Kelly Leak Quotes

But as the years passed, Ned's silence grew and grew. It pressed upon his face and his body. It leaked into the house and spread outward into the yard. His silence had weight. It had substance and presence and teeth.

...and the smoke that creeps off the tip of my cigarette and into the dim, scattered strands of light leaking off the moon, in through the clefts in the curtains, is much like my spirit trying to escape the burn of yesterday's presence.

Cori makes a teenage mouth noise that has, since the time of cavemen, meant, “Bullshit, you don’t know anything / I’m inventing feelings right now / Get out of my way, old lady.” Sort of the sound you’d get if you tickled her while she sneezed. Thanks to two long and difficult labors, if I make that kind of snort-laugh sound, a little pee leaks out.

With the mistaken premise that my stay-at-home work and his accomplished career required equal emotional energy, I couldn’t understand where he got the vigor to worry about his ego being rejected or his sex drive being ignored. For me, it was all hands on deck, between our kids and our house and our work. Sex, passion, romance, I thought, could certainly wait. And maybe some part of me reasoned that when I had suffered a loss, he had been too busy to support me. So what could he possibly ask of me now? But now, in the fresh mental air of my momspringa, I start to understand the kind of neglect John must have felt when I fell asleep in one of the kids’ beds every night or stopped kissing him hello and instead threw a preschooler into his arms the minute he walked in the door. At the moment I’m walking in his shoes: my children are cared for by someone else, my days are spent in rich mental exercise, I get plenty of sleep, and I go to the gym every day. In other words, I have the emotional energy to think about desire and how good it feels to be wanted. Yes, John had clean pressed shirts without having to ask, and yes, we had family dinners together that looked perfect and tasted as good, and yes, he never had to be on call when Joe started getting bullied for the first time or when Cori’s tampon leaked at a diving tournament. Yet while I was bending over backward to meet his children’s every need, his own were going ignored. And was it the chicken or the egg that started that ball rolling? If he had, only once, driven the carpool in my place, would I have suddenly wanted to greet him at the door in Saran Wrap? Or was I so incredibly consumed with the worry-work of motherhood that no contribution from him would have made me look up from my kids? I don’t know. I only know that in this month, when I have gotten time with friends, time for myself, positive attention from men, and yep, a couple of nice new bras, parts of me that were asleep for far too long are starting to wake up. I am seeing my children with a new, longer lens and seeing how grown up they are, how capable. I am seeing John as the lonely, troubled man he was when he walked out on us and understanding, for the first time, what part I played in that. I am seeing Talia’s lifestyle choices—singlehood, careerism, passionate pursuits—as less outrageous and more reasonable than ever before. And most startling of all, I am seeing myself looking down the barrel of another six years of single parenting, martyrdom, and self-neglect and feeling very, very conflicted.

Soon, we are moving, the motion lulling us into a contemplative trance. After a while, the bus slows, then comes to a stop well before the launchpad. We nod at one another, step off, and take up our positions. We’ve all undone the rubber-band seals that had been so carefully and publicly leak-checked just an hour before. I center myself in front of the right rear tire and reach into my Sokol suit. I don’t really have to pee, but it’s a tradition: When Yuri Gagarin was on his way to the launchpad for his historic first spaceflight, he asked to pull over—right about here—and peed on the right rear tire of the bus. Then he went to space and came back alive. So now we all must do the same. The tradition is so well respected that women space travelers bring a bottle of urine or water to splash on the tire rather than getting entirely out of their suits.

If I’d known it was going to be you back there I’d have eaten pickled onions and cabbage. Lots of them.” Serena’s fury faltered as Ritchie laughed. Warm and soulful. “And don’t laugh. I’m being serious.” “I know. That’s why I’m amused. Also it makes me extra glad that no one leaked the plan to you in advance. I love you, Serena, but at this point in our relationship I don’t know if I’m willing to die for you, especially if it’s death by fart-asphyxiation.

This is not the ammonia you might have found under your grandmother’s sink, but something a hundred times stronger and much more lethal. If this ammonia were to get inside the station, we could all be dead within minutes. An ammonia leak is one of the emergencies we prepare for most. So working with the cooling system and the ammonia lines is especially important to get right the first time. We must make sure not to get any of the ammonia onto our suits.