Inspection Readiness Quotes

I lean across his body and lift his hand for inspection. As i run my fingertips over his broken skin, careful not to cause more pain, I say "I meant you blowfish. Your bones." His hand trembles a little in mine. Somehow that rattles me more then anything else. I could deal with losing my fantasy Brody more then i can face a very real, trembling Quince. "No," He whispers. "I pulled my punches." Then, with some of his usual humor, he adds, "Principal Brown already thinks I'm one step away from juvie. Don't need to put myself there." I look up ready to argue, when a lumpy spot in his heather gray t-shirt catches my eye. Lifting my fingers to the place just beneath his collarbone, I'm both surprised and not to feel a sand-dollar shaped object. My gaze continues the journey up to his. "Your still wearing it." We both know it's not a question, just like we both seem to have lost the ability to breathe. A whole sea of emotions washes though his eyes-fear,anger, pain, trust, love. Love. It's when i see that last one that i close my eyes. He whispers, "Always.

Yet I can walk away from best friends and rarely think of them again. I can close a door and not look back. There's something about my soul that's always ready to go, to break camp, to unfold the road map, to leave at night when the house inspection's done and the civilians are asleep and the open road is calling...

She's the girl who told me she'd be ready for me to inspect her undergarments and didn't think twice about it.

Every town-gate and village taxing-house had its band of citizen-patriots,* with their national muskets in a most explosive state of readiness, who stopped all comers and goers, cross-questioned them, inspected their papers, looked for their names in lists of their own, turned them back, or sent them on, or stopped them and laid them in hold, as their capricious judgment or fancy deemed best for the dawning Republic One and Indivisible, of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death.*

Accordingly, he had the two leaders beheaded, and straightway installed the pair next in order as leaders in their place. When this had been done, the drum was sounded for the drill once more; and the girls went through all the evolutions, turning to the right or to the left, marching ahead or wheeling back, kneeling or standing, with perfect accuracy and precision, not venturing to utter a sound. Then Sun Tzu sent a messenger to the King saying: “Your soldiers, Sire, are now properly drilled and disciplined, and ready for your majesty's inspection. They can be put to any use that their sovereign may desire; bid them go through fire and water, and they will not disobey.

Every town-gate and village taxing-house had its band of citizen-patriots, with their national muskets in a most explosive state of readiness, who stopped all comers and goers, cross-questioned them, inspected their papers, looked for their names in lists of their own, turned them back, or sent them on, or stopped them and laid them in hold, as their capricious judgment or fancy deemed best for the dawning Republic One and Indivisible, of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death.

I’ll be ready for your inspection tomorrow, boss.” Then I wink and saunter away, feeling the weight of his gaze on my body and knowing he’s probably wondering if I’m wearing any undergarments right now.

In late August and early September, just after the first fall rain, hundreds of male tarantulas emerge from holes in the ground. They skitter through mint-scented mountain sage in search of burrows delicately draped in silk, where females are ready to mate. Visitors armed with flashlights flock to the mountain around sunset or just after dark, the best time to see the tarantulas. Bats wheel over gray pines and live oaks. Great horned owls hoot solemnly. Beams from flashlights weaving across trails sometimes catch a piece of earth that’s moving; closer inspection reveals the scuttling of saucer-size tarantulas. The male tarantulas never return to their holes. They mate as much as they can and then die, from starvation or cold.

There, all gone, Luce.” And the little girl continued to open and squint shut her eyes. “All gone,” she said eventually. Then, “More ’tato!” and the hunt began again. Inside, Isabel swept the floor in every room, gathering the sandy dust into piles in the corner, ready to gather up. Returning from a quick inspection of the bread in the oven, she found a trail leading all through the cottage, thanks to Lucy’s attempts with the dustpan.

Heilner went on: "Yes, things were certainly different then. Who knows anything about things like that around here? All these bores and cowards who grind away and work their fingers to the bone and don't realize that there's something higher than the Hebrew alphabet. You're no different." Hans kept silent. This Heilner fellow certainly was a strange one. A romantic, a poet. As everyone knew, he worked hardly at all and still he knew quite a bit, he knew how to give good answers, and at the same time despised his learning. “We're reading Homer," he went on in the same mocking tone, "as though the Odyssey were a cookbook. Two verses an hour and then the whole thing is masticated word by word and inspected until you're ready to throw up. But at the end of the hour the professor will say: 'Notice how nicely the poet has turned this phrase! This has afforded you an insight into the secret of poetic creativity!' Just like a little icing around the aorists and particles so you won't choke on them completely. I don't have any use for that kind of Homer. Anyway, what does all this old Greek stuff matter to us? If one of us ever tried to live a little like a Greek, he'd be out on his tail. And our room is called 'Hellas'! Pure mockery! Why isn't it called 'wastepaper basket' or 'monkey cage' or 'sweatshop'? All this classical stuff is a big fake.

Does it undermine my image as a warrior to be with you?' 'No. Does it undermine Feyre's when she's seen with Rhys?' Her stomach tightened. Her heartbeat pulsed in her arms, her gut. 'It's different for them,' she made herself say as they reached the end of the bridge and turned to walk along the quay flanking the river. Cassian asked carefully. 'Why?' Nesta kept her focus on the glittering river, vibrant with the hues of sunset. 'Because they're mates.' At his utter silence, she knew what he'd say. Halted again, bracing herself for it. Cassian's face was a void. Completely empty as he said, 'And we're not?' Nesta said nothing. He huffed a laugh. 'Because they're mates and you don't want us to be.' 'That word means nothing to me, Cassian,' she said, voice thick as she tried to keep the people who strode past from overhearing. 'It means something to all of you, but for most of my life, husband and wife was as good as it got. Mate is just a word.' 'That's bullshit.' When she only began walking along the river again, he asked. 'Why are you frightened?' 'I'm not frightened.' 'What spooked you? Just being seen publicly with me like this?' Yes. Having him kiss her and realising that soon she'd have to return to the world humming around them, and leave the House, and she didn't know what she would do then. What it would mean for them. If she would plunge back into that dark place she'd occupied before. Drag him down with her. 'Nesta. Talk to me.' She met his stare, but wouldn't open her mouth. Cassian's eyes blazed. 'Say it.' She refused. 'Say it, Nesta.' 'I don't know what you're talking about.' 'Ask me why I vanished for nearly a week after Solstice. Why I suddenly had to do an inspection right after a holiday.' Nesta kept her mouth shut. 'It was because I woke up the next morning and all I wanted to do was fuck you for a week straight. And I knew what that meant, what had happened, even though you didn't, and I didn't want to scare you. You weren't ready for the truth- not yet.' Her mouth went dry. 'Say it,' Cassian snarled. People gave them a wide berth. Some outright turned back toward the direction they'd come from. 'No.' His face shuttered with rage even as his voice became calm. 'Say it.' She couldn't. Not before he'd ordered her to, and certainly not now. She couldn't let him win like that. 'Say what I guessed from the moment we met,' he breathed. 'What I knew the first time I kissed you. What became unbreakable between us on Solstice night.' She wouldn't. 'I am your mate, for fuck's sake!' Cassian shouted, loud enough for people across the river to hear. 'You are my mate! Why are you still fighting it?' She let the truth, voiced at last, wash over her. 'You promised me forever on Solstice,' he said, voice breaking. 'Why is one word somehow throwing you off that?' 'Because with that one word, the last scrap of my humanity goes away!' She didn't care who saw them, who heard. 'With that one stupid word, I am no longer human in any way. I'm one of you!' He blinked. 'I thought you wanted to be one of us.' 'I don't know what I want. I didn't have a choice.' 'Well, I didn't have a choice in being shackled to you, either.' The declaration slammed into her. Shackled. He sucked in a breath. 'That was an incredibly poor choice of words.' 'But the truth, right?' 'No, I was angry- it's not true.' 'Why? Your friends saw me for what I was. What I am. The mating bond made you stupidly blind to it. How many times did they warn you away from me, Cassian?' She barked a cold laugh. Shackled. Words beckoned, sharp as knives, begging for her to grab one and plunge it into his chest. Make him hurt as much as that one would hurt her. Make him bleed. But if she did that, if she ripped into him... She couldn't. Wouldn't let herself do it.

I would stop by the table, where the kitchen-maid had shelled them, to inspect the platoons of peas, drawn up in ranks and numbered, like little green marbles, ready for a game; but what most enraptured me were the asparagus, tinged with ultramarine and pink which shaded off from their heads finely stippled in mauve and azure, through a series of imperceptible gradations to their white feet—still stained a little by the soil of their garden-bed—with an iridescence that was not of this world. I felt that these celestial hues indicated the presence of exquisite creatures who had been pleased to assume vegetable form and who, through the disguise of their firm, comestible flesh, allowed me to discern in this radiance of earliest dawn, these hinted rainbows, these blue evening shades, that precious quality which I should recognise again when, all night long after a dinner at which I had partaken of them, they played (lyrical and coarse in their jesting like one of Shakespeare's fairies) at transforming my chamber pot into a vase of aromatic perfume.

Catherine drew out an object wrapped in soft cloth. Gently she unwrapped a new pair of spectacles made of silver... gleaming and perfect, the oval lenses sparkling. Marveling at the workmanship, she drew a finger along one of the intricate filigreed earpieces, all the way to the curved tip. "They're so beautiful," she said in wonder. "If they please you, we'll have another pair made in gold. Here, let me help you..." Leo gently drew the old spectacles off her face, seeming to savor the gesture. She put the new ones on. They felt light and secure on the bridge of her nose. As she looked around the room, everything was wonderfully detailed and in focus. In her excitement, she jumped up and hurried to the looking glass that hung over the entryway table. She inspected her own glowing reflection. "How pretty you are," Leo's tall, elegant form appeared behind hers. "I do love spectacles on a woman." Catherine's smiling gaze met his in the silvered glass. "Do you? What an odd preference." "Not at all." His hands came to her shoulders, lightly fondling up to her throat and back again. "They emphasize your beautiful eyes. And they make you look capable of secrets and surprises- which, as much as we know, you are." His voice lowered. "Most of all I love the act of removing them- getting you ready for a tumble in bed." She shivered at his bluntness, her eyes half closing as she felt him pull her back against him. His mouth went to the side of her neck. "You like them?" Leo murmured, kissing her soft skin. "Yes." Her head listed to the side as his tongue traced a subtle path along her throat. "I... I don't know why you went to such trouble. It was very kind." Leo's dark head lifted, and he met her drowsy gaze in the looking glass. His fingers went to the side of her throat, stroking as if to rub the feel of his mouth into her skin. "I wasn't being kind," he murmured, a smile touching his lips. "I merely wanted you to see clearly." I'm beginning to, she was tempted to tell him, but Poppy returned to the apartment before she was able.

Petrykin left the room again, and after a few seconds Green could hear him washing his hands in the kitchen sink. He returned a few seconds later drying his hands on a towel. In his pocket was a pair of latex gloves. Green smiled as Petrykin put them on. He too had a box of gloves ready and waiting in his kitchen. Habit of the profession, he thought. Petrykin took out the book and the sheet of folded up paper from the package. "So, Stuart, this was hidden in the lining here?" Petrykin mimed the removal of the page from the book. "Exactly." "Okay, let me look at this book first." Green watched the master go to work, inspecting the volume from every angle. It didn't take long before he reached a verdict. "It looks to be from the correct period, certainly. Sixteenth century. And that's the Tsar's seal, I'm positive, unless it's a forgery..." Petrykin looked inside the book. "Greek. My Greek isn't what it should be—too much football when I should have been studying—but it’s of the right period. The workmanship suggests a very expensive book, but not too fancy. To be read, rather than admired. Do you know what it says?" Green shook his head. "Until today I only had a few photographed pages, which I sent to be translated.” "Constantin?" Petrykin asked. "Yes, actually, but he never got back to me. I imagine he's busy." "Not busy so much as troubled. The university is after him," Petrykin lamented. "Really?" Petrykin nodded gravely and made the universal gesture of tipping a bottle toward one’s mouth. "He sucks his thumb?" Green joked. Petrykin faked a smile. "Ha, ha," he said. "We should get him this book—no, a copy, he cannot be trusted at the moment. Is he the only Greek person we know in the whole world?" Petrykin wondered, annoyed. "Could be," Green lamented. "Okay, we will take the book to the copy place and copy some of it. If it's promising, we copy the rest.

Among the samples the author provides is one called ‘A Letter Regarding Wine’. It has been evocatively translated by Lionel Giles, who first catalogued the documents Stein sent to the British Museum in the early twentieth century. Yesterday, having drunk too much, I was so intoxicated as to pass all bounds; but none of the rude and coarse language I used was uttered in a conscious state. The next morning, after hearing others speak on the subject, I realised what had happened, whereupon I was overwhelmed with confusion and ready to sink into the earth in shame. It was due to a vessel of small capacity being filled for the nonce too full. I humbly trust that you in your wise benevolence will not condemn me for my transgression. Soon I will come to apologise in person, but meanwhile I beg to send this written communication for your kind inspection. Leaving much unsaid, I am yours respectfully…28

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That evening, a Thursday, we made ourselves ready with powder in our hair and a new cravat each. We inspected each other critically and brushed stray hairs and flakes from collar and lapels, and then emptied the mattress of its treasure.

Look, Sarasa, it’s not enough just to inspect the upper surface while buying a dosa pan. You should look at its base too. It too must have an even surface. And if you start using it from day one as if it’s a non-stick – that’s it! Your dosas will stick to the pan and come out a mess. There’s a procedure to get it ready for use. In our house we’d apply oil to the pan and keep it near the stove’s flame for several days. Sometimes we’d keep it out in the sun too. After it was heated up we’d wash it, scrubbing it with coconut coir. We’d keep doing this till the pan soaked up all the oil and became ready. An ideal pan should be coarse enough for the batter not to slide away, but smooth enough that the dosa shouldn’t stick when lifted. That’s when a pan is ready …

She has city girl written all over her. She has wild child written all over her. She’s not some sweet, small-town girl. She’s the girl who told me she’d be ready for me to inspect her undergarments and didn’t think twice about it. She has temptation written all over her.

didn’t offer many hiding places. Franco wasn’t worried. He was worried about that damned light stick fifteen yards farther down the tunnel. Its presence prevented a stealthy advance. Shooting it from here wouldn’t be easy. Throwing it down the mine had been a smart move on his enemy’s part . . . On closer inspection, though, it also afforded him an opportunity. The light stick had ended up on the outside of the left rail, nearly up against it. If he hugged the right side of the wall, he’d be in the shadows when he got closer to the light stick. He considered a balls-out run to the light stick so he could hurl it back toward the entrance. Shoving it in his pocket wasn’t an option because his opponent’s NV would see the light through the fabric. He might as well paint a bull’s-eye on his crotch—not an appealing visual. Because of the light stick up

usual call to quarters. This was part of the daily routine, but on this occasion, with a chase in sight, the preparation and inspection was more than usually rigorous, the captain himself accompanying the first lieutenant round the decks to see that all was in order and ready for action; so that all hands were kept busy till it was time to pipe down the hammocks and set the watch.

Have you had this place inspected?” he asked. “The house is ready to fall off its timbers. I couldn’t risk coming in here without offering a quick prayer to Butyakengo.” “Who?” “A Gypsy protective spirit.” He smiled at her. “But now that I’m here, I’ll take my chances.

The baskets, both of which I had filled, were growing heavy. I held one in each hand and glanced around for a place I might sit until Dahnath was ready to go home. I was about to dodge across the street when my load lightened, one of the baskets having been taken away. Thinking a thief, I shouted and swung around, arm outstretched, and my nails scratched someone or something. “Enough of that!” a man yelped, and the moment my eyes fell on him, I groaned. “Saadi, what do you think you’re doing?” I demanded. “Well, I thought I was helping you. As it turns out, I’m bleeding.” “No, you’re not!” I stepped closer to inspect the tracks on his cheek where my nails had made contact, and gently lay my fingers on the scratches. He winced and took my hand, holding it away from his lightly freckled face. Acutely aware of his touch, I blushed. He was adorable, as much as I’d fought against admitting it. His pale blue eyes examined me for a moment, confused by my reaction, then he grinned. “So…sewing?” he asked. “For my sisters.” “Oh. How many?” “Four. And a brother.” “Full house. Rava is my only sibling.” My mood dipped at mention of his sister. He put a hand gently on my back, guiding me to the side of a building and out of the way of traffic. “We don’t get along, if it helps,” he added, aware of my feelings. I laughed. “Do siblings ever get along?” “I think so. At least, most siblings who argue will apologize and enjoy each other’s company until the next fight comes along. I don’t remember ever enjoying Rava.” “That’s said,” I murmured. He grinned again. “Well, would you enjoy her?” “I don’t know her, other than as an enemy. Maybe I’d like her if we’d grown up together.

I don’t know what instructions Nimiar gave her seamstress in private. I had expected a modest trunk of nice fabric, enough for a gown or two in the current fashions. What returned, though, just over a week later, was a hired wagon bearing enough stuff to outfit the entire village, plus three determined young journey-seamstresses who came highly recommended and who were ready to make their fortunes. “Good,” Nee said, when we had finished interviewing them. She walked about inspecting the fabulous silks, velvets, linens, and a glorious array of embroidery twists, nodding happily. “Just what I wanted. Melise is a treasure.” “Isn’t this too much?” I asked, astounded. She grinned. “Not when you count up what you’ll need to make the right impression. Remember, you are acquiring overnight what ought to have been put together over years. Morning gowns, afternoon gowns, riding tunics and trousers, party dresses, and perhaps one ball gown, though that kind of thing you can order when we get to town, for those take an unconscionable amount of time to make if you don’t have a team doing it.” “A team? Doing nothing but sewing? What a horrible life!” I exclaimed. “Those who choose it would say the same about yours, I think,” Nee said with a chuckle. “Meaning your life as a revolutionary. There are many, not just women, though it’s mostly females, who like very much to sit in a warm house and sew and gossip all day. In the good houses the sewers have music, or have books read to them, and the products are the better for their minds being engaged in something interesting. This is their art, just as surely as yon scribe regards her map and her fellows regard their books.” She pointed toward the library. “And how those at Court view the way they conduct their public lives.” “So much to learn,” I said with a groan. “How will I manage?” She just laughed; and the next day a new arrival brought my most formidable interview yet: with my new maid.

Mooommmm-eeeee! What are you dooooo-ing?” Sean broke away abruptly and turned scarlet. There, at the end of the couch, stood Rosie, her pajama bottoms and panties missing, Harry standing beside her, his tail wagging out of his tutu. Sean grabbed a throw pillow and held it over the bulge in his jeans, although there was no way Rosie would know what was going on with him. “Kissing Sean,” Franci said very naturally. “Where are your pants?” “I pooped! I called you to check if I wiped good, but you dint come!” And with that she turned her back on them, bent over at the waist to touch her toes and exposed her butt. “Arrrggghhh,” Sean groaned, covering his eyes and sliding lower on the couch. Franci chuckled and stood. “Okey-dokey, looks like you did a good job. I like it when you save the inspection for the bathroom, though,” Franci said. “Let’s get your bottoms on and back to bed.” Sean collapsed against the couch and thought, I am not ready for this! How does a person get ready for this? When Franci came back, she was laughing at him. “Come on, stop it! The learning curve is really high here!” he complained. “When we get right down to it, marriage would be the least of your adjustments.” *

Trading for corn with the natives was to be prohibited. It was required that "every dwellinge howse shalbe pallizadoed," that guards be maintained and that careful and constant inspection by commanders insure working and ready arms and ammunition.

3 ALICIA Seven hours. That’s how much time had passed since Alicia collected two-and-a-half-year-old Theo from the police station and brought him to his new foster home. Seven hours since he scampered out of her grasp and disappeared under the dining room table. Seven hours since Alicia sat on the linoleum floor and promised him she would wait until he was ready to come out. Alicia always kept her promises to the kids. Which meant now she might have to die on this linoleum floor. “Hey, buddy, I think Bluey might be on the TV,” Alicia tried, without much hope. “Should we go and see?” Theo didn’t turn his little blond head from the wall. She had to admire his resolve. Since they’d arrived, he hadn’t spoken, he’d refused all food and drink, and, if smell was anything to go by, he’d soiled himself. Still, he wouldn’t budge. Last night, he’d been taken to the police station by a neighbor who’d discovered him playing on the road at midnight, wearing nothing but a dirty nappy. Apparently his father had been too inebriated to realize he was gone. His mother had yet to be located and it wasn’t looking hopeful. Alicia had hoped that returning Theo to Trish’s, where he’d spent a few months earlier in the year, might provide Theo with some reassurance; but, if anything, his understanding of what was happening made things worse. His head remained down, his tiny, twiggy arms remained ramrod straight by his sides. “Do you like chocolate?” she asked, as another foster kid, Aaron, sloped into the kitchen, and started rummaging in the cupboards, presumably for food. “I’ve got a Kit Kat here. Want some?” Alicia broke off a chocolate finger and held it out to Theo under the table. To her delight, he scooted across the floor to inspect it. “Ow!

Well?” Belle asks, throwing her arms out wide. “Do I look okay? Are we ready?” “Fine,” I growl. “You look fine.” Fine like wine. Fine like art. Fine like I want to inspect every inch of her with my fingers and my tongue. I grab my keys and walk past her into the hallway. “Let’s go.

God, the way he’s looking at me should be fucking illegal. Instead of doing as I ask, he grabs my outstretched hand in his own and inspects it closely, his brow lowered as he concentrates. “The hell are you doing, Zade?” The slightest curl to his lips and my mouth instantly dries. I’ll never get over how easily he morphs from man to beast. “Just trying to picture what ring would look best on your finger,” he says lightly. As if he didn’t just send my heart flying into my throat. Swallowing, I slide my hand from his. “What if I don’t want one? I would say no.” Slowly, he drags his eyes up to mine, and the intensity of his stare has me questioning why I just can’t be agreeable for once. It would save time and spare me from his smooth lines that never cease to fail. At least not completely. Maybe I’m just addicted to the fear and excitement he awakens in me when he looks at me… just like that. Like the beast readying to consume its prey, painfully slow. And I hope he does go slow. Drags out the torture of being caught between Zade's teeth. His hand drifts slowly up past my chest, gently grazing his fingers across the column of my neck. And then, in an instant, his hand is snapping around my throat, gripping tight. I gasp, my eyes widening as his lip curls into a sinister smile. “I can put a collar around this pretty neck of yours instead. Then you wouldn’t have the option to say no. You would just be my good little girl that does whatever your master says. Would you like that better, baby?” “No,” I snarl, but it tastes like a lie. “You don’t own me. You never will.” His eyes narrow, and my heart drops.

I said, picking up a pumpkin and running my hands all over it. “They sure are perfect,” said Robbie, inspecting

Where be I? – Mercy! I came for a pup! That’s where I be. ‘Usband says when we was changin’ shifts walkin’ son last night. ‘Try a pup, Mother’ ‘e sez- ‘We’ve tried rattles an’ bells an’ tyos. Try a live pup to soothe ‘is frettiness.’ So I come. ‘Usband sez, ‘Git a pup same age as son’ – Sooner ‘ave one ‘ouse-broke me’self – wot yer got?” “I have pups three months old” ‘Ezzact same age as son! Bring ‘em along.” She inspected the puppy, running an experienced finger round her gums. “Toothed a’ready! ‘E’ll do.” She tucked the pup into the pram beside the baby who immediately seized the dog’s ear and began to chew. The pup as immediately applied himself greedily to the baby’s bottle and began to suck.

My life is ready for inspection,’ Mickey said. ‘Let’s proceed.’” “Those words, ‘My life is ready for inspection,’ have stayed with me ever since,” Russell said years later. “He meant it most sincerely, and I have often contemplated the power of being able to face the next world with that kind of spiritual confidence.

One night back in the 1970s, I was driving home to my quarters at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where I had commanded the 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division for about a year, when I saw in the dark a soldier walking along the road heading for the gate. He probably lived with his wife in the trailer park just outside the gate. I stopped and offered him a ride. “Why are you going home so late?” I asked him as we drove along. “My buddies and I’ve been working hard to get ready for an inspector general inspection coming up,” he answered. Then he looked at me. “Sir, who are you?” he asked. “I’m your brigade commander,” I told him, taken aback. “How long have you been in command?” he asked. “Over a year,” I said. “Is it a good job?” he asked. “Yes, great,” I replied. Jeez, after a year of being all over the brigade area, here is a soldier who doesn’t recognize me. Something’s wrong. “How do you think you guys will do in the inspection?” I then asked. “We’ll do great,” he answered. “We’ve been working hard for weeks, and my captain, lieutenants, and sergeants have been pushing us. They’ve been telling us how important the inspection is; they’ve been working just as hard as we have.” Then he said simply, “We’re not going to let them down.

Maybe Sloan would agree to a deal. I’d talk to someone about some of my issues if she would agree to go to grief counseling. It wasn’t me giving in to Josh like she wanted, but Sloan knew how much I hated therapists, and she’d always wanted me to see someone. I was debating how to pitch this to her when I glanced into the living room and saw it—a single purple carnation on my coffee table. I looked around the kitchen like I might suddenly find someone in my house. But Stuntman was calm, plopped under my chair. I went in to investigate and saw that the flower sat on top of a binder with the words “just say okay” written on the outside in Josh’s writing. He’d been here? My heart began to pound. I looked again around the living room like I might see him, but it was just the binder. I sat on the sofa, my hands on my knees, staring at the binder for what felt like ages before I drew the courage to pull the book into my lap. I tucked my hair behind my ear and licked my lips, took a breath, and opened it up. The front page read “SoCal Fertility Specialists.” My breath stilled in my lungs. What? He’d had a consultation with Dr. Mason Montgomery from SoCal Fertility. A certified subspecialist in reproductive endocrinology and infertility with the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology. He’d talked to them about in vitro and surrogacy, and he’d had fertility testing done. I put a shaky hand to my mouth, and tears began to blur my eyes. I pored over his test results. Josh was a breeding machine. Strong swimmers and an impressive sperm count. He’d circled this and put a winking smiley face next to it and I snorted. He’d outlined the clinic’s high success rates—higher than the national average—and he had gotten signed personal testimonials from previous patients, women like me who used a surrogate. Letter after letter of encouragement, addressed to me. The next page was a complete breakdown on the cost of in vitro and information on Josh’s health insurance and what it covered. His insurance was good. It covered the first round of IVF at 100 percent. He even had a small business plan. He proposed selling doghouses that he would build. The extra income would raise enough money for the second round of in vitro in about three months. The next section was filled with printouts from the Department of International Adoptions. Notes scrawled in Josh’s handwriting said Brazil just opened up. He broke down the process, timeline, and costs right down to travel expenses and court fees. I flipped past a sleeve full of brochures to a page on getting licensed for foster care. He’d already gone through the background check, and he enclosed a form for me, along with a series of available dates for foster care orientation classes and in-home inspections. Was this what he’d been doing? This must have taken him weeks. My chin quivered. Somehow, seeing it all down on paper, knowing we’d be in it together, it didn’t feel so hopeless. It felt like something that we could do. Something that might actually work. Something possible. The last page had an envelope taped to it. I pried it open with trembling hands, my throat getting tight. I know what the journey will look like, Kristen. I’m ready to take this on. I love you and I can’t wait to tell you the best part…Just say okay. I dropped the letter and put my face into my hands and sobbed like I’d never sobbed in my life. He’d done all this for me. Josh looked infertility dead in the eye, and his choice was still me. He never gave up. All this time, no matter how hard I rejected him or how difficult I made it, he never walked away from me. He just changed strategies. And I knew if this one didn’t work he’d try another. And another. And another. He’d never stop trying until I gave in. And Sloan—she knew. She knew this was here, waiting for me. That’s why she’d made me leave. They’d conspired to do this.

Autumn Psalm A full year passed (the seasons keep me honest) since I last noticed this same commotion. Who knew God was an abstract expressionist? I’m asking myself—the very question I asked last year, staring out at this array of racing colors, then set in motion by the chance invasion of a Steller’s jay. Is this what people mean by speed of light? My usually levelheaded mulberry tree hurling arrows everywhere in sight— its bow: the out-of-control Virginia creeper my friends say I should do something about, whose vermilion went at least a full shade deeper at the provocation of the upstart blue, the leaves (half green, half gold) suddenly hyper in savage competition with that red and blue— tohubohu returned, in living color. Kandinsky: where were you when I needed you? My attempted poem would lie fallow a year; I was so busy focusing on the desert’s stinginess with everything but rumor. No place even for the spectrum’s introverts— rose, olive, gray—no pigment at all— and certainly no room for shameless braggarts like the ones that barge in here every fall and make me feel like an unredeemed failure even more emphatically than usual. And here they are again, their fleet allure still more urgent this time—the desert’s gone; I’m through with it, want something fuller— why shouldn’t a person have a little fun, some utterly unnecessary extravagance? Which was—at least I think it was—God’s plan when He set up (such things are never left to chance) that one split-second assignation with genuine, no-kidding-around omnipotence what, for lack of better words, I’m calling vision. You breathe in, and, for once, there’s something there. Just when you thought you’d learned some resignation, there’s real resistance in the nearby air until the entire universe is swayed. Even that desert of yours isn’t quite so bare and God’s not nonexistent; He’s just been waylaid by a host of what no one could’ve foreseen. He’s got plans for you: this red-gold-green parade is actually a fairly detailed outline. David never needed one, but he’s long dead and God could use a little recognition. He promises. It won’t go to His head and if you praise Him properly (an autumn psalm! Why didn’t I think of that?) you’ll have it made. But while it’s true that my Virginia creeper praises Him, its palms and fingers crimson with applause, that the local breeze is weaving Him a diadem, inspecting my tree’s uncut gold for flaws, I came to talk about the way that violet-blue sprang the greens and reds and yellows into action: actual motion. I swear it’s true though I’m not sure I ever took it in. Now I’d be prepared, if some magician flew into my field of vision, to realign that dazzle out my window yet again. It’s not likely, but I’m keeping my eyes open though I still wouldn’t be able to explain precisely what happened to these vines, these trees. It isn’t available in my tradition. For this, I would have to be Chinese, Wang Wei, to be precise, on a mountain, autumn rain converging on the trees, a cassia flower nearby, a cloud, a pine, washerwomen heading home for the day, my senses and the mountain so entirely in tune that when my stroke of blue arrives, I’m ready. Though there is no rain here: the air’s shot through with gold on golden leaves. Wang Wei’s so giddy he’s calling back the dead: Li Bai! Du Fu! Guys! You’ve got to see this—autumn sun! They’re suddenly hell-bent on learning Hebrew in order to get inside the celebration, which explains how they wound up where they are in my university library’s squashed domain. Poor guys, it was Hebrew they were looking for, but they ended up across the aisle from Yiddish— some Library of Congress cataloger’s sense of humor: the world’s calmest characters and its most skittish squinting at each other, head to head, all silently intoning some version of kaddish. Part 1

Man is encased, as though in a shell, in the particular ranking of the simplest values and value-qualities which represent the objective side of his *ordo amoris*, values which have not yet been shaped into things and goods. He carries this shell along with him wherever he goes and cannot escape from it no matter how quickly he runs. He perceives the world and himself through the windows of this shell, and perceives no more of the world, of himself, or of anything else besides what these windows show him, in accordance with their position, size, and color. The structure and total content of each man's environment, which is ultimately organized according to its value structure, does not wander or change, even though he himself wanders further and further in space. It is simply filled out anew with certain individual things. However, even this fulfillment must obey the law of formation prescribed by the value structure of the milieu. The goods along the route of a man's life, the practical things, the resistances to willing and acting against which he sets his will, are from the very first always inspected and "sighted," as it were, by the particular selective mechanism of his *ordo amoris*. Wherever he arrives, it is not the same men and the same things, but the same types of men and things (and this are in every case *types* of values), that attract or repulse him in accordance with certain constant rules of preference and rejection. What he actually notices, what he observes or leaves unnoticed and unobserved, is determined by this attraction and this repulsion; these already determine the material of *possible* noticing and observing. Moreover, the attraction and repulsion are felt to come from things, not from the self, in contrast to the case of so-called active attention, and are themselves governed and circumscribed by potentially effective attitudes of interest and love, experienced as readiness for being affected." —from_Ordo Amoris_

They didn’t need to inspect each vehicle’s interior; they simply needed to examine each exhaust pipe. Bank Robbery 101: The getaway car was already fired up and ready to go.