a boyfriend snoops around on his girlfriend’s Facebook account. Or kids snoop through the closets for Christmas packages. It’s like dubbing HealthCare.gov’s disastrous launch a “glitch.

He usually gets what he wants. And what he wants is to keep you safe. He really cares about you, you know.” Her chest constricted with a strange combination of pleasure and pain. She tried to cover her emotions with a playful shrug. “Well, of course he does—I mean, what’s not to like? I make incredibly bad, impulsive decisions. Plus, I’m lame, scarred, and crazy—the whole package.

What scientists haven’t realized until recently is that these risk factors have an upside. In other words, the sensitivities and the strengths are a package deal. High-reactive kids who enjoy good parenting, child care, and a stable home environment tend to have fewer emotional problems and more social skills than their lower-reactive peers, studies show. Often they’re exceedingly empathic, caring, and cooperative. They work well with others. They are kind, conscientious, and easily disturbed by cruelty, injustice, and irresponsibility. They’re successful at the things that matter to them.

People do not just buy products. They buy better versions of themselves. And the packages in which they want the products to be delivered must come from humble and approachable brands. People have no patience for fluff.

There was some little local controversy too, about a fundraising effort called Suzie's Closet--folks getting together in church basements to make care packages for the plantations--blankets and candy bars.....first they interviewed a local advocate for the homeless, asking why our attention shouuld be down there, "when there's so much suffering right here at home."...it was the usual stuff --all the new stories and just the old stories again.

I sell yawns. Buy one and someone else gets one FREE. Be careful—they’re contagious. They should only be used in the confines of political discourse. I tested all the merchandise out on my morning ducklings before packaging.

The viewer of television, the listener to radio, the reader of magazines, is presented with a whole complex of elements—all the way from ingenious rhetoric to carefully selected data and statistics—to make it easy for him to “make up his own mind” with the minimum of difficulty and effort. But the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up his own mind at all. Instead, he inserts a packaged opinion into his mind, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player. He then pushes a button and “plays back” the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so. He has performed acceptably without having had to think.

You have shown me, along with that man over there, that life and love aren't as far apart as we think. They go hand-in-hand, like you and me. You can't have one without the other. Everything around us, inside of us, is love. It's in the birds and the rivers, the newborn baby whimpers, and yes, the passionate kisses we share. Life is a package wrapped up in love. To experience love, we have to open it. Carefully. And cherish every gift we're given.

Of the many 'firsts' with which I have been involved at the Texas Heart Institute —including the first successful human heart transplant in the United States and the first total artificial heart transplant in the world—the achievement that may have the greatest impact on health care did not occur in the operating room or in the research laboratory. It happened on a piece of paper... when we created the first-ever packaged pricing plan for cardiovascular surgical procedures.

Elvin hobbies include activities like swimming, hiking, drawing, dancing, baking, and animal care—as well as the incredibly popular pastime of trading Prattles pins. Thus far, no one has ever managed to obtain a complete collection of Prattles pins. In fact, the closest anyone has ever come is still lacking three key pins—and the owner of the collection (who prefers to remain nameless) has developed a strong dislike of both the taste and smell of the candy after opening so many packages.

You lose your moonbeam hair, your bombshell shape and your sexual appetite, I don’t give a fuck. ’Cause I love your soul better than I love anythin’ else and that includes the fan-fuckin-tastic package it comes in. You got me, Lou?” I couldn’t breathe because he held my breath, couldn’t think because he’d rewritten my thoughts into ones of his own making. He controlled me but only to love me, to make me understand how I could love myself better than I already did. Suddenly, I understood that I’d insulted him by being heartbroken about my hair. Of course, Z would never care if I were bald or pink-haired or blonde. “Sorry,” I whispered. He cupped his hands around my face and pressed a kiss to the tip of my nose. “Love you even when you don’t.

Today Is A New Day/New Beginning 1. Send a food hamper to a less fortunate family 2.Tutor a neighborhood child at no cost 3.Give an elderly or disabled neighbor a ride to church 4.Buy a birthday gift for a less fortunate child 5. Donate school supplies to a nearby school 6.Donate to a Children’s charity 7. Donate new books to a library 8.Send military care packages to deployed Service members 9.Send cards to the sick in a Nursing Facility/Shut-ins 10.Cook and serve meals at a Homeless Shelter

The continent has embraced a spiritual death long before the demographic one. In those seventeen European countries that have fallen into the "lowest-low fertility," where are the children? In a way, you're looking at them: the guy sipping espresso at a sidewalk cafe listening to his iPod, the eternal adolescent charges of the paternalistic state. The government makes the grown-up decisions and we spend our pocket money on our record collection...the long-term cost of welfare is the infantilization of the population. The populations of wealthy democratic societies expect to have total choice over their satellite TV package, yet think it perfectly normal to allow the state to make all the choices in respect of their health care. It's a curious inversion of citizenship to demand control over peripheral leisure activities but to contract out the big life-changing stuff to the government. And it's hard to come up with a wake-up call for a society as dedicated as latter-day Europe to the belief that life is about sleeping in.

New Rule: Republicans must stop pitting the American people against the government. Last week, we heard a speech from Republican leader Bobby Jindal--and he began it with the story that every immigrant tells about going to an American grocery store for the first time and being overwhelmed with the "endless variety on the shelves." And this was just a 7-Eleven--wait till he sees a Safeway. The thing is, that "endless variety"exists only because Americans pay taxes to a government, which maintains roads, irrigates fields, oversees the electrical grid, and everything else that enables the modern American supermarket to carry forty-seven varieties of frozen breakfast pastry.Of course, it's easy to tear government down--Ronald Reagan used to say the nine most terrifying words in the Englishlanguage were "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." But that was before "I'm Sarah Palin, now show me the launch codes."The stimulus package was attacked as typical "tax and spend"--like repairing bridges is left-wing stuff. "There the liberals go again, always wanting to get across the river." Folks, the people are the government--the first responders who put out fires--that's your government. The ranger who shoos pedophiles out of the park restroom, the postman who delivers your porn.How stupid is it when people say, "That's all we need: the federal government telling Detroit how to make cars or Wells Fargo how to run a bank. You want them to look like the post office?"You mean the place that takes a note that's in my hand in L.A. on Monday and gives it to my sister in New Jersey on Wednesday, for 44 cents? Let me be the first to say, I would be thrilled if America's health-care system was anywhere near as functional as the post office.Truth is, recent years have made me much more wary of government stepping aside and letting unregulated private enterprise run things it plainly is too greedy to trust with. Like Wall Street. Like rebuilding Iraq.Like the way Republicans always frame the health-care debate by saying, "Health-care decisions should be made by doctors and patients, not government bureaucrats," leaving out the fact that health-care decisions aren't made by doctors, patients, or bureaucrats; they're made by insurance companies. Which are a lot like hospital gowns--chances are your gas isn't covered.

Tatiasha, my wife, I got cookies from you and Janie, anxious medical advice from Gordon Pasha (tell him you gave me a gallon of silver nitrate), some sharp sticks from Harry (nearly cried). I’m saddling up, I’m good to go. From you I got a letter that I could tell you wrote very late at night. It was filled with the sorts of things a wife of twenty-seven years should not write to her far-away and desperate husband, though this husband was glad and grateful to read and re-read them. Tom Richter saw the care package you sent with the preacher cookies and said, “Wow, man. You must still be doing something right.” I leveled a long look at him and said, “It’s good to know nothing’s changed in the army in twenty years.” Imagine what he might have said had he been privy to the fervent sentiments in your letter. No, I have not eaten any poison berries, or poison mushrooms, or poison anything. The U.S. Army feeds its men. Have you seen a C-ration? Franks and beans, beefsteak, crackers, fruit, cheese, peanut butter, coffee, cocoa, sacks of sugar(!). It’s enough to make a Soviet blockade girl cry. We’re going out on a little scoping mission early tomorrow morning. I’ll call when I come back. I tried to call you today, but the phone lines were jammed. It’s unbelievable. No wonder Ant only called once a year. I would’ve liked to hear your voice though: you know, one word from you before battle, that sort of thing . . . Preacher cookies, by the way, BIG success among war-weary soldiers. Say hi to the kids. Stop teaching Janie back flip dives. Do you remember what you’re supposed to do now? Kiss the palm of your hand and press it against your heart.   Alexander   P.S. I’m getting off the boat at Coconut Grove. It’s six and you’re not on the dock. I finish up, and start walking home, thinking you’re tied up making dinner, and then I see you and Ant hurrying down the promenade. He is running and you’re running after him. You’re wearing a yellow dress. He jumps on me, and you stop shyly, and I say to you, come on, tadpole, show me what you got, and you laugh and run and jump into my arms. Such a good memory. I love you, babe.

No one was a stranger in that crowd. We had all heard FDR's "Fireside Chats" and Edward R. Murrow's "This is London," listened to H.V. Kaltenborn for the evening news, and watched the newsreels before the movies. We'd read Ernie Pyle's columns, planted victory gardens, written V mails, sent care packages, gathered phonograph records for the USO, given up nylon for parachutes, saved bacon grease for explosives, and turned in tin foil, saved from gum wrappers, for ammunition. Most of all, we'd prayed that our loved ones would be safe.

I write them to improve my productivity as a programmer. Making the quality assurance department happy is just a side effect. Unit tests are highly localized. Each test class works within a single package. It tests the interfaces to other packages, but beyond that it assumes the rest just works. Functional tests are a different animal. They are written to ensure the software as a whole works. They provide quality assurance to the customer and don't care about programmer productivity. They should be developed by a different team, one who delights in finding bugs.

Presents are made for the pleasure of the one who gives them, not for the merits of those who receive them,' said my father. 'Besides, it can't be returned. Open it.' I undid the carefully wrapped package in the dim light of dawn. It contained a shiny carved wooden box, edged with gold rivets. Even before opening it, I was smiling. The sound of the clasp when it unlocked was exquisite, like the ticking of a watch. Inside, the case was lined with dark blue velvet. Victor Hugo's fabulous Montblanc Meisterstuck rested in the centre. It was a dazzling sight. I took it and gazed at it by the light of the balcony. The gold clip of the pen top had an inscription. Daniel Sempere, 1950 I stared at my father, dumbfounded. I don't think I had ever seen him look as happy as he seemed to me at that moment. Without saying anything, he got up from his armchair and held me tight. I felt a lump in my throat and, lost for words, fell utterly silent.

What Dad taught me above all else, and did so utterly unconsciously, was why people like him became Tories. He had been poor. He was working class. He aspired to be middle class. He worked hard, made it on his merits, and wanted his children to do even better than him. He thought – as did many others of his generation – that the logical outcome of this striving, born of this attitude, was to be a Tory. Indeed, it was part of the package. You made it; you were a Tory: two sides of the same coin. It became my political ambition to break that connection, and replace it with a different currency. You are compassionate; you care about those less fortunate than yourself; you believe in society as well as the individual. You can be Labour. You can be successful and care; ambitious and compassionate; a meritocrat and a progressive. These are entirely compatible ways of making sure progress happens; and they answer the realistic, not utopian, claims of human nature.

Look at this like placing an order on Amazon. You know that your order is going to arrive. You put in the order to the universe with your thoughts and emotions; trust that it is going to be delivered to you. You wouldn’t worry about how Amazon is going to make the delivery, or what kind of truck they will use to bring your package. You don’t even care how they bring it. You just know and trust that they will. This is the same way you can start to trust the universe. Put in your order with your mind and emotions. Feel it getting ready to happen for you. Feel it entering your life. Feel the delivery on the way. Get as excited as if you were expecting a big delivery.

So, when I read of a recent study that found that children are significantly more inclined to eat “difficult” foods like liver, spinach, broccoli—and other such hard-to-sell “but-it’s-good-for-you” classics—when they are wrapped in comfortingly bright packages from McDonald’s, I was at first appalled, and then … inspired. Rather than trying to co-opt Ronald’s all-too-effective credibility among children to short-term positive ends, like getting my daughter to eat the occasional serving of spinach, I could reverse-engineer this! Use the strange and terrible powers of the Golden Arches for good—not evil! I plan to dip something decidedly unpleasant in an enticing chocolate coating and then wrap it carefully in McDonald’s wrapping paper. Nothing dangerous, mind you, but something that a two-and-a-half-year-old will find “yucky!”—even upsetting—in the extreme. Maybe a sponge soaked with vinegar. A tuft of hair. A Barbie head. I will then place it inside the familiar cardboard box and leave it—as if forgotten—somewhere for my daughter to find. I might even warn her, “If you see any of that nasty McDonald’s … make sure you don’t eat it!” I’ll say, before leaving her to it. “Daddy was stupid and got some chocolate … and now he’s lost it…” I might mutter audibly to myself before taking a long stroll to the laundry room. An early, traumatic, Ronald-related experience can only be good for her.

A plain, brown paper-wrapped package came in the mail recently. Upon opening it, I saw that it was a patchwork quilt about four feet by five feet. Many little scraps of cloth, carefully joined by loving hands. Two squares have suggestions of a black cassock and Roman white collar. The maker of the quilt states, “In its variety, I feel it denotes confusion and the world “mixed” up. There are dark spots for the dark times and bright squares, so, hopefully, some good and brightness will come in the future. The other pieces of cloth were of happy times, mothers and children, peaceful settings, happy things.” A note inside stated that she felt we were “scraps,”—the “scraps” that the abusive priests treated us like. They would use us as a scrap is used and then simply toss us aside. I was moved to tears. Holding it in my hands, I could almost feel others' pain and suffering, as I touched each panel. It is a magnificent work, worthy of a prize. I was deeply humbled by the receipt of the quilt. This woman got it; she really got it. This woman got it; she really got it. She has a deeper understanding of what we have gone through. It is rare.

Past, present, and future, the symbiosis of our lives," the old man continued quietly, gently. "Our birth, our life, our death, all tied into a single package that we spend our time on this earth unwrapping. Sometimes we see clearly what it is we are looking at. Sometimes we do not. Sometimes things happen to distract or deceive us, and we must look more carefully at what it is we hold.

The historian William Cronon explains that packing plants 'distanced their customers most of all from the act of killing.... The more people became accustomed to the attractively cut, carefully wrapped, cunningly displayed packages that Swift had introduced to the trade, the more easily they could fail to remember that their purchase had once pulsed and breathed with a life much like their own.... As time went on, fewer of those who ate meat could say they had actually killed the animals themselves. In the packer's world, it was easy not to remember that eating meat was a moral act inextricably bound to killing. Such was the second nature that a corporate order had imposed on the American landscape. Forgetfulness was among the least noticed and most important of its by-products.

(…) it may be seriously questioned whether the advent of modern communications media has much enhanced our understanding of the world in which we live.(…) Perhaps we know more about the world than we used to, and insofar as knowledge is prerequisite to understanding, that is all to the good. But knowledge is not as much a prerequisite to understanding as is commonly supposed. We do not have to know everything about something in order to understand it; too many facts are often as much of an obstacle to understanding as too few. There is a sense in which we moderns are inundated with facts to the detriment of understanding. (…) One of the reasons for this situation is that the very media we have mentioned are so designed as to make thinking seem unnecessary (though this is only an appearance). The packaging of intellectual positions and views is one of the most active enterprises of some of the best minds of our day. The viewer of television, the listener to radio, the reader of magazines, is presented with a whole complex of elements—all the way from ingenious rhetoric to carefully selected data and statistics—to make it easy for him to “make up his own mind” with the minimum of difficulty and effort. But the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up his own mind at all. Instead, he inserts a packaged opinion into his mind, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player. He then pushes a button and “plays back” the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so. He has performer acceptably without having had to think.

By my fifth sip, I am sooooo glad I splurged thirty-five delicious Euros. That’s right math whizzes, the Red Beach set me back over fifty American dollars. Who cares if I have to eat Top Ramen when I get home? I’ll gladly pilfer condiment packages from fast food restaurants to survive if it means I get to sit in ZPlage and sip Red Beaches with anorexic Russian models and their playboy sugar daddies.

Five Poems" 1 Well now, hold on maybe I won't go to sleep at all and it'll be a beautiful white night or else I'll collapse completely from nerves and be calm as a rug or a bottle of pills or suddenly I'll be off Montauk swimming and loving it and not caring where 2 an invitation to lunch HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT? when I only have 16 cents and 2 packages of yoghurt there's a lesson in that, isn't there like in Chinese poetry when a leaf falls? hold off on the yoghurt till the very last, when everything may improve 3 at the Rond-Point they were eating an oyster, but here we were dropping by sculptures and seeing some paintings and the smasheroo-grates of Cadoret and music by Varese, too well Adolph Gottlieb I guess you are the hero of this day along with venison and Bill I'll sleep on the yoghurt and dream of the Persian Gulf 4 which I did it was wonderful to be in bed again and the knock on my door for once signified "hi there" and on the deafening walk through the ghettos where bombs have gone off lately left by subway violators I knew why I love taxis, yes subways are only fun when you're feeling sexy and who feels sexy after The Blue Angel well maybe a little bit 5 I seem to be defying fate, or am I avoiding it?

I love memories. They are our ballads, our personal foundation myths. But I must acknowledge that memory can be cruel if left unchallenged. Memory is often our only connection to who we used to be. Memories are fossils, the bones left by dead versions of ourselves. More potently, our minds are a hungry audience, craving only the peaks and valleys of experience. The bland erodes, leaving behind the distinctive bits to be remembered again and again. Painful or passionate, surreal or sublime, we cherish those little rocks of peak experience, polishing them with the ever-smoothing touch of recycled proxy living. In so doing—like pagans praying to a sculpted mud figure—we make of our memories the gods which judge our current lives. I love this. Memory may not be the heart of what makes us human, but it’s at least a vital organ. Nevertheless, we must take care not to let the bliss of the present fade when compared to supposedly better days. We’re happy, sure, but were we more happy then? If we let it, memory can make shadows of the now, as nothing can match the buttressed legends of our past. I think about this a great deal, for it is my job to sell legends. Package them, commodify them. For a small price, I’ll let you share my memories—which I solemnly promise are real, or will be as long as you agree not to cut them too deeply. Do not let memory chase you. Take the advice of one who has dissected the beast, then rebuilt it with a more fearsome face—which I then used to charm a few extra coins out of an inebriated audience. Enjoy memories, yes, but don’t be a slave to who you wish you once had been. Those memories aren’t alive. You are.

Lone rangers, that's what we are. We see the world with our naked eyes, unabashed of the greed and ego. Our mind resides on our tongue and we stand for what's right. A little too much fun, and an exciting package. Raving for life and exploring possibilities is our goal. Travel far and wide and into the wild, we will go for it someday. Care so much that even gods would bow down. Love to the hilt and then let go, coz that's what this life is meant for. One life and we will live up to the hilt and leave no regrets. So, when we land into our graves with a satisfied smile, we big farewell to the meanness of this so-called universe. With every journey there is a new lesson learned, every place traveled, explored; makes us in fall in love with the earth. Care less about our whereabouts; we keep the expedition going because we want to go far beyond the civilized, beyond the living, beyond the world of predictability, beyond u and I & into the wild. Feasting the eyes, rejuvenating the senses, every breath we take is a sigh of relief and we make peace. Choosing the roads less traveled, our wandering souls makes our way towards the unknown destination not only to discover ourselves but to discover the wild, nature and the mother earth.

Death sucks, and premature death sucks worse. But it’s part of the package deal of getting to be alive. It happens because you, and all the people around you, are part of the world; the physical, natural world, with all of its wonders and horrors. It’s a world that doesn’t really care whether you live or die, whether you suffer or rejoice, and to some people that can seem bleak and cold. But it’s a world of which we are a part, a world which we are intimately connected to down to our very molecules — not a world that stands apart from us and punishes us for reasons we can never fathom. And

Antonapoulos was not changed at all. When Singer came into his room he ambled placidly to meet his friend. He was even fatter than before, but the dreamy smile on his face was just the same. Singer had some packages in his arms and the big Greek gave them his first attention. His presents were a scarlet dressing-gown, soft bedroom slippers, and two monogrammed nightshirts. Antonapoulos looked beneath all the tissue papers in the boxes very carefully. When he saw that nothing good to eat had been concealed there, he dumped the gifts disdainfully on his bed and did not bother with them any more.

MY CONFESSION FOR TODAY I confess that I am “sealed” with the Holy Spirit. My contents are intact and in order. I am approved, endorsed, recognized, affirmed, sanctified, and notarized by the Spirit of God. Because God has “sealed” me, it is guaranteed that I am going to make it to my final destination. When demons see the seal of God on me, they know they are not to mess around with me! I am a special package, to be treated with special care. Angels watch over me and guard my safe passage from one place to the next. Evil forces may attempt to mess with me, but the seal of God guarantees that I’ll arrive safely and complete! I declare this by faith in Jesus’ name!

I remember the time I went to my first rare-book fair and saw how the first editions of Thoreau and Whitman and Crane had been carefully packaged in heat-shrunk plastic with the price tags on the inside. Somehow the simple addition of air-tight plastic bags had transformed the books from vehicles of liveliness into commodities, like bread made with chemicals to keep it from perishing. In commodity exchange it’s as if the buyer and the seller where both in plastic bags; there’s none of the contact of a gift exchange. There is neither motion nor emotion because the whole point is to keep the balance, to make sure the exchange itself doesn’t consume anything or involve one person with another. Consumer goods are consumed by their owners, not by their exchange. The desire to consume is a kind of lust. We long to have the world flow through us like air or food. We are thirsty and hungry for something that can only be carried inside bodies. But consumer goods merely bait this lust, they do not satisfy it. The consumer of commodities is invited to a meal without passion, a consumption that leads to neither satiation nor fire. He is a stranger seduced into feeding on the drippings of someone else’s capital without benefit of its inner nourishment, and he is hungry at the end of the meal, depressed and weary as we all feel when lust has dragged us from the house and led us to nothing.

Note that Campbell says you must have a room or a certain hour. A bliss station can be not just a where, but also a when. Not just a sacred space, but also a sacred time. The deluxe package would include both a special room and a special hour that you enter it. But I think one can make up for a lack of the other. For example, say you have a tiny apartment you share with small children. There’s no room for your bliss station, there’s only time. When the kids are asleep or at school or day care, even a kitchen table can become a bliss station. Or, say your schedule is totally unpredictable and a certain time of day can’t be relied upon—that’s when a dedicated space that’s ready for you at any time will come in handy.

What scientists haven’t realized until recently is that these risk factors have an upside. In other words, the sensitivities and the strengths are a package deal. High-reactive kids who enjoy good parenting, child care, and a stable home environment tend to have fewer emotional problems and more social skills than their lower-reactive peers, studies show. Often they’re exceedingly empathic, caring, and cooperative. They work well with others. They are kind, conscientious, and easily disturbed by cruelty, injustice, and irresponsibility. They’re successful at the things that matter to them. They don’t necessarily turn into class presidents or stars of the school play, Belsky told me, though this can happen, too: “For some it’s becoming the leader of their class. For others it takes the form of doing well academically or being well-liked.

R.J. Reynolds owns a subsidiary called RJR Packaging, which produces packaging used on many food products for both human and pet consumption.[276] They also produce packaging for many medical devices and over-the-counter medications, as well as personal care, coffee, and confectionary products.[277] In order to remain in business, a company must be profitable. In order to remain profitable in the face of extensive, long-term compulsory levies by state governments via the tobacco settlement, the costs of products must go up so that income remains higher than expenses. Thus, Altria can raise prices on their Kraft food products you buy in order to pay off their tobacco settlement. R.J. Reynolds can pass along the cost by raising packaging costs for manufacturers of many different types of consumer products, who pass the increased production costs along to you.

I Won’t Write Your Obituary You asked if you could call to say goodbye if you were ever really gonna kill yourself. Sure, but I won’t write your obituary. I’ll commission it from some dead-end journalist who will say things like: “At peace… Better place… Fought the good fight…” Maybe reference the loving embrace of Capital-G-God at least 4 times. Maybe quote Charles fucking Bukowski. And I won’t stop them because I won’t write your obituary. But if you call me, I will write you a new sky, one you can taste. I will write you a D-I-Y cloud maker so on days when you can’t do anything you can still make clouds in whatever shape you want them. I will write you letters, messages in bottles, in cages, in orange peels, in the distance between here and the moon, in forests and rivers and bird songs. I will write you songs. I can’t write music, but I’ll find Rihanna, and I’ll get her to write you music if it will make you want to dance a little longer. I will write you a body whose veins are electricity because outlets are easier to find than good shrinks, but we will find you a good shrink. I will write you 1-800-273-8255, that’s the suicide hotline; we can call it together. And yeah, you can call me, but I won’t tell you it’s okay, that I forgive you. I won’t say “goodbye” or “I love you” one last time. You won’t leave on good terms with me, Because I will not forgive you. I won’t read you your last rights, absolve you of sin, watch you sail away on a flaming viking ship, my hand glued to my forehead. I will not hold your hand steady around a gun. And after, I won’t come by to pick up the package of body parts you will have left specifically for me. I’ll get a call like “Ma’am, what would you have us do with them?” And I’ll say, “Burn them. Feed them to stray cats. Throw them at school children. Hurl them at the sea. I don’t care. I don’t want them.” I don’t want your heart. It’s not yours anymore, it’s just a heart now and I already have one. I don’t want your lungs, just deflated birthday party balloons that can’t breathe anymore. I don’t want a jar of your teeth as a memento. I don’t want your ripped off skin, a blanket to wrap myself in when I need to feel like your still here. You won’t be there. There’s no blood there, there’s no life there, there’s no you there. I want you. And I will write you so many fucking dead friend poems, that people will confuse my tongue with your tombstone and try to plant daisies in my throat before I ever write you an obituary while you’re still fucking here. So the answer to your question is “yes”. If you’re ever really gonna kill yourself, yes, please, call me.

Then just when I thought I was going to really break down for a good cry, I remembered a large bag of pistachio nuts in the back of the pantry. I don't know what made me think of them. I had hidden them beneath several packages of dried pasta. Sam liked pistachio nuts. I bought them for a cake recipe I had seen in Gourmet. I stood up like a sleepwalker, my hands empty of sheets or shoes. I would take care of all this once the cake was in the oven. The recipe was from several months ago. I didn't remember which issue. I would find it. I would bake a cake. My father liked exotic things. On the rare occasions we went out to dinner together over the years, he always wanted us to go to some little Ethiopian restaurant down a back alley or he would say he had to have Mongolian food. He would like this cake. It was Iranian. There was a full tablespoon of cardamom sifted in with the flour, and I could imagine that it would make the cake taste nearly peppered, which would serve to balance out all the salt. I stood in the kitchen, reading the magazine while the sharp husks of the nuts bit into the pads of my fingers. I rolled the nut meat between my palms until the bright spring green of the pistachios shone in my hands, a fist full of emeralds. I would grind the nuts into powder without letting them turn to paste. I would butter the parchment paper and line the bottom of the pan. It was the steps, the clear and simple rules baking, that soothed me. My father would love this cake, and my mother would find this cake interesting, and Sam wouldn't be crazy about it but he'd be hungry and have a slice anyway. Maybe I could convince Camille it wasn't a cake at all. Maybe I could bring them all together, or at least that's what I dreamed about while I measured out the oil.

And that had led to all the trouble with How to Dynamically Manage People for Dynamic Results in a Caring Empowering Way in Quite a Short Time Dynamically. Ponder didn't know when this book would be written, or even in which world it might be published, but it was obviously going to be popular because random trawls in the depths of L-space often turned up fragments. Perhaps it wasn't even just one book. And the fragments had been on Ponder's desk when Ridcully had been poking around. Unfortunately, like many people who are instinctively bad at something, the Archchancellor prided himself on how good at it he was. Ridcully was to management what King Herod was to the Bethlehem Playgroup Association. His mental approach to it could be visualized as a sort of business flowchart with, at the top, a circle entitled "Me, who does the telling" and, connected below it by a line, a large circle entitled "Everyone else." Until now this had worked quite well, because, although Ridcully was an impossible manager, the University was impossible to manage and so everything worked seamlessly. And it would have continued to do so if he hadn't suddenly started to see the point in preparing career development packages and, worst of all, job descriptions.

And you're thinking I just tossed out some casual phrase that you've heard from dozens of guys? Or maybe one in particular,who mattered enough to turn you into a cynic?" At the intensity of his tone she looked up. "Yeah.Something like that.After all, McCord,your reputation precedes you. You're not exactly shy with women. I'm sure you've used plenty of lines like that to get what you want." His eyes,steady on hers,were hot and fierce. His voice was equally fierce. "I'll admit that when I first saw you, my initial reaction was purely physical. A healthy combination of testosterone and lust.What guy could look at you and not feel what I felt? You're beautiful, and bright and independent.And did I mention beautiful?" That brought a smile to her eyes. "But the more I got to know you,the more I realized you weren't just a pretty package.I started learning that you were someone special.Someone I wanted to treat very carefully." "And now?" "I'm still battling lust." There was that grin,sending an arrow straight through her heart. "But there's more here.Much more." He stared at her mouth with naked hunger. "I've waited a long time for this,but now I'm going to have to kiss you.And when I do,I can't promise to stop." She stood very still,heart pounding. "How do you know I'll ask you to?" "Careful.Because unless you tell me to stop,you have to know where this is heading..." In reply she stood on tiptoe to brush her mouth to his,stopping his words. Stopping his heart. He drew in a deep breath and drew her a little away to stare into her eyes. "I hope you meant that." "With all my heart." "Thank God." He dragged her against him and covered her lips with his.Inside her mouth he whispered, "Because, baby,I mean this." She'd waited so long.So long.And it was worth all the time she'd spent waiting and wondering.Here was a man who knew how to kiss a woman and make her feel like the only one in the universe. This kiss was so hot,so hungry, she felt the rush of desire from the top of her head all the way to her toes.And still it spun on and on until she became lost in it. He changed the angle of the kiss and took it deeper until Marilee could feel her flesh heating, her bones melting like hot wax. She wanted to be sensible,to move slowly, but her mind refused to cooperate. With a single kiss her brain had been wiped clear of every thought but one.She wanted this man.Wanted him now.Desperately. When at last they came up for air, she put a hand to his chest. "I need a minute to catch my breath." "Okay." A second later he dragged her close. "Time's up." Her laughter turned into a sigh as he ran nibbling kisses down her throat until the blood was drumming in her temples.

You're in there somewhere." He tapped at her collarbone. "You'll pop out again when-Well,when the time is right. But for now,you've slipped entirely inside your past. Like a cute little turtle in a borrowed shell.Except it's more than that.When you're in Lys's body, your very beings are entwined, so all sorts of good stuff comes with the package.Her memories,her passions,her manners-lucky for you.Of course,you also have to grapple with her shortcomings.This one,if I recall,puts her foot in her mouth with some regularity.So watch out." "Amazing," Luce whispered. "So if I could just find Daniel,I'd be able to feel exactly what she feels toward him." "Sure,I guess,but you do realize that once I snap my fingers,Lys has obligations at this ball that don't include Daniel.This isn't really his scene,and by that I mean,no way the guards would let a poor stable boy in here." Luce didn't care about any of that. Poor stable boy or not,she would find him. She couldn't wait. Inside Lys's body she could even hold him, maybe even kiss him.The anticipation of it was almost overwhelming. "Hello?" Bill flicked a hard finger against her temple. "You ready yet? Get in there,see what you can see-then get out while the getting's good, if you know what I mean." Luce nodded.She straightened Lsys's black gown and held her head a little higher. "Snap to it." "And...go." Bill snapped his fingers.

More than anything, we have lost the cultural customs and traditions that bring extended families together, linking adults and children in caring relationships, that give the adult friends of parents a place in their children's lives. It is the role of culture to cultivate connections between the dependent and the dependable and to prevent attachment voids from occurring. Among the many reasons that culture is failing us, two bear mentioning. The first is the jarringly rapid rate of change in twentieth-century industrial societies. It requires time to develop customs and traditions that serve attachment needs, hundreds of years to create a working culture that serves a particular social and geographical environment. Our society has been changing much too rapidly for culture to evolve accordingly. There is now more change in a decade than previously in a century. When circumstances change more quickly than our culture can adapt to, customs and traditions disintegrate. It is not surprising that today's culture is failing its traditional function of supporting adult-child attachments. Part of the rapid change has been the electronic transmission of culture, allowing commercially blended and packaged culture to be broadcast into our homes and into the very minds of our children. Instant culture has replaced what used to be passed down through custom and tradition and from one generation to another. “Almost every day I find myself fighting the bubble-gum culture my children are exposed to,” said a frustrated father interviewed for this book. Not only is the content often alien to the culture of the parents but the process of transmission has taken grandparents out of the loop and made them seem sadly out of touch. Games, too, have become electronic. They have always been an instrument of culture to connect people to people, especially children to adults. Now games have become a solitary activity, watched in parallel on television sports-casts or engaged in in isolation on the computer. The most significant change in recent times has been the technology of communication — first the phone and then the Internet through e-mail and instant messaging. We are enamored of communication technology without being aware that one of its primary functions is to facilitate attachments. We have unwittingly put it into the hands of children who, of course, are using it to connect with their peers. Because of their strong attachment needs, the contact is highly addictive, often becoming a major preoccupation. Our culture has not been able to evolve the customs and traditions to contain this development, and so again we are all left to our own devices. This wonderful new technology would be a powerfully positive instrument if used to facilitate child-adult connections — as it does, for example, when it enables easy communication between students living away from home, and their parents. Left unchecked, it promotes peer orientation.

When the dress for Irex’s dinner party arrived wrapped in muslin and tied with twine, it was Arin who brought the package to Kestrel. She hadn’t seen him since the first green storm. She didn’t like to think about that day. It was her grief, she decided, that she didn’t want to remember. She was learning to live around it. She had returned to her music, and let that outings and lessons flow around the fact of Enai’s death, smoothing its jagged edges. She spent little time at the villa. She sent no invitations to Arin for Bite and Sting. If she went into society, she chose other escorts. When Arin stepped into her sitting room that was really a writing room, Kestrel set her book next to her on the divan and turned its spine so that he wouldn’t see the title. “Hmm,” Arin said, turning the packaged dress over in his hands. “What could this be?” “I am sure you know.” He pressed it between his fingers. “A very soft kind of weapon, I think.” “Why are you delivering my dress?” “I saw Lirah with it. I asked if I could bring it to you.” “And she let you, of course.” He lifted his brows at her tone. “She was busy. I thought she would be glad for one less thing to do.” “That was kind of you then,” Kestrel said, though she heard her voice indicate otherwise and was annoyed with herself. Slowly, he said, “What do you mean?” “I mean nothing.” “You asked me to be honest with you. Do you think I have been?” She remembered his harsh words during the storm. “Yes.” “Can I not ask the same thing of you?” The answer was no, no slave could ask anything of her. The answer was no, if he wanted her secret thoughts he could try to win them at Bite and Sting. But Kestrel swallowed a sudden flare of nervousness and admitted to herself that she valued his honesty--and her own, when she was around him. There was nothing wrong with speaking the truth. “I think that you are not fair to Lirah.” His brows drew together. “I don’t understand.” “It’s not fair for you to encourage Lirah when your heart is elsewhere.” He inhaled sharply. Kestrel thought that he might tell her it was no business of hers, for it was not, but then she saw that he wasn’t offended, only taken aback. He pulled up a chair in that possessive, natural way of his and sank into it, dropping the dress onto his knees. He studied her. She willed herself not to look away. “I hadn’t thought of Lirah like that.” Arin shook his head. “I’m not thinking clearly at all. I need to be more careful.” Kestrel supposed that she should feel reassured. Arin set the package on the divan where she sat. “A new dress means an event on the horizon.” “Yes, a dinner party. Lord Irex is hosting.” He frowned. “And you’re going?” She shrugged. “Do you need an escort?” Kestrel intended to say no, but became distracted by the determined set to Arin’s mouth. He looked almost…protective. She was surprised that he should look that way. She was confused, and perhaps this made her say, “To be honest, I would be glad for your company.” His eyes held hers. Then his gaze fell to the book by Kestrel’s side. Before she could stop him, he took it with a nimble hand and read the title. It was a Valorian history of its empire and wars. Arin’s face changed. He returned the book and left.

Our two taco specials get shoved up on the serving counter, crispy, cheesy goodness in brown plastic baskets lined with parchment paper, sour cream and guacamole exactly where they should be. On the side. There is a perfect ratio of sour cream, guac, and salsa on a shredded chicken tostada. No one can make it happen for you. Many restaurants have tried. All have failed. Only the mouth knows its own pleasure, and calibration like Taco Heaven cannot be mass produced. It simply cannot. Taco Heaven is a sensory explosion of flavor that defies logic. First, you have to eye the amount of spiced meat, shredded lettuce, chopped tomatoes, and tomatillos. You must consider the size and crispiness of the shells. Some people–I call them blasphemers–like soft tacos. I am sitting across from Exhibit A. We won’t talk about soft tacos. They don’t make it to Taco Heaven. People who eat soft tacos live in Taco Purgatory, never fully understanding their moral failings, repeating the same mistakes again and again for all eternity. Like Perky and dating. Once you inventory your meat, lettuce, tomato, and shell quality, the real construction begins. Making your way to Taco Heaven is like a mechanical engineer building a bridge in your mouth. Measurements must be exact. Payloads are all about formulas and precision. One miscalculation and it all fails. Taco Death is worse than Taco Purgatory, because the only reason for Taco Death is miscalculation. And that’s all on you. “Oh, God,” Fiona groans through a mouthful of abomination. “You’re doing it, aren’t you?” “Doing what?” I ask primly, knowing damn well what she’s talking about. “You treat eating tacos like you’re the star of some Mythbusters show.” “Do not.” “Do too.” “Even if I do–and I am notconceding the point–it would be a worthwhile venture.” “You are as weird about your tacos as Perky is about her coffee.” “Take it back! I am not that weird.” “You are.” “Am not.” “This is why Perky and I swore we would never come here with you again.” Fiona grabs my guacamole and smears the rounded scoop all over the outside of her soft taco. I shriek. “How can you do that?” I gasp, the murder of the perfect ratio a painful, almost palpable blow. The mashed avocado has a death rattle that rings in my ears. Smug, tight lips give me a grimace. “See? A normal person would shout, ‘Hey! That’s mine!’ but you’re more offended that I’ve desecrated my inferior taco wrapping with the wrong amount of guac.” “Because it’s wrong.” “You should have gone to MIT, Mal. You need a job that involves nothing but pure math for the sake of calculating stupid shit no one else cares about.” “So glad to know that a preschool teacher holds such high regard for math,” I snark back. And MIT didn’t give me the kind of merit aid package I got from Brown, I don’t add. “Was that supposed to sting?” She takes the rest of my guacamole, grabs a spoon, and starts eating it straight out of the little white paper scoop container thing. “How can you do that? It’s like people who dip their french fries in mayonnaise.” I shudder, standing to get in line to buy more guac. “I dip my french fries in mayo!” “More evidence of your madness, Fi. Get help now. It may not be too late.” I stick my finger in her face. “And by the way, you and Perky talk about my taco habits behind my back? Some friends!” I hmph and turn toward the counter.

Around Christmas 2003, we visited Chris’s parents in Texas. I found myself exceptionally hungry, though I couldn’t figure out why. When we came back to California, I just felt something was off. Could I be…pregnant? Nah. I bought a pregnancy test just in case. Chris and I had always planned to have children, but we weren’t in a rush about it. In fact, we had only recently decided to be “a little less careful.” It was a compromise between our spontaneous impulses and our careful planning instincts, which we both shared. We figured, if it happens somewhere in the next year… I was upstairs in the house working when I decided to take a break and check things out. Wow. WOW!!! Chris happened to be home fiddling with something in the garage. I ran downstairs, holding the stick in my hand. When I got there, I held it up, waving. “Hey, babe,” he said, looking at me as if I were waving a sword. “Come here,” I said. “I have to show you something.” He came over. I showed him the stick. “Okay?” “Look!” “What is it?” “Look at this!” Obviously, he wasn’t familiar with home pregnancy tests. Maybe that’s a guy thing-given that the tests reveal either your worst nightmare or one of the most exciting events of your life. I’d wager every woman in America knows what they are and how they work. Slowly it dawned on him. “Oh my God,” he said, stunned. “Are you…?” “Yes!” We confirmed it at the doctor’s soon after. I know you’re supposed to wait something like twelve weeks before telling anyone-there’s so much that can go wrong-but we couldn’t keep that kind of secret to ourselves for more than a few days. We ended up sending packages with an ultrasound and baby booties-one pink, one blue-to our parents, telling them we had a late Christmas surprise and to call us so we could be on the phone when they opened them.

Managerial abilities, bureaucratic skills, technical expertise, and political talent are all necessary, but they can be applied only to goals that have already been defined by military policies, broad and narrow. And those policies can be only as good as strategy, operational art of war, tactical thought, and plain military craft that have gone into their making. At present, the defects of structure submerge or distort strategy and operational art, they out rightly suppress tactical ingenuity, and they displace the traditional insights and rules of military craft in favor of bureaucratic preferences, administrative convenience, and abstract notions of efficiency derived from the world of business management. First there is the defective structure for making of military decisions under the futile supervision of the civilian Defense Department; then come the deeply flawed defense policies and military choices, replete with unnecessary costs and hidden risks; finally there come the undoubted managerial abilities, bureaucratic skills, technical expertise, and political talents, all applied to achieve those flawed policies and to implement those flawed choices. By this same sequence was the fatally incomplete Maginot Line built, as were all the Maginot Lines of history, each made no better by good government, technical talent, careful accounting, or sheer hard work. Hence the futility of all the managerial innovations tried in the Pentagon over the years. In the purchasing of weapons, for example, “total package” procurement, cost plus incentive contracting, “firm fixed price” purchasing have all been introduced with much fanfare, only to be abandoned, retried, and repudiated once again. And each time a new Secretary of Defense arrives, with him come the latest batch of managerial innovations, many of them aimed at reducing fraud, waste, and mismanagement-the classic trio endlessly denounced in Congress, even though they account for mere percentage points in the total budget, and have no relevance at all to the failures of combat. The persistence of the Administrator’s Delusion has long kept the Pentagon on a treadmill of futile procedural “reforms” that have no impact at all on the military substance of our defense. It is through strategy, operational art, tactical ingenuity, and military craft that the large savings can be made, and the nation’s military strength greatly increased, but achieving long-overdue structural innovations, from the central headquarters to the combat forces, from the overhead of bases and installations to the current purchase of new weapons. Then, and only then, will it be useful to pursue fraud, waste, and mismanagement, if only to save a few dollars more after the billions have already been saved. At present, by contrast, the Defense Department administers ineffectively, while the public, Congress, and the media apply their energies to such petty matters as overpriced spare parts for a given device in a given weapon of a given ship, overlooking at the same time the multibillion dollar question of money spent for the Navy as a whole instead of the Army – whose weakness diminishes our diplomatic weight in peacetime, and which could one day cause us to resort to nuclear weapons in the face of imminent debacle. If we had a central military authority and a Defense Department capable of strategy, we should cheerfully tolerate much fraud, waste, and mismanagement; but so long as there are competing military bureaucracies organically incapable of strategic combat, neither safety nor economy will be ensured, even if we could totally eliminate every last cent of fraud, waste, and mismanagement.

Lemon Barley Chicken Soup: The first thing you have to do is make chicken broth. Over here in France, I can’t seem to find acceptable packaged chicken broth, so I make it from scratch; it’s really not tricky. Remove the skin from four or five chicken thighs. Put them in a big pot, along with a cut-up onion, a carrot or two, some celery, salt and pepper, and lots of water. Cook this mélange very, very slowly (bubbles just rising) for a few hours (at least three). When you’ve got the broth under way, cook the barley: take 1 cup of barley and simmer it slowly in 4 to 5 cups of water. When it’s soft, drain the barley, but reserve any remaining barley water so you can add it to the broth. When the broth is ready, skim off the froth. Then remove the chicken thighs and when they’re cool enough, strip the meat off the bones, saving it for the soup. Strain the broth and put it to the side. Now that you’ve got chicken broth, it’s time for the soup itself—the rest is even easier. Cut up some leeks, if you have them, though an onion works just fine, too. If you’ve got leeks, put some butter in your (now emptied) stockpot over low heat; use olive oil instead if you have onions. While the leeks/onions are softening, finely mince a knob of ginger and 2 or 3 garlic cloves. If you can get some, you can also crush some lemongrass and put it in at this point. I never seem to cook it right (it always stays tough), but it adds great flavor. Dump all that in with the softened leeks/onions. Cook until you can smell it, but take care to avoid browning. Then add the cut-up chicken and the barley, and pour in the broth. Simmer it over low heat for about half an hour. Add salt to taste. To get a great lemon kick, squeeze 2 lemons and beat the juice well with 2 egg yolks. With the pot removed from the heat source, briskly whisk this mixture into the soup, being careful that the eggs don’t separate and curdle. Then return the pot to the heat and stir vigorously for a bit, until the eggs are cooked. This soup is excellent for sick people (ginger, hot lemon, and chicken; need I say more?) and a tonic for sad people (total comfort). And it’s even better the next day.

Convinced that struggle was the crucible of character, Rockefeller faced a delicate task in raising his children. He wanted to accumulate wealth while inculcating in them the values of his threadbare boyhood. The first step in saving them from extravagance was keeping them ignorant of their father’s affluence. Until they were adults, Rockefeller’s children never visited his office or refineries, and even then they were accompanied by company officials, never Father. At home, Rockefeller created a make-believe market economy, calling Cettie the “general manager” and requiring the children to keep careful account books.16They earned pocket money by performing chores and received two cents for killing flies, ten cents for sharpening pencils, five cents per hour for practicing their musical instruments, and a dollar for repairing vases. They were given two cents per day for abstaining from candy and a dime bonus for each consecutive day of abstinence. Each toiled in a separate patch of the vegetable garden, earning a penny for every ten weeds they pulled up. John Jr. got fifteen cents an hour for chopping wood and ten cents per day for superintending paths. Rockefeller took pride in training his children as miniature household workers. Years later, riding on a train with his thirteen-year-old daughter, he told a traveling companion, “This little girl is earning money already. You never could imagine how she does it. I have learned what my gas bills should average when the gas is managed with care, and I have told her that she can have for pin money all that she will save every month on this amount, so she goes around every night and keeps the gas turned down where it is not needed.”17 Rockefeller never tired of preaching economy and whenever a package arrived at home, he made a point of saving the paper and string. Cettie was equally vigilant. When the children clamored for bicycles, John suggested buying one for each child. “No,” said Cettie, “we will buy just one for all of them.” “But, my dear,” John protested, “tricycles do not cost much.” “That is true,” she replied. “It is not the cost. But if they have just one they will learn to give up to one another.”18 So the children shared a single bicycle. Amazingly enough, the four children probably grew up with a level of creature comforts not that far above what Rockefeller had known as a boy.

I am dreaming of happy Pandas. A whole field full of happy Pandas. I am beside myself. I am entirely myself. I am going to set myself on fire. Just you wait and see. I will destroy. You will obey. That's the way it has to be. You'll make the lemonade and I'll ensure that no other lemonade stand stands in our way. We will wear terrific Panda suits. We will have a secret hand shake. We'll stick to the plan. I will destroy. You will obey. That's the way it's going to have to be. Pouting about it won't change anything. Pouting about it will only make you look like an unhappy Panda and we can't be having that. So you should think before you speak. You should consider your options before you decide to become an unhappy Panda. Because you don't want to know what happens to Pandas that aren't happy. So you'd best be careful. Don't worry though. This is just us talking. This is just us coming together at the head. Like Siamese twins, like two happy peas in a pod. You would not like it if we were to do the other routine. There are no happy Pandas to be had in that one. Not at all. No mention of Pandas whatsoever. Just unpleasantness that I would rather avoid. So keep smiling. Always remember to keep smiling. Whatever will be, will be. There is nothing more pathetic than a sore loser. So keep smiling. Everything will take care of itself. Thank goodness. I'm tired now. I am going to go to bed. I don't much feel like being your friend anymore. The good old days are gone. Best to get on board with the depravity of the here and now. The world consumes, the world revolves, the world will someday come to and end. If not by us, then pulverized by the sun. The mysteries of the universe revealed with no time to study the data and reach an outcome, the sun will go out and all creatures great and small will be helpless against the unknowns of life. So why are you so worried? Why don't you go have some drinks, get laid, get back, get something. After everything has been done, been bought, sold, produced, consumed, recycled, re-packaged, and re-sold, you will have gained nothing by floundering about trying to change things that cannot be changed. The little things exist only so that the important ones never get touched upon. That's why you can wear leather shoes and, at the same time, refuse to eat beef. Because we are all, every one of us, ridiculous. And we've elected you our leader. I am going to go lay in bed and wait for the hands of impossibility to come strangle me. I am going to smile at my ceiling and sing the song of our undoing. I will wear my Panda pajamas. I will think of you often when I get to where it is that I'm going. Everything will be fine. Just you wait and see. Just you wait and see.

It's funny, you know. We're free. We make choices. We weigh things in our minds, consider everything carefully, use all the tools of logic and education. And in the end, what we mostly do is what we have no choice but to do. Makes you think, why bother? But you bother because you do, that's why. Because you're a DNA-brand computer running Childhood 1.0 software. They update the software but the changes are always just around the edges. You have the brain you have, the intelligence, the talents, the strengths and weaknesses you have, from the moment they take you out of the box and throw away the Styrofoam padding. But you have the fears you picked up along the way. The terrors of age four or six or eight are never suspended, just layered over. The dread I'd felt so recently, a dread that should be so much greater because the facts had been so much more horrible, still could not diminish the impact of memories that had been laid down long years before. It's that way all through life, I guess. I have a relative who says she still gets depressed every September because in the back of her mind it's time for school to start again. She's my great-aunt. The woman is sixty-seven and still bumming over the first day of school five-plus decades ago. It's sad in a way because the pleasures of life get old and dated fast. The teenage me doesn't get the jolt the six-year-old me got from a package of Pop Rocks. The me I've become doesn't rush at the memories of the day I skated down a parking ramp however many years ago. Pleasure fades, gets old, gets thrown out with last year's fad. Fear, guilt, all that stuff stays fresh. Maybe that's why people get so enraged when someone does something to a kid. Hurt a kid and he hurts forever. Maybe an adult can shake it off. Maybe. But with a kid, you hurt them and it turns them, shapes them, becomes part of the deep, underlying software of their lives. No delete. I don't know. I don't know much. I feel like I know less all the time. Rate I'm going, by the time I'm twenty-one I won't know a damned thing. But still I was me. Had no choice, I guess. I don't know, maybe that's bull and I was just feeling sorry for myself. But, bottom line, I dried my eyes, and I pushed my dirty, greasy hair back off my face, and I started off down the road again because whatever I was, whoever I was, however messed up I might be, I wasn't leaving April behind. Maybe it was all an act programmed into me from the get-go, or maybe it grew up out of some deep-buried fear, I mean maybe at some level I was really just as pathetic as Senna thought I was. Maybe I was a fake. Whatever. Didn't matter. I was going back to the damned dragon, and then I was getting April out, and everything and everyone else could go screw themselves. One good thing: For now at least, I was done being scared.

Without thinking, she delivered a stinging slap, all her hurt and disappointment behind the impact. The imprint of her hand on his cheek shocked her. And though she immediately regretted her childish action, pride forbade her to own up to it. "Mind your manners, next time, Sinclair!" Across the yard, Luter Hicks halted and burst into guffaws. "Guess she told you, lapdog! Hey, honey," he called to Willow, "if he ain't satisfying you, how 'bout lettin' me warm your bed tonight?" An angry growl rolled out of Rider's throat. He pulled Willow up on her tiptoes, mashing her breasts against his hard chest. His fingers plowed through her thick tresses, knocking her bonnet off and scattering her hair pins. Then clasping her chin between his thumb and fingers, he tipped her head back and took fierce possession of her mouth. When he finally released her lips, he set her down a little harder than necessary. "I'll kill the first man who even blinks at you," he ground out loud enough for Hicks to hear. Then in a low, no-nonsense voice,meant for her ears alone, he ordered, "Kiss me and make it look good!" Willow glanced over at Hick's eager face and cringed. Her pride be damned! Sinclair was by far the lesser evil. She swept her arms around his neck. "Whatever you say...lover," she hissed in his ear. Standing on tiptoe again, she slowly brought his head down and pasted her lips to his. But he would have none of her stiff-lipped kiss and increased the pressure on her mouth until she opened to his brazen tongue. As the kiss deepened, he spread one big hand at the base of her spine and molded her stomach against his hard, hot need. Willow's blood sang, her anger instantly gone in the heat of the moment. "Mr. Sinclair!" Miriam interrupted in a berating tone. "You degrade this young lady with your public display. Unhand her at once!" Without his supporting arms, Willow's weak knees barely held her upright. She stumbled backwards, thoroughly stunned by her backfiring emotions. A loud crash snapped her to her senses when Luther threw his plate against the house and stomped off to the bunkouse. Rider collected himself and stooped to pick up Willow's discarded bonnet. Carefully brushing the dust off, he handed it to her without a word. Willow took her hat, gave him a perfunctory nod, and ground her heel into his toe as she pivoted to enter the house. Unaware of the young man's pained expression, Miriam followed on the girl's heels. "Talk about circuses!" she exclaimed, closing the door behind them. "It was just an act for Hick's benefit," Willow defended. Feeling the need to escape Miriam's all-too-knowing glance,she headed down the hall to her room. A heavy boot kicked at the door. Miriam opened it and Rider limped in. "Where do you want these?" he growled testily from behind a tower of packages. "Put them on the settee for now, thank you," Miriam said. "I'd have you carry them back to Willow's room but it isn't a healthy place for you right now." Rider only grunted,dumped the bundles, and returned to the wagon for another armload.

A box sat on top of Jade’s pillows, wrapped in green paper with a white bow. He frowned slightly. Who would’ve left a gift on Jade’s bed? “You have a present.” “What?” Jade turned her head when he gestured toward the box. Confusion filled her eyes. She sat up and reached for the box. “I don’t understand.” Zach sat by her again and wrapped his arm around her waist. “Maybe there’s a card.” After searching beneath the large white bow, Jade pulled out a small envelope. Zach looked over her shoulder as she withdrew the card and read it aloud. “‘To Mom and Zach. Have fun tonight. Bre.’” Zach chuckled, both at Breanna’s card and at Jade’s blush. “Your daughter has quite a sense of humor.” “My daughter deserves to be spanked.” She lifted the box onto her lap. “I’m afraid to open it.” “Would you like me to? It’s addressed to both of us.” “I’m even more afraid for you to open it.” “Go ahead. It can’t be that bad.” “You don’t know my daughter.” Untying the bow, Jade raised the lid and pulled apart the bright green tissue paper. Several sex toys lay in the box. She gasped. “Oh, my God. I can’t believe she did this!” She started to push the tissue paper back over the contents, but Zach held her hand to stop her. “Wait. Let’s see what she bought.” “I am going to kill her, after I beat her.” Chuckling, Zach dug through the box, lifting the different items as he came to them. “Cock ring. Chocolate body paint. Stay-hard gel.” He looked into Jade’s eyes. “I don’t think I’ll need that tonight.” Her cheeks turned a deep pink. He dropped a kiss on her lips before beginning to explore again. “Anal beads. Ben-Wa balls. Fur-lined handcuffs. Nipple clamps. Lemon-flavored nipple cream.” His gaze dipped to her breasts. “Interesting.” She huffed out a breath. “Can we close the box now?” “Not yet. I like it when you blush.” Zach grinned when Jade scowled at him. “This is completely spoiling the mood.” “I won’t have any problem getting hard again.” “Zach!” Ignoring her outraged tone, he continued to sift through the items. “Lifelike dildo.” He held it up to eye level. “Close, but not quite as big as I am.” Jade covered her eyes with one hand. “I don’t believe this,” she muttered. “Butt plug. Wait, I’m wrong. It’s a vibrating butt plug. Very interesting. I hope you have batteries. Never mind. Breanna included several packages.” “Okay, that’s enough.” Jade tried to jerk the box out of his reach, but Zach held on to the side. “There’re only a couple more items. We might as well see what they are.” “I don’t care what they are.” “You might care about one of them.” Zach held up a large box of condoms. “Oh.” He turned the box in his hand. “I’m flattered, but I don’t think I’ll be able to use one hundred of these tonight.” “One hundred?” “All different types, sizes, and colors.” Jade laughed. “Oh, Bre.” She pushed her hair behind one ear. “What’s the last thing?” “Cherry-flavored lubricant. It looks like she thought of everything.” “You must think my daughter is crazy.” “I think your daughter loves you very much and wants you to be happy.” “That’s true. But we won’t use all this…stuff.” “Who says we won’t?