Customized Birthday Quotes

CUSTOMER: Do you have any Robin Hood stories where he doesn’t steal from the rich? My husband’s called Robin and I’d like to buy him a copy for his birthday, but he’s a banker, so ...

Lowering his voice, he said, "In America we have a custom. When you're given presents for your birthday, you're supposed to open them and say thank you." Tatiana nervously looked down at the present. "Thank you." Gifts were not something she was used to. Wrapped gifts? Unheard of, even when they came wrapped only in plain brown paper. "No. Open first. Then say thank you." She smiled. "What do I do? Do I take the paper off?" "Yes. You tear it off." "And then what?" "And then you throw it away." "The whole present or just the paper?" Slowly he said, "Just the paper." "But you wrapped it so nicely. Why would I throw it away?" "It's just paper." "If it's just paper, why did you wrap it?" "Will you please just open my present?" said Alexander

It was generally agreed that a coffin-size studio on Avenue D was preferable to living in one of the boroughs. Moving from one Brooklyn or Staten Island neighborhood to another was fine, but unless you had children to think about, even the homeless saw it as a step down to leave Manhattan. Customers quitting the island for Astoria or Cobble Hill would claim to welcome the change of pace, saying it would be nice to finally have a garden or live a little closer to the airport. They’d put a good face one it, but one could always detect an underlying sense of defeat. The apartments might be bigger and cheaper in other places, but one could never count on their old circle of friend making the long trip to attend a birthday party. Even Washington Heights was considered a stretch. People referred to it as Upstate New York, though it was right there in Manhattan.

But let me tell you something, girl,” she goes on, speaking low and discreet for the few customers in the place. “What you feel for him or anyone else isn’t what you need. This—” she taps my chest over my heart, “what you’re feeling right now—is the best thing that can happen to you. Because when all the pieces of your heart start to come back together, and they will, they’ll be stronger. And much tougher for someone to pierce.

And the plunder was not just of Prince alone. Think of all the love poured into him. Think of the tuitions for Montessori and music lessons. Think of the gasoline expended, the treads worn carting him to football games, basketball tournaments, and Little League. Think of all the time spent regulating sleepovers. Think of the surprise birthday parties, the daycare, and the reference checks on babysitters. Think of World Book and Childcraft. Think of checks written for family photos. Think of credit cards charged for vacations. Think of soccer balls, science kits, chemistry sets, racetracks, and model trains. Think of all the embraces, all the private jokes, customs, greetings, names, dreams, all the shared knowledge and capacity of a black family injected into that vessel of flesh and bone. And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and all its holy contents, all that had gone into him, sent flowing back to the earth.

When I worked in a second-hand bookshop — so easily pictured, if you don't work in one, as a kind of paradise where charming old gentlemen browse eternally among calf-bound folios — the thing that chiefly struck me was the rarity of really bookish people. Our shop had an exceptionally interesting stock, yet I doubt whether ten per cent of our customers knew a good book from a bad one. First edition snobs were much commoner than lovers of literature, but oriental students haggling over cheap textbooks were commoner still, and vague-minded women looking for birthday presents for their nephews were commonest of all.

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This database enabled Johnson to keep in touch with all his customers, at all times, and to keep them all feeling special. He sent them Christmas cards. He sent them birthday cards. He sent them notes of congratulation after they completed a big race or marathon.

Tate gave me your birthday present when you were here before,” she confessed. “I put it on top of the cabinet in the dining room and forgot to give it to you. Here, I’ll fetch it!” Cecily felt as if she’d had the wind knocked out of her just at the sound of his name. She could almost taste him on her mouth, feel the fierce hunger of his body as he pressed her into the wall… “He remembered my birthday,” she said faintly, touched. “He always remembers it, but he said you weren’t speaking then.” She handed the small box to Cecily. “Go on,” she said when the younger woman hesitated. “Open it.” Cecily’s hands went cold and trembled as she tore off the wrappings. It was a jewelry box. I wasn’t a ring, of course, she told herself as she forced up the hinged lid. He certainly wouldn’t buy her a… “The beast!” she exclaimed. “Oh, how could he?” Leta looked over her shoulder at what was in the box and dissolved into gales of laughter. Cecily glared at her. “It isn’t funny.” “Oh, yes it is!” Cecily looked back down at the silver crab with its ruby eyes and pearl claws, and one corner of her mouth tugged up. “He is pretty, isn’t he?” She took the pin out of the box and studied it. It wasn’t silver. It was white gold. Those were real rubies and pearls, too. This hadn’t been an impulse purchase. He’d had this custom-made for her. Tears stung her eyes. It was the sort of present you gave to someone who meant something to you. She remembered his passionate kisses, and wished with all her heart that he’d meant those, too. She pinned the small crab onto the collar of her blouse and knew that she’d treasure it as long as she lived.

Think of all the love poured into him. Think of the tuitions for Montessori and music lessons. Think of the gasoline expended, the treads worn carting him to football games, basketball tournaments, and Little League. Think of the time spent regulating sleepovers. Think of the surprise birthday parties, the daycare, and the reference checks on babysitters. Think of World Book and Childcraft. Think of checks written for family photos. Think of credit cards charged for vacations. Think of soccer balls, science kits, chemistry sets, racetracks, and model trains. Think of all the embraces, all the private jokes, customs, greetings, names, dreams, all the shared knowledge and capacity of a black family injected into that vessel of flesh and bone. And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and all its holy contents, all that had gone into him, sent flowing back to the earth. Think of your mother, who had no father. And your grandmother, who was abandoned by her father. And your grandfather, who was left behind by his father. And think of how Prince's daughter was now drafted into those solemn ranks and deprived of her birthright — that vessel which was her father, which brimmed with twenty-five years of love and was the investment of her grandparents and was to be her legacy.

The best thing is when a customer comes back and praises the book you recommended. I can’t get enough of that. Boy: I saved my lawn-mowing money to buy this book. Me: I had no idea that kids still did this. Boy: Kids still pull up the couch cushions too. For change. See? He held up a baggie of coins and small bills. Me: I’ll be hornswoggled. Teen Girl: Are you still open? Oh, thank god. I ran here. I promised myself. Me: Promised yourself what? Teen Girl: This book. It is my birthday and this is my present to myself. She holds up Joan Didion’s biography. For the rest of the week I enjoy this moment.

The conduct of a new sedoretu is to some extent, and wisely, prescribed by custom and sanctioned by religion. The first night after the ceremony of marriage belongs to the Morning and Evening couples; the second night to the Day and Night couples. Thereafter the four spouses may join as and when they please, but always and only by invitation given and accepted, and the arrangements are to be known to all four. Four souls and bodies and all the years of their four lives to come are in the balance in each of those decisions and invitations; passion, negative and positive, must find its channels, and trust must be established, lest the whole structure fail to found itself solidly, or destroy itself in selfishness and jealousy and grief.

And it occurred to me then that you would not escape, that there were awful men who’d laid plans for you, and I could not stop them. Prince Jones was the superlative of all my fears.And if he, good Christian, scion of a striving class, patron saint of the twice as good, could be forever bound, who then could not? And the plunder was not just of Prince alone. Think of all the love poured into him. Think of the tuitions for Montessori and music lessons. Think of the gasoline expended, the treads worn carting him to football games, basketball tournaments, and Little League. Think of the time spent regulating sleepovers. Think of the surprise birthday parties, the daycare, and the reference checks on babysitters. Think of World Book and Childcraft. Think of checks written for family photos. Think of credit cards charged for vacations. Think of soccer balls, science kits, chemistry sets, racetracks, and model trains. Think of all the embraces, all the private jokes, customs, greetings, names, dreams, all the shared knowledge and capacity of a black family injected into that vessel of flesh and bone. And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and all its holy contents, all that had gone into him, sent flowing back to the earth.

It is already the fashion to diminish Eliot by calling him derivative, the mouthpiece of Pound, and so forth; and yet if one wanted to understand the apocalypse of early modernism in its true complexity it would be Eliot, I fancy, who would demand one's closest attention. He was ready to rewrite the history of all that interested him in order to have past and present conform; he was a poet of apocalypse, of the last days and the renovation, the destruction of the earthly city as a chastisement of human presumption, but also of empire. Tradition, a word we especially associate with this modernist, is for him the continuity of imperial deposits; hence the importance in his thought of Virgil and Dante. He saw his age as a long transition through which the elect must live, redeeming the time. He had his demonic host, too; the word 'Jew' remained in lower case through all the editions of the poems until the last of his lifetime, the seventy-fifth birthday edition of 1963. He had a persistent nostalgia for closed, immobile hierarchical societies. If tradition is, as he said in After Strange Gods--though the work was suppressed--'the habitual actions, habits and customs' which represent the kinship 'of the same people living in the same place' it is clear that Jews do not have it, but also that practically nobody now does. It is a fiction, a fiction cousin to a myth which had its effect in more practical politics. In extenuation it might be said that these writers felt, as Sartre felt later, that in a choice between Terror and Slavery one chooses Terror, 'not for its own sake, but because, in this era of flux, it upholds the exigencies proper to the aesthetics of Art.' The fictions of modernist literature were revolutionary, new, though affirming a relation of complementarity with the past. These fictions were, I think it is clear, related to others, which helped to shape the disastrous history of our time. Fictions, notably the fiction of apocalypse, turn easily into myths; people will live by that which was designed only to know by. Lawrence would be the writer to discuss here, if there were time; apocalypse works in Woman in Love, and perhaps even in Lady Chatterley's Lover, but not n Apocalypse, which is failed myth. It is hard to restore the fictive status of what has become mythical; that, I take it, is what Mr. Saul Bellow is talking about in his assaults on wastelandism, the cant of alienation. In speaking of the great men of early modernism we have to make very subtle distinctions between the work itself, in which the fictions are properly employed, and obiter dicta in which they are not, being either myths or dangerous pragmatic assertions. When the fictions are thus transformed there is not only danger but a leak, as it were, of reality; and what we feel about. all these men at times is perhaps that they retreated inso some paradigm, into a timeless and unreal vacuum from which all reality had been pumped. Joyce, who was a realist, was admired by Eliot because he modernized myth, and attacked by Lewis because he concerned himself with mess, the disorders of common perception. But Ulysses ,alone of these great works studies and develops the tension between paradigm and reality, asserts the resistance of fact to fiction, human freedom and unpredictability against plot. Joyce chooses a Day; it is a crisis ironically treated. The day is full of randomness. There are coincidences, meetings that have point, and coincidences which do not. We might ask whether one of the merits of the book is not its lack of mythologizing; compare Joyce on coincidence with the Jungians and their solemn concordmyth, the Principle of Synchronicity. From Joyce you cannot even extract a myth of Negative Concord; he shows us fiction fitting where it touches. And Joyce, who probably knew more about it than any of the others, was not at tracted by the intellectual opportunities or the formal elegance of fascism.

Saturday is birthday cake day. During the week, the panadería is all strong coffee and pan dulce. But on weekends, it's sprinkle cookies and pink cake. By ten or eleven this morning, we'll get the first rush of mothers picking up yellow boxes in between buying balloons and paper streamers. In the back kitchen, my father hums along with the radio as he shapes the pastry rounds of ojos de buey, the centers giving off the smell of orange and coconut. It may be so early the birds haven't even started up yet, but with enough of my mother's coffee and Mariachi Los Camperos, my father is as awake as if it were afternoon. While he fills the bakery cases, my mother does the delicate work of hollowing out the piñata cakes, and when her back is turned, I rake my fingers through the sprinkle canisters. During open hours, most of my work is filling bakery boxes and ringing up customers (when it's busy) or washing dishes and windexing the glass cases (when it's not). But on birthday cake days, we're busy enough that I get to slide sheet cakes from the oven and cover them in pink frosting and tiny round nonpareils, like they're giant circus-animal cookies. I get to press hundreds-and-thousands into the galletas de grajea, the round, rainbow-sprinkle-covered cookies that were my favorite when I was five. My mother finishes hollowing two cake halves, fills them with candy- green, yellow, and pink this time- and puts them back together. Her piñatas are half our Saturday cake orders, both birthday girls and grandfathers delighting at the moment of seeing M&M's or gummy worms spill out. She covers them with sugar-paste ruffles or coconut to look like the tiny paper flags on a piñata, or frosting and a million rainbow sprinkles.

In the future that globalists and feminists have imagined, for most of us there will only be more clerkdom and masturbation. There will only be more apologizing, more submission, more asking for permission to be men. There will only be more examinations, more certifications, mandatory prerequisites, screening processes, background checks, personality tests, and politicized diagnoses. There will only be more medication. There will be more presenting the secretary with a cup of your own warm urine. There will be mandatory morning stretches and video safety presentations and sign-off sheets for your file. There will be more helmets and goggles and harnesses and bright orange vests with reflective tape. There can only be more counseling and sensitivity training. There will be more administrative hoops to jump through to start your own business and keep it running. There will be more mandatory insurance policies. There will definitely be more taxes. There will probably be more Byzantine sexual harassment laws and corporate policies and more ways for women and protected identity groups to accuse you of misconduct. There will be more micro-managed living, pettier regulations, heavier fines, and harsher penalties. There will be more ways to run afoul of the law and more ways for society to maintain its pleasant illusions by sweeping you under the rug. In 2009 there were almost five times more men either on parole or serving prison terms in the United States than were actively serving in all of the armed forces.[64] If you’re a good boy and you follow the rules, if you learn how to speak passively and inoffensively, if you can convince some other poor sleepwalking sap that you are possessed with an almost unhealthy desire to provide outstanding customer service or increase operational efficiency through the improvement of internal processes and effective organizational communication, if you can say stupid shit like that without laughing, if your record checks out and your pee smells right—you can get yourself a J-O-B. Maybe you can be the guy who administers the test or authorizes the insurance policy. Maybe you can be the guy who helps make some soulless global corporation a little more money. Maybe you can get a pat on the head for coming up with the bright idea to put a bunch of other guys out of work and outsource their boring jobs to guys in some other place who are willing to work longer hours for less money. Whatever you do, no matter what people say, no matter how many team-building activities you attend or how many birthday cards you get from someone’s secretary, you will know that you are a completely replaceable unit of labor in the big scheme of things.

In 1990, Elizabeth Newton earned a Ph.D. in psychology at Stanford by studying a simple game in which she assigned people to one of two roles: “tappers” or “listeners.” Tappers received a list of twenty-five well-known songs, such as “Happy Birthday to You” and “The StarSpangled Banner.” Each tapper was asked to pick a song and tap out the rhythm to a listener (by knocking on a table). The listener’s job was to guess the song, based on the rhythm being tapped. Over the course of Newton’s experiment, 120 songs were tapped out. Listeners guessed only 2.5 percent of the songs: 3 out of 120. But here’s what made the result worthy of a dissertation in psychology. Before the listeners guessed the name of the song, Newton asked the tappers to predict the odds that the listeners would guess correctly. They predicted that the odds were 50 percent. The tappers got their message across 1 time in 40, but they thought they were getting their message across 1 time in 2. Why? When a tapper taps, she is hearing the song in her head. Go ahead and try it for yourself — tap out “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It’s impossible to avoid hearing the tune in your head. Meanwhile, the listeners can’t hear that tune — all they can hear is a bunch of disconnected taps, like a kind of bizarre Morse Code. In the experiment, tappers are flabbergasted at how hard the listeners seem to be working to pick up the tune. Isn’t the song obvious? The tappers’ expressions, when a listener guesses “Happy Birthday to You” for “The Star-Spangled Banner,” are priceless: How could you be so stupid? It’s hard to be a tapper. The problem is that tappers have been given knowledge (the song title) that makes it impossible for them to imagine what it’s like to lack that knowledge. When they’re tapping, they can’t imagine what it’s like for the listeners to hear isolated taps rather than a song. This is the Curse of Knowledge. Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. Our knowledge has “cursed” us. And it becomes difficult for us to share our knowledge with others, because we can’t readily re-create our listeners’ state of mind. The tapper/listener experiment is reenacted every day across the world. The tappers and listeners are CEOs and frontline employees, teachers and students, politicians and voters, marketers and customers, writers and readers. All of these Groups rely on ongoing communication, but, like the tappers and listeners, they suffer from enormous information imbalances. When a CEO discusses “unlocking shareholder value,” there is a tune playing in her head that the employees can’t hear.

9Then the chief cupbearer told his dream to Joseph. He said to him, “In my dream, there was a vine in front of me. 10On the vine were three branches. It had barely budded, when out came its blossoms and its clusters ripened into grapes. 11Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand, and I took the grapes, pressed them into Pharaoh’s cup, and placed the cup in Pharaoh’s hand.” 12Joseph said to him, “This is its interpretation: The three branches are three days. 13In three days Pharaoh will pardon you* and restore you to your post; you will place Pharaoh’s cup in his hand, as was your custom formerly when you were his cupbearer. 14But think of me when all is well with you again, and do me the kindness of mentioning me to Pharaoh, so as to free me from this place. 15For in truth, I was kidnapped from the land of the Hebrews; nor have I done anything here that they should have put me in the dungeon.” 16When the chief baker saw how favorably he had interpreted, he said to Joseph, “In my dream, similarly, there were three openwork baskets* on my head. 17In the uppermost basket were all kinds of food for Pharaoh that a baker prepares; and the birds were eating it out of the basket above my head.” 18Joseph answered, “This is its interpretation: The three baskets are three days. 19In three days Pharaoh will lift off your head and impale you upon a pole; and the birds will pick off your flesh.” 20On the third day—his birthday—Pharaoh made a banquet for all his officials, and he singled out* his chief cupbearer and his chief baker from among his officials. 21He restored the chief cupbearer to his cupbearing, and he placed the cup in Pharaoh’s hand; 22but the chief baker he impaled—just as Joseph had interpreted to them. 23Yet the chief cupbearer did not think of Joseph; he forgot him.

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Think of all the love poured into him. Think of the tuitions for Montessori and music lessons. Think of the gasoline expended, the treads worn carting him to football games, basketball tournaments, and Little League. Think of the time spent regulating sleepovers. Think of the surprise birthday parties, the daycare, and the reference checks on babysitters. Think of World Book and Childcraft. Think of checks written for family photos. Think of credit cards charged for vacations. Think of soccer balls, science kits, chemistry sets, racetracks, and model trains. Think of all the embraces, all the private jokes, customs, greetings, names, dreams, all the shared knowledge and capacity of a black family injected into that vessel of flesh and bone. And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and all its holy contents, all that had gone into him, sent flowing back to the earth.

And if he, good Christian, scion of a striving class, patron saint of the twice as good, could be forever bound, who then could not? And the plunder was not just of Prince alone. Think of all the love poured into him. Think of the tuitions for Montessori and music lessons. Think of the gasoline expended, the treads worn carting him to football games, basketball tournaments, and Little League. Think of the time spent regulating sleepovers. Think of the surprise birthday parties, the daycare, and the reference checks on babysitters. Think of World Book and Childcraft. Think of checks written for family photos. Think of credit cards charged for vacations. Think of soccer balls, science kits, chemistry sets, racetracks, and model trains. Think of all the embraces, all the private jokes, customs, greetings, names, dreams, all the shared knowledge and capacity of a black family injected into that vessel of flesh and bone. And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and all its holy contents, all that had gone into him, sent flowing back to the earth. Think of your mother, who had no father. And your grandmother, who was abandoned by her father. And your grandfather, who was left behind by his father. And think of how Prince’s daughter was now drafted into those solemn ranks and deprived of her birthright—that vessel which was her father, which brimmed with twenty-five years of love and was the investment of her grandparents and was to be her legacy.

The first time he showed me round the big freezers he pulled out a tray of frozen ice cream balls covered in cornflakes and bit into one like an apple. These were the deep-fried ice creams, an important part of Chiquito’s elaborate birthday treat that all customers got if it was their birthday. He bit into it and stuck it back on the tray. I’d never seen lunacy like it. A few days later I found myself alone in the freezer. Wanting to be as cool as Dave I grab an ice cream and stuff it in my mouth. Sadly though it wasn’t an ice cream. It was a ball of frozen shrimp butter. It was horrid and I vowed I would never randomly eat frozen balls of unknown matter again. It’s a promise I have never broken.

happily for a few seconds, then picked up the parcel Hedwig had brought. Inside this, too, there was a wrapped present, a card, and a letter, this time from Hermione. Dear Harry, Ron wrote to me and told me about his phone call to your Uncle Vernon. I do hope you’re all right. I’m on holiday in France at the moment and I didn’t know how I was going to send this to you — what if they’d opened it at customs? — but then Hedwig turned up! I think she wanted to make sure you got something for your birthday for a change. I bought your present by owl-order; there was an advertisement in the Daily Prophet (I’ve been getting it delivered; it’s so good to keep up with what’s going on in the wizarding world). Did you see that picture of Ron and his

Now that his children are grown, Cliff misses that special time when they were young with proportionately large eyes filled with wonder (the eye supposedly is the only human body part that remains the same size from birth). Although he longs for grandchildren to gift his life someday, he has the great fortune of a customer base that is forever young and a monster truck that puts smiles on the faces of adults as well as children. What’s not to like about that?

In our digital world today, handwritten notes are an “old school” way to make people feel important. Email is easy and Facebook birthday messages are now the norm, however, taking that extra step makes your efforts extra special. Whether it is a thank you note, birthday greeting, or a card of congratulations, taking the time to extend this personal consideration makes a person feel like you care. Be the surprise in someone’s day and make them feel important.

A birthday surprise,” Miss Pickerell said. “For my cow. Every year, just before my cow’s birthday, I take a pail, paint it some bright color, fill it with earth, and plant seeds of my cow’s very favorite kind of grass. I always plant it early enough so that the grass in the pail will be well grown by the time of her birthday.” “What a quaint custom,” said the man. “It isn’t any more quaint, is it,” said Miss Pickerell, “than making a cake for the birthday of someone you like very much?” “I suppose not,” said the man. “You let her eat it?” “Of course,” said Miss Pickerell. “I’ve done this for my cow’s birthday every year since she was one year old. I’ve done it so often I don’t suppose she is really surprised any more. By this time it’s more a tradition than a surprise. But I certainly would hate to have anything go wrong. I wouldn’t want to disappoint her.

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But Joelle doesn't do "nice". Nice is too passive for what she is, which is a genuinely sweet and kind and thoughtful person---one of the best I know. I've watched her for over a year and a half pouring her heart and soul into her bakery, treating her customers like members of her own family. She remembers their names, the names of their kids and pets, birthdays, first days of school and work, graduations and weddings. I've seen her give out pastries and drinks to people on the street near our building. I've seen her offer up her bakery as a hangout for local high school students who want a place to play cards and dominoes. I've seen her give cash out of her pocket to a kid in need. All because she cares. She doesn't do a single thing that isn't rooted in sincerity. That's why what she said to me yesterday meant so much. Because despite the stress of our current work setup and how it's caused countless fights between us, she still cares about me. And that means everything---more than she'll ever know.

زبون : أين أجد قسم الكتب الشعرية؟ البائعة : إنه هناك . زبون :عظيم، هل تعرفين من كتب القصيدة التي تقول : (Happy birthday to you, you live in a zoo, you look like a monkey, and you smell like one too) البائعة : . . .

HETTA’S BIRTHDAY. In accordance with my custom, I went to All Souls Church to give thanks for the daughter they told me would never come. I say I am giving thanks. But deep down, I wonder. Am I praising God or serving a penance? For each time I step into the church there is a nagging guilt at the core of me. When I pray, there are two voices inside my head, gabbling over one another. One cries thank you; the other forgive me. Today I felt, more powerful than ever, the weight of God’s disapproval pressing down on me as I slipped into the deserted church and took a pew. A force loving but sad, intolerably heavy. Saints gazed upon me from the old stained-glass windows left from Queen Mary’s reign. They seemed to shake their heads. I clasped my hands tighter. And as I closed my eyes, the words came to me in a torrent: How dare you? My eyelids snapped open. I felt suddenly very small. But even as I dropped to my knees, the voice came again. How dare you? My gaze flew to the front of the church, to the cross, soaring up before the altar. Who are you to create a life where I have refused it? I knew then that it was an answer to my prayers, to the nights I have spent on my knees asking why our family has suffered such humiliation: it was my fault. And I see it now. God has a plan for each and every one of us He creates. His plan for Josiah was a brilliant one, set at the centre of court. But that plan did not account for one factor: Hetta. Hetta befriended the gypsy and I, weak again, gave in to her demands. My sin looms so large that it has changed the path of my life. This idea haunted me all the way home. As I walked through the swirling leaves, as I tasted the musk of late October on the air, I kept asking myself why I had done it. I had three boys. Three! My mother would have given her right arm for only one. But I had wanted a girl. Another Mary to sit with me and walk with me, a mirror of my own childhood springing up at my feet. And wrong as it may be, I want her still.

In the morning, I jumped out of bed with a burst of excitement, the song “Child of Mine” playing in my head. Happy birthday to me! I’d been wanting a baby for the past several years, and finding a donor I felt so comfortable with seemed like the best birthday present ever. Heading to the computer, I smiled at my good fortune—I was really going to do this. I typed in the sperm bank’s URL, found the donor’s profile, and read it all over again. I was just as certain as I’d been the night before that he was The One—the one that would make sense to my child when he or she asked why, of all the possible donors, I chose this guy. I placed the donor in my online shopping cart—just as I might with a book on Amazon—double-checked the order, then clicked Purchase Vials. I’m having a baby! I thought. The moment felt monumental. As the order processed, I planned what I had to do next: Make an appointment for the insemination, buy prenatal vitamins, put together a baby registry, get the baby’s room set up. Between thoughts, I noticed that my order was taking a while to complete. The rotating circle on my screen, known as the “spinning wheel of death,” seemed to be spinning for an unusually long time. I waited, waited some more, and finally tried using the back button in case my computer was crashing. But nothing happened. Finally, the spinning wheel of death disappeared and a message popped up: Out of stock. Out of stock? I figured there must be some computer glitch—maybe when I pressed the back button?—so I speed-dialed the sperm bank and asked for Kathleen, but she was out and I got transferred to a customer-service rep named Barb. Barb looked into the matter and determined that this was no glitch. I’d selected a very popular donor, she said. She went on to explain that popular donors went quickly and that, while the company tried to “restock” their “inventory” often, there was a six-month hold for it so it could get quarantined and tested. Even when the inventory was made available, she said, there still might be a long wait, because some people had placed it on back order. As Barb spoke, I thought of how Kathleen had called just yesterday. Now it occurred to me that maybe she’d suggested this donor to several women. Like me, maybe many women had bonded with Kathleen over her honest appraisals of semen.

The Eight Myths of Hanukah 1. Hanukah is the Jewish Christmas. False. How many times have I been asked, “Is Hanukah the Jewish Christmas?” Let me set the record straight. Christmas is the Jewish Christmas. Mary and Joseph were Jewish, Jesus was Jewish, and at least one of the Wise Men was Jewish — the one that brought the fur. 2. Hanukah is the holiest of Jewish holidays. False. Hanukah isn’t even a religious holiday. The holiest of Jewish holidays is April 24, Barbra Streisand’s birthday. The second holiest Jewish holiday is December 29, the wedding anniversary of Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme. 3. Hanukah is another Jewish holiday where they tried to kill us, they didn’t, so we eat. True. Also known as the Festival of Lights, Hanukah is an eight-day Jewish holiday commemorating the re-dedication of the Holy Temple (the Second Temple) in Jerusalem at the time of the Maccabean Revolt of the second century BCE, which brings us to ... 4. Hanukah commemorates the miracle that one day’s worth of oil lasted eight days in the Holy Temple. True. But, this is hardly a miracle because I witnessed my grandmother doing the same thing with one tea bag. 5. During Hanukah, children get a gift every night for eight days. False. If you grew up in my house, you got a gift the first night, then for seven nights, you heard about how awful it was to grow up during The Great Depression. The ritual of gift giving is actually very American, since Jewish children in this country are totally exposed to Christmas customs. 6. Hanukah is a holiday when Jewish people eat bland, colorless foods that are fried in oil and difficult to digest. True for ALL Jewish holidays. On Hanukah, we eat latkes (potato pancakes) or sufganiot, if you are Sephardic. Sufganiot are similar to jelly donuts. I am part Sephardic, so I like donuts, just not jelly ones. 7. There are many popular songs about Hanukah, and Jewish people know the words to all of them. False. Other than “Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel,” there are no other Hanukah songs we can sing, except for “The Hanukah Song,” by Adam Sandler, which brings us to Number 8 ... 8. Steve & Eydie and Barbra Streisand have recorded Hanukah albums. SO NOT TRUE! Would you believe Steve and Eydie have recorded a Christmas album, and Barbra has recorded not one but two Christmas albums?! And all those Christmas songs we hear on the radio are mostly written, and oftentimes performed, by Jews! Oy vay! This brings us back to myth Number 1, proving once again that Christmas is the Jewish Christmas! So, from my Trailer Park to Yours, here is wishing you a very Happy Jewish Christmas and a Merry Hanukah! 261

I’d received countless gifts in my life. A customized Audi for my sixteenth birthday; a limited-edition Vacheron Constantin watch when I was accepted into Oxford; a penthouse atop the Peak in Hong Kong when I graduated from Cambridge with my master’s. None of them touched me as much as a flimsy paperback of velociraptor erotica.

When I was a child, charlottes--- French desserts made traditionally out of brioche, ladyfingers, or sponge and baked in a charlotte mold--- were everywhere. Charlotte au chocolat wasn't the only variety, though being chocolate, it had the edge on my mother's autumn-season apple charlotte braised with brioche and poached in clarified butter, and even on the magnificent charlotte Malakoff she used to serve in the summer: raspberries, slivered almonds, and Grand Marnier in valleys of vanilla custard. But it is charlotte au chocolat, being my namesake dessert, that I remember most, for we offered it on the menu all year long. I walked into the pastry station and saw them cooling in their rusted tin molds on the counter. I saw them scooped onto lace doilies and smothered in Chantilly cream, starred with candied violets and sprigs of wet mint. I saw them lit by birthday candles. I saw them arranged, by the dozens, on silver trays for private parties. I saw them on customers' plates, destroyed, the Chantilly cream like a tumbled snowbank streaked with soot from the chocolate. And charlottes smelled delightful: they smelled richer, I thought, than any dessert in the world. The smell made me think of black velvet holiday dresses and grown-up perfumes in crystal flasks. It made me want to collapse and never eat again.

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Another friend works in delivery for UPS. He is often behind schedule and hurried in his job. But he takes the time to learn his customers’ names and stories and serves them in profoundly thoughtful ways. He gives cards on birthdays and Starbucks cards to celebrate children’s graduations, and he offers prayer whenever people ask. In the kingdom of God, people will be lovers of others.

Yogurt is good for you. And it’s just one spoon,” Sharpcot had replied, but this stack summoned a billion voices, all of them saying in a chorus, “Just one spoon.” From kids’ lunches and store shelves and desk drawers and airline meal packs, in every country of the world: Canada and the United States and Nicaragua and Uruguay and Argentina and Ireland and Burkina Faso and Russia and Papua New Guinea and New Zealand and very probably the Antarctic. Where wasn’t there disposable cutlery? Plastic spoons in endless demand, in endless supply, from factory floors where they are manufactured and packaged in boxes of 10 or 20 or 100 or 1000 or individually in clear wrap, boxed on skids and trucked to trains freighting them to port cities and onto giant container ships plying the seas to international ports to intercity transport trucks to retail delivery docks for grocery stores and retail chains, supplying restaurants and homes, consumers moving them from shelf to cart to bag to car to house, where they are stuck in the lunches of the children of polluting parents, or used once each at a birthday party to serve ice cream to four-year-olds where only some are used but who knows which? So used and unused go together in the trash, or every day one crammed into a hipster’s backpack to eat instant pudding at his software job in an open-concept walkup in a gentrified neighbourhood, or handed out from food trucks by the harbour, or set in a paper cup at a Costco table for customers to sample just one bite of this exotic new flavour, and so they go into trash bins and dumpsters and garbage trucks and finally vast landfill sites or maybe just tossed from the window of a moving car or thrown over the rail of a cruise ship to sink in the ocean deep.

While they waited for the tram, Alexander said, “I brought you something.” He handed her a package wrapped in brown paper. “I know Monday was your birthday. But I didn’t have a chance before today…” “What is it?” Sincerely surprised, she took the package from him. A small lump came up in her throat. Lowering his voice, he said, “In America we have a custom. When you’re given presents for your birthday, you’re supposed to open them and say thank you.” Tatiana nervously looked down at the present. “Thank you.” Gifts were not something she was used to. Wrapped gifts? Unheard of, even when they came wrapped only in plain brown paper. “No. Open first. Then say thank you.” She smiled. “What do I do? Do I take the paper off?” “Yes. You tear it off.” “And then what?” “And then you throw it away.” “The whole present or just the paper?” Slowly he said, “Just the paper.” “But you wrapped it so nicely. Why would I throw it away?” “It’s just paper.” “If it’s just paper, why did you wrap it?” “Will you please open my present?” said Alexander. Eagerly Tatiana tore open the paper. Inside were three books—one hefty hardcover collection by Aleksandr Pushkin called The Bronze Horseman and Other Poems, and two smaller books, one by a man she’d never heard of, named John Stuart Mill; the book was called On Liberty. It was in English. The last one was an English-Russian dictionary. “English-Russian?” Tatiana said, smiling. “It’s less helpful than you might think. I speak no English. Was this yours from when you came here?” “Yes,” he said. “And without it you won’t be able to read Mill.” “Thank you so much for all of them,” she said. “The Bronze Horseman book was my mother’s,” said Alexander. “She gave it to me a few weeks before they came for her.

I’m on holiday in France at the moment and I didn’t know how I was going to send this to you — what if they’d opened it at customs? — but then Hedwig turned up! I think she wanted to make sure you got something for your birthday for a change. I bought your present by owl-order; there was an advertisement in the Daily Prophet

The Owl & Moon would never lack for customers. If a person came in for Chocolate Bomb cookies for her daughter's birthday, while she waited to have them boxed she'd smell the paper-thin rosemary-garlic Cheese Pennies, and pick up two dozen. Then she'd ask for a taste of the gleaming slab of Chocolate Cherry Thunder fudge.

When looking for the best dunk tank rental Cincinnati has to offer, turn to the experts at Party Go Round. If you'd like a chance for all your co-workers to dunk the boss at a company picnic, students getting their teachers soaked at a school carnival, kids dunking their friends at a birthday party, dunking booth rentals can be enjoyed at any type of event. Party Go Round takes great pride in providing the Cincinnati area with an unmatched level of customer service and satisfaction.

We can also increase the perceived long term value by the way we describe our emails. Nowadays many businesses mention a newsletter on their website, but the phrase ‘newsletter’ doesn’t have any implied value in it. In fact the word ‘news’ is probably something you don’t want to hear from a potential supplier. Who cares whether Mary in accounts has had a birthday? What you would like to get is useful, valuable information. So instead of calling it an email newsletter, I call mine ‘client winning tips via email’. Or you could call it a ‘divorce survival bulletin’. Or ‘the cash flow accelerator emails’ or ‘tax cutting tips’. Each of these names implies some kind of value or outcome your potential subscribers will get from your emails. To come up with a good name, go back to your customer insight map for your ideal clients and look at the big problems, challenges, goals and aspirations your clients have. If you can name your emails to relate to those big goals and problems then they’re likely to see they’ll get value by subscribing to them.