Kitchen Frame Quotes

Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines he wrote a poem And he called it "Chops" because that was the name of his dog And that's what it was all about And his teacher gave him an A and a gold star And his mother hung it on the kitchen door and read it to his aunts That was the year Father Tracy took all the kids to the zoo And he let them sing on the bus And his little sister was born with tiny toenails and no hair And his mother and father kissed a lot And the girl around the corner sent him a Valentine signed with a row of X's and he had to ask his father what the X's meant And his father always tucked him in bed at night And was always there to do it Once on a piece of white paper with blue lines he wrote a poem And he called it "Autumn" because that was the name of the season And that's what it was all about And his teacher gave him an A and asked him to write more clearly And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because of its new paint And the kids told him that Father Tracy smoked cigars And left butts on the pews And sometimes they would burn holes That was the year his sister got glasses with thick lenses and black frames And the girl around the corner laughed when he asked her to go see Santa Claus And the kids told him why his mother and father kissed a lot And his father never tucked him in bed at night And his father got mad when he cried for him to do it. Once on a paper torn from his notebook he wrote a poem And he called it "Innocence: A Question" because that was the question about his girl And that's what it was all about And his professor gave him an A and a strange steady look And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because he never showed her That was the year that Father Tracy died And he forgot how the end of the Apostle's Creed went And he caught his sister making out on the back porch And his mother and father never kissed or even talked And the girl around the corner wore too much makeup That made him cough when he kissed her but he kissed her anyway because that was the thing to do And at three a.m. he tucked himself into bed his father snoring soundly That's why on the back of a brown paper bag he tried another poem And he called it "Absolutely Nothing" Because that's what it was really all about And he gave himself an A and a slash on each damned wrist And he hung it on the bathroom door because this time he didn't think he could reach the kitchen.

The kitchen was bright, cheerful yellow, the walls decorated with framed chalk and pencil sketches Simon and Rebecca had done in grade school. Rebecca had some drawing talent, you could tell, but Simon's sketches of people all looked like parking meters with tufts of hair.

Because I ‘like you’...?” Rowan cackles an incredulous laugh. “Like. You. Seriously…? Christ, Sloane. You are fucking brilliant but also the most willfully oblivious person I have ever met. Do you really think I just like you when I framed a drawing you left for me on a scrap of paper you tore from a notebook? The one I hung it in the kitchen so I can look at it every day and think of you? Do you think I just like you when I tattoo it on my skin? I play this fucking game every year and tear my heart out watching you walk away, only to do it all over again, and I like you? You think I just like you when I fuck you like this?

we had goldfish and they circled around and around in the bowl on the table near the heavy drapes covering the picture window and my mother, always smiling, wanting us all to be happy, told me, “be happy, Henry!” and she was right: it’s better to be happy if you can but my father continued to beat her and me several times a week while raging inside his 6-foot-2 frame because he couldn’t understand what was attacking him from within. my mother, poor fish, wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a week, telling me to be happy: “Henry, smile! why don’t you ever smile?” and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the saddest smile I ever saw. one day the goldfish died, all five of them, they floated on the water, on their sides, their eyes still open, and when my father got home he threw them to the cat there on the kitchen floor and we watched as my mother smiled. A smile to remember

Cooking without remuneration" and "slaving over a hot stove" are activities separated mostly by a frame of mind. The distinction is crucial. Career women in many countries still routinely apply passion to their cooking, heading straight from work to the market to search out the freshest ingredients, feeding their loved ones with aplomb. [...] Full-time homemaking may not be an option for those of us delivered without trust funds into the modern era. But approaching mealtimes as a creative opportunity, rather than a chore, is an option. Required participation from spouse and kids is an element of the equation. An obsession with spotless collars, ironing, and kitchen floors you can eat off of---not so much. We've earned the right to forget about stupefying household busywork. But kitchens where food is cooked and eaten, those were really a good idea. We threw that baby out with the bathwater. It may be advisable to grab her by her slippery foot and haul her back in here before it's too late.

What was once a home she had taken apart one piece at a time, one day...She sold her belongings for money to buy food.  First the luxuries: a small statue, a picture.  Then the items with more utility: a lamp, a kettle.  Clothes left the closet at a rate of a garment a day…she burned everything in the basement first; then everything in the attic.  It lasted weeks, not months.  Though tempted, she left the roof alone.  She stripped the second floor, and the stairs.  She extracted every possible calorie from the kitchen.  she wasn’t working alone, because neighbourhood pirates simultaneously stole anything of value outside: door and window frames, fencing, stucco.  They pillaged her yard.  Breaking in was a boundary her neigbours had not yet crossed.  But the animals had.  Rats and mice and other vermin found the cracks without much effort.  Like her, they sought warmth and scraps of food.  With great reluctance, she roasted the ones she could catch.  She spent her nights fighting off the ones that escaped.

I lie down on many a station platform; I stand before many a soup kitchen; I squat on many a bench;--then at last the landscape becomes disturbing, mysterious, and familiar. It glides past the western windows with its villages, their thatched roofs like caps, pulled over the white-washed, half-timbered houses, its corn-fields, gleaming like mother-of-pearl in the slanting light, its orchards, its barns and old lime trees. The names of the stations begin to take on meaning and my heart trembles. The train stamps and stamps onward. I stand at the window and hold on to the frame. These names mark the boundaries of my youth.

We used to all come outside when the streetlights came on and prowl the neighborhood in a pack, a herd of kids on banana-seat bikes and minibikes. The grown-ups looked so silly framed in their living-room and kitchen windows. They complained about their days and sighed deep sighs of depression and loss. They talked about how spoiled and lucky children were these days. We will never be that way, we said, we will never say those things.

A day doesn't go by when I don't look at them, she said. I can't have them up on the kitchen refrigerator or in a frame in the bedroom--I just can't do it, I just can't run into them casually when I'm supposed to be doing something else--but I also can't last a day without seeing them. Visiting with them when I am alone in the house.

It was knock or go home and die. Rase knocked. The door opened with such alacrity that Rase wondered whether Gabriel had been standing on the other side, drawn to the door by the same uncanny instinct that had inspired him to torment Rase. "You said anytime," Rase said, before Gabriel could say anything. "I did." Gabriel seemed unperturbed at having his employer show up at his door. He stepped back to let Rase in. Rase had been expecting something in keeping with the rest of the building. Instead, Gabriel's apartment was shabby but spotless. It was one main room with a niche for the kitchen and a tiny bathroom that Rase could see through a narrow door that stood ajar. He walked to the center of the room and found himself only feet from Gabriel's bed, a sizable bed with a heavy iron frame. That stopped him in his tracks, and he stood there, wondering what to do with himself. "Beer?" Gabriel was so close that Rase could feel Gabriel's breath on his hair. "This isn't a social call," Rase said, not even trying to keep his voice steady. "Then why are your clothes still on?

Van Uoc felt the stab of a sad truth: she and her mother would never be as close as her mother and grandmother had been. Her mother got up, stretched her tidy, graceful frame and headed for the kitchen. Van Uoc wanted to be able to offer her some comfort, but what could she say? Her mother was right. The two of them represented an irreconcilable cultural split. Distance between them was inevitable.

Maybe the wealth we wanted as children is this, I thought: not strongboxes full of diamonds and gold coins but a bathtub, to immerse yourself like this every day, to eat bread, salami, prosciutto, to have a lot of space even in the bathroom, to have a telephone, a pantry and icebox full of food, a photograph in a silver frame on the sideboard that shows you in your wedding dress—to have this entire house, with the kitchen, the bedroom, the dining room, the two balconies, and the little room where I am studying, and where, even though Lila hasn’t said so, soon, when it comes, a baby will sleep.

Nothing is a masterpiece - a real masterpiece - till it's about two hundred years old. A picture is like a tree or a church, you've got to let it grow into a masterpiece. Same with a poem or a new religion. They begin as a lot of funny words. Nobody knows whether they're all nonsense or a gift from heaven. And the only people who think anything of 'em are a lot of cranks or crackpots, or poor devils who don't know enough to know anything. Look at Christianity. Just a lot of floating seeds to start with, all sorts of seeds. It was a long time before one of them grew into a tree big enough to kill the rest and keep the rain off. And it's only when the tree has been cut into planks and built into a house and the house has got pretty old and about fifty generations of ordinary lumpheads who don't know a work of art from a public convenience, have been knocking nails in the kitchen beams to hang hams on, and screwing hooks in the walls for whips and guns and photographs and calendars and measuring the children on the window frames and chopping out a new cupboard under the stairs to keep the cheese and murdering their wives in the back room and burying them under the cellar flags, that it begins even to feel like a religion. And when the whole place is full of dry rot and ghosts and old bones and the shelves are breaking down with old wormy books that no one could read if they tried, and the attic floors are bulging through the servants' ceilings with old trunks and top-boots and gasoliers and dressmaker's dummies and ball frocks and dolls-houses and pony saddles and blunderbusses and parrot cages and uniforms and love letters and jugs without handles and bridal pots decorated with forget-me-nots and a piece out at the bottom, that it grows into a real old faith, a masterpiece which people can really get something out of, each for himself. And then, of course, everybody keeps on saying that it ought to be pulled down at once, because it's an insanitary nuisance.

As Strane works at me, part of me leaves the bedroom and wanders into the kitchen, where the cup he drank from lies tipped over in the sink. The faucet drips; the refrigerator hums. The kitten pads in from the living room, wanting to be held. Standing by the window, the broken-off part of me takes the kitten in her arms, gazes down at the quiet street below. It’s started to storm, a streetlight’s orange glow illuminating the sheets of rain, and the broken-off part of me watches it fall, humming softly to herself to block out the sounds coming from the bedroom. Every so often, she holds her breath and listens to check if it’s still happening. When she hears the metal scrape of the bed frame, the slap of skin on skin, she holds the kitten closer, turns back to the rain.

There was no answer. I looked up. Epsilon’s light shone out onto a picture on the wall. A round picture in a square frame. The golden symbol of O. The One. The symbol of perfection. The symbol of eternity. The One without beginning or end. The One who is the beginning and the end. The One to whom time is meaningless. The One who could do whatever he wanted with time. What had Mrs. Shiling said, in the kitchen, a year ago? “Time is nothing. Not to him. A moment in time. What is that t him?” Quivering from head to toe, I stared up at that simple O.

Instead of “Put away your plate after dinner” or “Fold your laundry,” you’re framing the tasks as a communal activity, such as “Let’s all work together to clean up the kitchen after dinner” or “Let’s all help fold the laundry as a family.

GERTRUDE Gertrude Appleman, 1901-1976 God is all-knowing, all-present, and almighty. --A Catechism of Christian Doctrine I wish that all the people who peddle God could watch my mother die: could see the skin and gristle weighing only seventy-nine, every stubborn pound of flesh a small death. I wish the people who peddle God could see her young, lovely in gardens and beautiful in kitchens, and could watch the hand of God slowly twisting her knees and fingers till they gnarled and knotted, settling in for thirty years of pain. I wish the people who peddle God could see the lightning of His cancer stabbing her, that small frame tensing at every shock, her sweet contralto scratchy with the Lord’s infection: Philip, I want to die. I wish I had them gathered round, those preachers, popes, rabbis, imams, priests – every pious shill on God’s payroll – and I would pull the sheets from my mother’s brittle body, and they would fall on their knees at her bedside to be forgiven all their faith.

A single bed with blood in it. Blood on the pillow and on the sheets and even on the enameled metal of the bed frame. Pink rags in a basin. Half-unrolled bandage on the floor. The nurse bustles over and grimaces at Werner. Outside of the kitchens, she is the only woman at the school.

We're buying curtains, babe, that activity hardly requires a cart," he noted. "We're in a home store, Tate," I replied, thinking my answer said all. "And?" he returned, stating plainly my answer did not say all. "A mega home store," I added. "And?" "And, I came here a few days ago to buy you sheets. I ended up buying you two sets of sheets, six new pillows, a down comforter, a comforter cover and shams. That happens in a home store," I educated him. "You come in needing a spatula and you go out with a spatula, new kitchen towels, candles, candle holders, cool things to seal open chip bags, a variety of frames, a soap dispenser and a new vacuum cleaner.

They'd had a long chat, Elsie Gormley and this house, more than sixty years of it. It had witnessed all her tempers, all her moods, and usually improved them. It held her voice, her husband's, her children's, and now their children's in turn - echoes and repetitions lodged in around the baseboards, around the window frames like those pale motes of dust that had wedged at the edge of the kitchen floor.

I came here a few days ago to buy you sheets. I ended up buying you two sets of sheets, six new pillows, a down comforter, a comforter cover and shams. That happens in a home store,” I educated him. “You come in needing a spatula and you go out with a spatula, new kitchen towels, candles, candle holders, cool things to seal open chip bags, a variety of frames, a soap dispenser and a new vacuum cleaner.

It seemed as if nothing were to break that tie — as if the years were merely to compact and cement it; and as if those years were to be all the years of their natural lives. Eighteen-forty-two turned into eighteen-forty-three; eighteen-forty-three into eighteen- forty-four; eighteen-forty-four into eighteen-forty-five. Flush was no longer a puppy; he was a dog of four or five; he was a dog in the full prime of life — and still Miss Barrett lay on her sofa in Wimpole Street and still Flush lay on the sofa at her feet. Miss Barrett’s life was the life of “a bird in its cage.” She sometimes kept the house for weeks at a time, and when she left it, it was only for an hour or two, to drive to a shop in a carriage, or to be wheeled to Regent’s Park in a bath-chair. The Barretts never left London. Mr. Barrett, the seven brothers, the two sisters, the butler, Wilson and the maids, Catiline, Folly, Miss Barrett and Flush all went on living at 50 Wimpole Street, eating in the dining-room, sleeping in the bedrooms, smoking in the study, cooking in the kitchen, carrying hot-water cans and emptying the slops from January to December. The chair-covers became slightly soiled; the carpets slightly worn; coal dust, mud, soot, fog, vapours of cigar smoke and wine and meat accumulated in crevices, in cracks, in fabrics, on the tops of picture-frames, in the scrolls of carvings. And the ivy that hung over Miss Barrett’s bedroom window flourished; its green curtain became thicker and thicker, and in summer the nasturtiums and the scarlet runners rioted together in the window-box. But one night early in January 1845 the postman knocked. Letters fell into the box as usual. Wilson went downstairs to fetch the letters as usual. Everything was as usual — every night the postman knocked, every night Wilson fetched the letters, every night there was a letter for Miss Barrett. But tonight the letter was not the same letter; it was a different letter. Flush saw that, even before the envelope was broken. He knew it from the way that Miss Barrett took it; turned it; looked at the vigorous, jagged writing of her name.

Did you know that simply walking through a door-frame can break a repetitive thought-loop? It literally causes a memory lapse, which is why we leave the living room and go into the kitchen for something, and then stand in the kitchen cluelessly scratching our heads. In a fascinating study aptly called ‘Walking through doorways causes forgetting’, professors at Notre Dame University discovered that this worked in both virtual and real-world settings.

So, yes, I might look like I’m doing okay after my week’s holiday, like I’m thriving and happy, but nobody saw what I was like during it. Nobody asked how many times I had to tiptoe to the toilet because my bladder hurt from how long it took me to gather the strength to go wee. Nobody saw the clean sink in the kitchen and wondered if I’m just really good at cleaning up after myself, or if I’ve not eaten in a week. People only see what you show on the outside, and when you come across as a cheery, upbeat person, you don’t give people any reason to look deeper.

Overcooked, flabby pasta or a blob of tomato ketchup was enough to incense Frank; a plate of soggy pasta in Matteo’s Italian restaurant in Los Angeles, owned by his childhood buddy, Matty Jordan, had Frank storming into the kitchens. He looked around wildly, “Where are all the Italians?” he roared at the startled Filipino kitchen staff. Not content, he shot back upstairs and threw his plate of pasta against the wall. As he walked out, he dipped his finger in the tomato sauce and signed the smear: Picasso (Matty very good-naturedly put a frame around this later).

Other people used photographs as a way to keep close to the events of their lives; she had used them as a way to stand apart. She had never looked at the Kitchen Counter series and remembered the days before and after, the grocery shopping or the leftovers in the refrigerator, didn't look at the photographs of Ben's action figures or even the plateau of his baby back and think of which toys he'd preferred or when those faint dimples at the base of his spine had given way to the firmer flesh of childhood. She'd denatured parts of her own existence by printing and framing and freezing them.

never so happy in my whole life. Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines he wrote a poem And he called it “Chops” because that was the name of his dog And that’s what it was all about And his teacher gave him an A and a gold star And his mother hung it on the kitchen door and read it to his aunts That was the year Father Tracy took all the kids to the zoo And he let them sing on the bus And his little sister was born with tiny toenails and no hair And his mother and father kissed a lot And the girl around the corner sent him a Valentine signed with a row of X’s and he had to ask his father what the X’s meant And his father always tucked him in bed at night And was always there to do it Once on a piece of white paper with blue lines he wrote a poem And he called it “Autumn” because that was the name of the season And that’s what it was all about And his teacher gave him an A and asked him to write more clearly And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because of its new paint And the kids told him that Father Tracy smoked cigars And left butts on the pews And sometimes they would burn holes That was the year his sister got glasses with thick lenses and black frames And the girl around the corner laughed when he asked her to go see Santa Claus And the kids told him why his mother and father kissed a lot And his father never tucked him in bed at night And his father got mad when he cried for him to do it. Once on a paper torn from his notebook he wrote a poem And he called it “Innocence: A Question” because that was the question about his girl And that’s what it was all about And his professor gave him an A and a strange steady look And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because he never showed her That was the year that Father Tracy died And he forgot how the end of the Apostle’s Creed went And he caught his sister making out on the back porch And his mother and father never kissed or even talked And the girl around the corner wore too much makeup That made him cough when he kissed her but he kissed her anyway because that was the thing to do And at three A.M. he tucked himself into bed his father snoring soundly That’s why on the back of a brown paper bag he tried another poem And he called it “Absolutely Nothing” Because that’s what it was really all about And he gave himself an A and a slash on each damned wrist And he hung it on the bathroom door because this time he didn’t think he could reach the kitchen.

There was another inspiring moment: a rough, choppy, moonlit night on the water, and the Dreadnaught's manager looked out the window suddenly to spy thousands of tiny baitfish breaking the surface, rushing frantically toward shore. He knew what that meant, as did everyone else in town with a boat, a gaff and a loaf of Wonder bread to use as bait: the stripers were running! Thousands of the highly prized, relatively expensive striped bass were, in a rare feeding frenzy, suddenly there for the taking. You had literally only to throw bread on the water, bash the tasty fish on the head with a gaff and then haul them in. They were taking them by the hundreds of pounds. Every restaurant in town was loading up on them, their parking lots, like ours, suddenly a Coleman-lit staging area for scaling, gutting and wrapping operations. The Dreadnaught lot, like every other lot in town, was suddenly filled with gore-covered cooks and dishwashers, laboring under flickering gaslamps and naked bulbs to clean, wrap and freeze the valuable white meat. We worked for hours with our knives, our hair sparkling with snowflake-like fish scales, scraping, tearing, filleting. At the end of the night's work, I took home a 35-pound monster, still twisted with rigor. My room-mates were smoking weed when I got back to our little place on the beach and, as often happens on such occasions, were hungry. We had only the bass, some butter and a lemon to work with, but we cooked that sucker up under the tiny home broiler and served it on aluminum foil, tearing at it with our fingers. It was a bright, moonlit sky now, a mean high tide was lapping at the edges of our house, and as the windows began to shake in their frames, a smell of white spindrift and salt saturated the air as we ate. It was the freshest piece of fish I'd ever eaten, and I don't know if it was due to the dramatic quality the weather was beginning to take on, but it hit me right in the brainpan, a meal that made me feel better about things, made me better for eating it, somehow even smarter, somehow . . . It was a protein rush to the cortex, a clean, three-ingredient ingredient high, eaten with the hands. Could anything be better than that?

Sue stepped into a haven that smelled of candles and lemon-scented dish soap, a cabinet of curiosities, one of which was the bathtub smack dab in the middle of the small kitchen. Bob Roy’s railroad flat was four tight, connected rooms, each stuffed with koombies, knickknacks, doodads, furniture pieces of any style, shelves, books, photos in frames, trophies bought from flea markets, old records, small lamps, and calendars from decades before. “I know,” he said. “It looks like I sell magic potions in here, like I’m an animated badger from a Disney cartoon.” He lit a burner on the stove with a huge kitchen match, then filled a shiny, Olde English–style kettle with water from the tap. As he prepared cups on a tray he said, “Tea in minutes, titmouse. Make a home for yourself.

We had only the bass, some butter and a lemon to work with, but we cooked that sucker up under the tiny home broiler and served it on aluminum foil, tearing at it with our fingers. It was a bright, moonlit sky now, a mean high tide was lapping at the edges of our house, and as the windows began to shake in their frames, a smell of white spindrift and salt saturated the air as we ate. It was the freshest piece of fish I'd ever eaten, and I don't know if it was due “to the dramatic quality the weather was beginning to take on, but it hit me right in the brainpan, a meal that made me feel better about things, made me better for eating it, somehow even smarter, somehow . . . It was a protein rush to the cortex, a clean, three-ingredient ingredient high, eaten with the hands. Could anything be better than that?

Here is a life in still frames. Moments like Polaroids. Like paintings. Like flowers pressed between the pages of a book. Perfectly preserved. The three of them, napping in the sun. Addie, stroking Henry’s hair while she tells him stories, and he writes, and writes, and writes. Henry, pressing her down into the bed, their fingers tangled, their breath quick, her name an echo in her hair. Here they are, together in his galley kitchen, his arms threaded through hers, her hands over his as they stir béchamel, as they knead bread dough. When it is in the oven, he cups her face with floury hands, leaves trails everywhere he touches. They make a mess, as the room fills with the scent of freshly baking bread. And in the morning it looks like ghosts have danced across the kitchen, and they pretend there were two instead of one.

European statesmen of the First World War era did—to some extent—recognize the problem and its significance. As soon as they began to plan their annexation of the Middle East, Allied leaders recognized that Islam’s hold on the region was the main feature of the political landscape with which they would have to contend. Lord Kitchener, it will be remembered, initiated in 1914 a policy designed to bring the Moslem faith under Britain’s sway. When it looked as though that might not work—for the Sherif Hussein’s call to the Faithful in 1916 fell on deaf ears—Kitchener’s associates proposed instead to sponsor other loyalties (to a federation of Arabic-speaking peoples, or to the family of King Hussein, or to about-to-be-created countries such as Iraq) as a rival to pan-Islam. Indeed they framed the postwar Middle East settlement with that object (among others) in view.

I spent most of the afternoon tempering the new batch of couverture and working on the window display. A thick covering of green tissue paper for the grass. Paper flowers- daffodils and daisies, Anouk's contribution- pinned to the window frame. Green-covered tins that had once contained cocoa powder, stacked up against each other to make a craggy mountainside. Crinkly cellophane paper wraps it like a covering of ice. Running past and winding into the valley, a river of blue silk ribbon, upon which a cluster of houseboats sits quiet and unreflecting. And below, a procession of chocolate figures, cats, dogs, rabbits, some with raisin eyes, pink marzipan ears, tails made of licorice-whips, with sugar flowers between their teeth... And mice. On every available surface, mice. Running up the sides of the hill, nestling in corners, even on the riverboats. Pink and white sugar coconut mice, chocolate mice of all colors, variegated mice marbled through with truffle and maraschino cream, delicately tinted mice, sugar-dappled frosted mice. And standing above them, the Pied Piper resplendent in his red and yellow, a barley-sugar flute in one hand, his hat in the other. I have hundreds of molds in my kitchen, thin plastic ones for the eggs and the figures, ceramic ones for the cameos and liqueur chocolates. With them I can re-create any facial expression and superimpose it upon a hollow shell, adding hair and detail with a narrow-gauge pipe, building up torso and limbs in separate pieces and fixing them in place with wires and melted chocolate.... A little camouflage- a red cloak, rolled from marzipan. A tunic, a hat of the same material, a long feather brushing the ground at his booted feet. My Pied Piper looks a little like Roux, with his red hair and motley garb.

I was afraid of other people’s houses. After school sometimes a friend might talk me into going to his house or apartment to do our homework together. It was a shock, the way people lived, other people, those who weren’t me. I didn’t know how to respond, the clinging intimacy of it, kitchen slop, pan handles jutting from the sink. Did I want to be curious, amused, indifferent, superior? Just walking past a bathroom, a woman’s stocking draped over the towel rack, pill bottles on the windowsill, some open, some capsized, a child’s slipper in the bathtub. It made me want to run and hide, partly from my own fastidiousness. The bedrooms with unmade beds, somebody’s socks on the floor, the old woman in nightclothes, barefoot, an entire life gathered up in a chair by the bed, hunched frame and muttering face. Who are these people, minute to minute and year after year? It made me want to go home and stay there.

He forced his mind back to the kitchen and the mess she’d created. He found himself smiling for no reason at all. If he wasn’t already falling for her, this mess definitely turned the tide. She’d tried. For him. She had no clue how to cook, but she’d gotten up early, looked up cooking videos and tried to make him breakfast. He went back to his room and got his cell phone so he could take pictures. Lots of them. He added a video of the entire room. He wanted to have both to remember this moment. His woman, doing her best, giving him a priceless gift. The question came up in interview after interview: What did one get for the man who had everything and could get anything he wanted? You gave him this. A messy kitchen and burned pots and pans. Flour all over your face and clothes. You gave him something no one else had ever bothered to do or would think of doing. Yeah. He was falling hard. And he was framing the damn pictures and putting them up on his wall

said he was attracted to the way I lived my life, the way I’d dance easily, laugh loudly, fill a room with colour; but instead of sitting back and enjoying the butterfly, he caught it. He framed me like a butterfly, pinning me into his frame, but the pins that hold the butterfly in place are not easily visible, and no one can see I’m being held down. Over the years the butterfly has faded – he’s stripped me of everything that made me what I was, and now he’s left with this dull, colourless woman who’s scared to say what she really thinks. And I can’t dance any more. It’s hard to reconcile the person I once was with the woman I am now, standing helplessly in my beautiful bedroom with handmade oak wardrobes and gold silk eiderdown. The only reason I get out of bed in the morning is my children; they are my reason to live, and without them I don’t think I would survive. Things have never been perfect between Simon and I, but until Caroline, my life was bearable, but now I see her curling up on our king-sized bed. She’s lounging seductively on our sofa, arms around the boys, my boys, and she’s in my kitchen serving breakfast. This woman wants to take over my husband, but she’ll also take over my life,

Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines he wrote a poem And he called it “Chops” because that was the name of his dog And that’s what it was all about And his teacher gave him an A and a gold star And his mother hung it on the kitchen door and read it to his aunts That was the year Father Tracy took all the kids to the zoo And he let them sing on the bus And his little sister was born with tiny toenails and no hair And his mother and father kissed a lot And the girl around the corner sent him a Valentine signed with a row of X’s and he had to ask his father what the X’s meant And his father always tucked him in bed at night And was always there to do it Once on a piece of white paper with blue lines he wrote a poem And he called it “Autumn” because that was the name of the season And that’s what it was all about And his teacher gave him an A and asked him to write more clearly And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because of its new paint And the kids told him that Father Tracy smoked cigars And left butts on the pews And sometimes they would burn holes That was the year his sister got glasses with thick lenses and black frames And the girl around the corner laughed when he asked her to go see Santa Claus And the kids told him why his mother and father kissed a lot And his father never tucked him in bed at night And his father got mad when he cried for him to do it. Once on a paper torn from his notebook he wrote a poem And he called it “Innocence: A Question” because that was the question about his girl And that’s what it was all about And his professor gave him an A and a strange steady look And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because he never showed her That was the year that Father Tracy died And he forgot how the end of the Apostle’s Creed went And he caught his sister making out on the back porch And his mother and father never kissed or even talked And the girl around the corner wore too much makeup That made him cough when he kissed her but he kissed her anyway because that was the thing to do And at three A.M. he tucked himself into bed his father snoring soundly That’s why on the back of a brown paper bag he tried another poem And he called it “Absolutely Nothing” Because that’s what it was really all about And he gave himself an A and a slash on each damned wrist And he hung it on the bathroom door because this time he didn’t think he could reach the kitchen.

I’d better go,” Marlboro Man said, leaning forward and kissing my cheek. I still grasped the diamond ring in my warm, sweaty hand. “I don’t want Mike to burst a blood vessel.” He laughed out loud, clearly enjoying it all. I tried to speak but couldn’t. I’d been rendered totally mute. Nothing could have prepared me for those ten minutes of my life. The last thing I remember, I’d awakened at eleven. Moments later, I was hiding in my bathroom, trying, in all my early-morning ugliness, to avoid being seen by Marlboro Man, who’d dropped by unexpectedly. Now I was standing on the front porch, a diamond ring in my hand. It was all completely surreal. Marlboro Man turned to leave. “You can give me your answer later,” he said, grinning, his Wranglers waving good-bye to me in the bright noonday sun. But then it all came flashing across my line of sight. The boots in the bar, the icy blue-green eyes, the starched shirt, the Wranglers…the first date, the long talks, my breakdown in his kitchen, the movies, the nights on his porch, the kisses, the long drives, the hugs…the all-encompassing, mind-numbing passion I felt. It played frame by frame in my mind in a steady stream. “Hey,” I said, walking toward him and effortlessly sliding the ring on my finger. I wrapped my arms around his neck as his arms, instinctively, wrapped around my waist and raised me off the ground in our all-too-familiar pose. “Yep,” I said effortlessly. He smiled and hugged me tightly. Mike, once again, laid on the horn, oblivious to what had just happened. Marlboro Man said nothing more. He simply kissed me, smiled, then drove my brother to the mall.

Then I saw the figure standing outside my car door: it was Marlboro Man, who’d come outside to greet me. His jeans were clean, his shirt tucked in and starched. I couldn’t yet see his face, though, which was what I wanted most. Getting out of the car, I smiled and looked up, squinting. The western sunset was a backdrop behind his sculpted frame. It was such a beautiful sight, a stark contrast to all the ugliness that had surrounded me that day. He shut the car door behind me and moved in for a hug, which provided all the emotional fuel I needed to continue breathing. Finally, in that instant, I felt like things would be okay. I smiled and acted cheerful, following him into the kitchen and not at all letting on that my day had sucked about as badly as a day could have sucked. I’d never been one to wear my feelings on my sleeve, and I sure wasn’t going to let them splay out on what was merely my sixth date with the sexiest, most masculine man I’d ever met. But I knew I was a goner when Marlboro Man looked at me and asked, “You okay?” You know when you’re not okay, but then someone asks you if you’re okay, and you say you’re okay and act like you’re okay, but then you start realizing you’re not okay? Then you feel your nose start to tingle and your throat start to swell and your chin start to quiver and you tell yourself, In the name of all that is good and holy, do not do this. Do not do this…but you’re powerless to stop it? And you try to blink it away and you finally think you’ve just about got it under control? But then the cowboy standing in front of you smiles gently and says, “You sure?” Those two simple words opened up the Floodgates of Hell. I smiled and laughed, embarrassed, even as two big, thick tears rolled down both my cheeks. Then I laughed again and blew a nice, clear explosion of snot from my nose. Of all the things that had happened that day, that single moment might have been the worst.

She slipped into the shadows and waited, like a she-wolf, for her quarry. Bay caught her breath when Owen Blackthorne stepped into the cool night air. He was close enough to touch. His shaggy black hair looked rumpled, as though he’d shoved both hands through it in agitation. When he started to move off the porch, Bay reached out and grasped his sleeve. A second later she was slammed back against the wall, a powerful male hand at her throat choking her. She could feel the heat of him, the solid maleness of him. And panicked. She clawed at Owen’s flesh with her nails and drove her knee upward toward his genitals. Her thrust her upraised knee aside, and the full weight of his over-six-foot frame shoved hard against her from shoulders to thighs. Bay froze, staring up at him in mute horror. Her body trembled in shock. She tried to speak, but there was no air to be had beneath the crushing pressure of his grip on her throat. “What the hell . . .?” He released her throat and grabbed her arms to yank her into the narrow stream of light from the kitchen doorway. She gasped a breath of air, coughed, then gasped another, pressing a shaky hand to her injured throat. She wrenched to free herself, but he let her go without a struggle and took a wary step back. She rubbed her arms where he’d held her, wishing she’d approached him more directly. “What are you doing out here, Mizz Creed?” His voice was clipped but controlled. The violence she’d felt in his touch was still there in his eyes, which glittered with hostility. “It’s Dr. Creed,” she rasped, glaring back at him. He lifted a black brow. “Well, Dr. Creed.” She opened her mouth to say I need your help. But the words wouldn’t come. There was nothing wrong with her voice. She just hated the thought of asking a Blackthorne for anything. “I haven’t got all night,” he said. “There’s an emergency at the barn—” “Ruby’s foal has already been delivered safely,” she said. “I made up that story because I wanted to speak privately with you.

Hey,” Sean said as he stretched. “I just took Scout out.” “Thanks,” Cade said. Sean glanced back and noticed me. “Hey, Fallon.” He smirked at Cade. “Well, guess I’ll be heading to my room now.” Scout raised his head and his tail slapped against the couch. “Three’s a crowd, and all that.” Sean ruffled the fur along Scout’s neck. “Unless, of course, you’re a dog.” He stood and stretched again. “Oh, to be a dog in a crate.” Cade rolled his eyes at Sean’s fly-on-a-wall reference. “ ’Night, Sean,” he grumbled. “See you two crazy kids later.” He strolled out of the room but paused and patted the kitchen wall. “Oh, and FYI, the shower in Cade’s room backs to the kitchen.” God, Sean was like a male version of me. Poor Brinley, always having to put up with my crap. She was a damn good sport. Cade just shook his head and muttered, “Jealous?” “Fuck yeah, I am,” Sean called back as he wandered down the hall. “I’m going to start calling you magic hands.” Though Sean was still fucking around, I sensed Cade losing his patience. “It’s not just his hands,” I said. Sean looked over his shoulder at me. “I mean, call him what you want, but don’t sell him short.” Sean just stared at me, surprised by either what I’d said or the fact I’d said anything at all. I smiled in the way that always drove guys crazy, totally fake but filled with flirtation. “Listen close tonight and maybe you can figure out what I like to call him.” He leaned his head against his door frame and groaned. “Just not even fair.” He picked his head up and glanced at me. “If you get bored, you know I live right down the hall.” I laughed, though Cade didn’t seem to find quite the humor in it I did. He slipped his hand in mine. “Not happening, bro.” Sean raised his hands. “Just throwing it out there.” “Thanks,” I said sweetly. “But my schedule is pretty full with Cade RSVPing to my fuckfest and all…” Cade chuckled. Sean gaped at me then, with a pointed look at Cade, said, “Marry her, dude. Seriously, if you don’t, I will.” He stepped into his room grumbling something about fuckfests. “My roommate is in love with you now. You’re like this hot female version of him. His dream girl.

once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines he wrote a poem and he called it "chops" because that was the name of his dog and thats what it was all about his teacher gave him an A and a gold star and his mother hung it on the kitchen door and read it to his aunts. that was the year Father Tracy took all the kids to the zoo and he let them sing on the bus and his little sister was born with tiny nails and no hair and his mother and father kissed a lot and the girl around the corner sent him a Valentine signed with a row of X's and he had to ask his father what the X's meant and his father always tucked him in bed at night and was always there to do it once on a piece of white paper with blue lines he wrote a poem he called it "Autumn" because that was the name of the season and that's what it was all about and his teacher gave him an A and asked him to write more clearly and his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because of the new paint and the kids told him that Father Tracy smoked cigars and left butts on the pews and sometime they would burn holes that was the year his sister got glasses with thick lenses and black frames and the girl around the corner laughed when he asked her to go see santa claus and the kids told him why his mother and father kissed a lot and his father never tucked him in bed at night and his father got mad when he cried for him to do it once on a paper torn from his notebook he wrote a poem and he called it "Innocence: A Question" because that was the question about his girl and thats what it was all about and his professor gave him an A and a strange steady look and his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because he never showed her that was the year Father Tracy died and he forgot how the end of the Apostles's Creed went and he caught his sister making out on the back porch and his mother and father never kissed or even talked and the girl around the corner wore too much make up that made him cough when he kissed her but he kissed her anyway because it was the thing to do and at 3 am he tucked himself into bed his father snoring soundly that's why on the back of a brown paper bag he tried another poem and he called it "Absolutely Nothing" because that's what it was really all about and he gave himself an A and a slash on each damned wrist and he hung it on the bathroom door because this time he didn't think he could reach the kitchen

once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines he wrote a poem and he called it "chops" because that was the name of his dog and that's what it was all about his teacher gave him an a and a gold star and his mother hung it on the kitchen door and read it to his aunts. that was the year father tracy took all the kids to the zoo and he let them sing on the bus and his little sister was born with tiny nails and no hair and his mother and father kissed a lot and the girl around the corner sent him a valentine signed with a row of x's and he had to ask his father what the x's meant and his father always tucked him in bed at night and was always there to do it once on a piece of white paper with blue lines he wrote a poem he called it "autumn" because that was the name of the season and that's what it was all about and his teacher gave him an a and asked him to write more clearly and his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because of the new paint and the kids told him that Father Tracy smoked cigars and left butts on the pews and sometime they would burn holes that was the year his sister got glasses with thick lenses and black frames and the girl around the corner laughed when he asked her to go see santa claus and the kids told him why his mother and father kissed a lot and his father never tucked him in bed at night and his father got mad when he cried for him to do it once on a paper torn from his notebook he wrote a poem and he called it "innocence: a question" because that was the question about his girl and that's what it was all about and his professor gave him an a and a strange steady look and his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because he never showed her that was the year father tracy died and he forgot how the end of the apostles' creed went and he caught his sister making out on the back porch and his mother and father never kissed or even talked and the girl around the corner wore too much make up that made him cough when he kissed her but he kissed her anyway because it was the thing to do and at 3 am he tucked himself into bed his father snoring soundly that's why on the back of a brown paper bag he tried another poem and he called it "absolutely nothing" because that's what it was really all about and he gave himself an a and a slash on each damned wrist and he hung it on the bathroom door because this time he didn't think he could reach the kitchen

Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines he wrote a poem And he called it "Chops" because that was the name of his dog And that's what it was all about And his teacher gave him an A and a gold star And his mother hung it on the kitchen door and read it to his aunts That was the year Father Tracy took all the kids to the zoo And he let them sing on the bus And his little sister was born with tiny toenails and no hair And his mother and father kissed a lot And the girl around the corner sent him a Valentine signed with a row of X's and he had to ask his father what the X's meant And his father always tucked him in bed at night And was always there to do it Once on a piece of white paper with blue lines he wrote a poem And he called it "Autumn" because that was the name of the season And that's what it was all about And his teacher gave him an A and asked him to write more clearly And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because of its new paint And the kids told him that Father Tracy smoked cigars And left butts on the pews And sometimes they would burn holes That was the year his sister got glasses with thick lenses and black frames And the girl around the corner laughed when he asked her to go see Santa Claus And the kids told him why his mother and father kissed a lot And his father never tucked him in bed at night And his father got mad when he cried for him to do it. Once on a paper torn from his notebook he wrote a poem And he called it "Innocence: A Question" because that was the question about his girl And that's what it was all about And his professor gave him an A and a strange steady look And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because he never showed her That was the year that Father Tracy died And he forgot how the end of the Apostle's Creed went And he caught his sister making out on the back porch And his mother and father never kissed or even talked And the girl around the corner wore too much makeup That made him cough when he kissed her but he kissed her anyway because that was the thing to do And at three a.m. he tucked himself into bed his father snoring soundly That's why on the back of a brown paper bag he tried another poem And he called it "Absolutely Nothing" Because that's what it was really all about And he gave himself an A and a slash on each damned wrist And he hung it on the bathroom door because this time he didn't think he could reach the kitchen.

Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines he wrote a poem And he called it “Chops” because that was the name of his dog And that’s what it was all about And his teacher gave him an A and a gold star And his mother hung it on the kitchen door and read it to his aunts That was the year Father Tracy took all the kids to the zoo And he let them sing on the bus And his little sister was born with tiny toenails and no hair And his mother and father kissed a lot And the girl around the corner sent him a Valentine signed with a row of X’s and he had to ask his father what the X’s meant And his father always tucked him in bed at night And was always there to do it Once on a piece of white paper with blue lines he wrote a poem And he called it “Autumn” because that was the name of the season And that’s what it was all about And his teacher gave him an A and asked him to write more clearly And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because of its new paint And the kids told him that Father Tracy smoked cigars And left butts on the pews And sometimes they would burn holes That was the year his sister got glasses with thick lenses and black frames And the girl around the corner laughed when he asked her to go see Santa Claus And the kids told him why his mother and father kissed a lot And his father never tucked him in bed at night And his father got mad when he cried for him to do it. Once on a paper torn from his notebook he wrote a poem And he called it “Innocence: A Question” because that was the question about his girl And that’s what it was all about And his professor gave him an A and a strange steady look And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because he never showed her That was the year that Father Tracy died And he forgot how the end of the Apostle’s Creed went And he caught his sister making out on the back porch And his mother and father never kissed or even talked And the girl around the corner wore too much makeup That made him cough when he kissed her but he kissed her anyway because that was the thing to do And at three A.M. he tucked himself into bed his father snoring soundly That’s why on the back of a brown paper bag he tried another poem And he called it “Absolutely Nothing” Because that’s what it was really all about And he gave himself an A and a slash on each damned wrist And he hung it on the bathroom door because this time he didn’t think he could reach the kitchen. That was the poem I read for Patrick. Nobody knew who wrote it, but Bob said he heard it before, and he heard that it was some kid’s suicide note. I really hope it wasn’t because then I don’t know if I like the ending.

So, you want to improve your home like you have some knowledge and respect for the endeavor, yes? Very well. First, you need to know the basics associated with it to showcase what type of knowledge you actually have about it. If that is not enough, try reviewing the article listed below to assist you. Home improvement is often a daunting task. This is because of the time and the amounts of money required. However, it doesn't have to be so bad. If you have several projects in your house, divide them up into several smaller DIY projects. For example you may want to redo the entire living room. Start simple, by just replacing the carpet, and before you know it, your living room will be like new. One great way to make the inside of your home sparkle is to put new molding in. New molding helps create a fresh sense in your living space. You can purchase special molding with beautiful carvings on them to add a unique touch of elegance and style to your home. When it comes to home improvement, consider replacing your windows and doors. This not only has a chance of greatly improving the value of the home, but may also severely decrease the amount of money required to keep your house warm and dry. You can also add extra security with new doors and windows. Change your shower curtain once a month. Showering produces excessive humidity in a bathroom that in turn causes shower curtains to develop mold and mildew. To keep your space fresh and healthy, replace your curtains. Don't buy expensive plastic curtains with hard to find designs, and you won't feel bad about replacing it. Sprucing up your walls with art is a great improvement idea, but it doesn't have to be a painting. You can use practically anything for artwork. For instance, a three-dimensional tile works great if you contrast the colors. You can even buy some canvas and a frame and paint colored squares. Anything colorful can work as art. If you are renovating your kitchen but need to spend less money, consider using laminate flooring and countertops. These synthetic options are generally much less expensive than wood, tile, or stone. They are also easier to care for. Many of these products are designed to closely mimic the natural products, so that the difference is only visible on close inspection. New wallpaper can transform a room. Before you add wallpaper, you need to find out what type of wall is under the existing wallpaper. Usually walls are either drywall or plaster smoothed over lath. You can figure out what kind of wall you are dealing with by feeling the wall, plaster is harder, smoother, and colder than drywall. You can also try tapping the wall, drywall sounds hollow while plaster does not. Ah, you have read the aforementioned article, or you wouldn't be down here reading through the conclusion. Well done! That article should have provided you with a proper foundation of what it takes to properly and safely improve your home. If any questions still remain, try reviewing the article again.

Amazing.” Anders glanced around with a start. He found Lucian leaning against the door frame, eyeing him with amusement. “What?” he asked, sitting up straight. “How everything can change so swiftly,” Lucian said dryly, moving into the kitchen. Anders watched him get a glass out of the cupboard before asking mildly, “And what is it you think is changing?” “Three days ago when you first realized you couldn’t read her and that she might possibly be your life mate, you weren’t happy,” Lucian said. He filled the glass with water, took a drink, and then continued, “You didn’t like the idea of anyone stealing so much of your attention, of having something to lose, of becoming a mother hen like me, or of being led around by your dick. Now you want to follow that presently very evident dick upstairs and claim Valerie by any means necessary.” Anders glanced down to note that not only did he still have an erection, but it was very evident in his boxers. Grabbing one of the couch pillows, he dragged it over his lap and muttered, “You caught all that from reading my thoughts, did you?” “Clear as glass,” Lucian said. “Right.” Anders said and grimaced at the knowledge that Lucian had read his less than complimentary thoughts about his worry for Leigh and being led around by his dick. Raising an eyebrow, he asked, “Do I owe you an apology?” “Nope. I can hardly complain when I was eavesdropping on your thoughts.” He took another drink of his water. As Lucian lowered the glass, he swallowed, and added, “But I’d go softly with Valerie. I wouldn’t want you to rush things and blow it.” “Thanks for the advice,” Anders said dryly. “I’m serious,” Lucian said softly. Anders stilled. As a rule, Lucian could be counted on to growl, grunt, or bark. His voice only got that soft, solemn sound on very rare occasions. When it did, you were smart to listen. Anders nodded. “I’m listening.” “She just experienced a nightmarish two weeks at the hands of what she thinks is a vampire. One of our kind,” he pointed out. “Ten days and nights in the flesh and three in fever-driven nightmares.” “But we aren’t vampires,” Anders pointed out. “We’re immortals.” “Semantics,” Lucian said with a shrug. “It won’t make any difference to her whether we are the mythological cursed and soulless beast Stoker wrote about, or scientifically evolved mortals turned nearly immortal by bio-engineered nanos that were introduced into our blood before the fall of Atlantis.” “Scientifically evolved mortals who need more blood than the human body can produce to power those nanos,” Anders added wearily. Lucian nodded. “We have fangs, we don’t age, we are hard to kill and we need blood to survive. To her and many others, we are vampires.” “We drink bagged blood to survive now,” Anders argued. “The immortal who kidnapped and held Valerie and the other women is a rogue.” “True,” Lucian agreed. “Unfortunately, Valerie’s first encounter with our kind was via that rogue. She, understandably, is not going to be very receptive to the possibility that there are good guys among our kind. She needs to get to know and trust us, you especially, before you reveal too much.” Anders nodded, seeing the wisdom in what he said. Then he cleared his throat and asked, “By don’t reveal too much, you aren’t including—” “No,” Lucian said, rare amusement curving his lips. “Bed her all you want, just keep your mouth shut while you do. At least until you think she can handle it. Otherwise,” he warned, “you could lose the chance of a lifetime.

And indeed at the hotel where I was to meet Saint-Loup and his friends the beginning of the festive season was attracting a great many people from near and far; as I hastened across the courtyard with its glimpses of glowing kitchens in which chickens were turning on spits, pigs were roasting, and lobsters were being flung alive into what the landlord called the ‘everlasting fire’, I discovered an influx of new arrivals (worthy of some Census of the People at Bethlehem such as the Old Flemish Masters painted), gathering there in groups, asking the landlord or one of his staff (who, if they did not like the look of them; would recommend accommodation elsewhere in the town) for board and lodging, while a kitchen-boy passed by holding a struggling fowl by its neck. Similarly, in the big dining-room, which I had passed through on my first day here on my way to the small room where my friend awaited me, one was again reminded of some Biblical feast, portrayed with the naïvety of former times and with Flemish exaggeration, because of the quantity of fish, chickens, grouse, woodcock, pigeons, brought in garnished and piping hot by breathless waiters who slid along the floor in their haste to set them down on the huge sideboard where they were carved immediately, but where – for many of the diners were finishing their meal as I arrived – they piled up untouched; it was as if their profusion and the haste of those who carried them in were prompted far less by the demands of those eating than by respect for the sacred text, scrupulously followed to the letter but naïvely illustrated by real details taken from local custom, and by a concern, both aesthetic and devotional, to make visible the splendour of the feast through the profusion of its victuals and the bustling attentiveness of those who served it. One of them stood lost in thought by a sideboard at the end of the room; and in order to find out from him, who alone appeared calm enough to give me an answer, where our table had been laid, I made my way forward through the various chafing-dishes that had been lit to keep warm the plates of latecomers (which did not prevent the desserts, in the centre of the room, from being displayed in the hands of a huge mannikin, sometimes supported on the wings of a duck, apparently made of crystal but actually of ice, carved each day with a hot iron by a sculptor-cook, in a truly Flemish manner), and, at the risk of being knocked down by the other waiters, went straight towards the calm one in whom I seemed to recognize a character traditionally present in these sacred subjects, since he reproduced with scrupulous accuracy the snub-nosed features, simple and badly drawn, and the dreamy expression of such a figure, already dimly aware of the miracle of a divine presence which the others have not yet begun to suspect. In addition, and doubtless in view of the approaching festive season, the tableau was reinforced by a celestial element recruited entirely from a personnel of cherubim and seraphim. A young angel musician, his fair hair framing a fourteen-year-old face, was not playing any instrument, it is true, but stood dreaming in front of a gong or a stack of plates, while less infantile angels were dancing attendance through the boundless expanse of the room, beating the air with the ceaseless flutter of the napkins, which hung from their bodies like the wings in primitive paintings, with pointed ends. Taking flight from these ill-defined regions, screened by a curtain of palms, from which the angelic waiters looked, from a distance, as if they had descended from the empyrean, I squeezed my way through to the small dining-room and to Saint-Loup’s table.

He removed his hand from his worn, pleasantly snug jeans…and it held something small. Holy Lord, I said to myself. What in the name of kingdom come is going on here? His face wore a sweet, sweet smile. I stood there completely frozen. “Um…what?” I asked. I could formulate no words but these. He didn’t respond immediately. Instead he took my left hand in his, opened up my fingers, and placed a diamond ring onto my palm, which was, by now, beginning to sweat. “I said,” he closed my hand tightly around the ring. “I want you to marry me.” He paused for a moment. “If you need time to think about it, I’ll understand.” His hands were still wrapped around my knuckles. He touched his forehead to mine, and the ligaments of my knees turned to spaghetti. Marry you? My mind raced a mile a minute. Ten miles a second. I had three million thoughts all at once, and my heart thumped wildly in my chest. Marry you? But then I’d have to cut my hair short. Married women have short hair, and they get it fixed at the beauty shop. Marry you? But then I’d have to make casseroles. Marry you? But then I’d have to wear yellow rubber gloves to do the dishes. Marry you? As in, move out to the country and actually live with you? In your house? In the country? But I…I…I don’t live in the country. I don’t know how. I can’t ride a horse. I’m scared of spiders. I forced myself to speak again. “Um…what?” I repeated, a touch of frantic urgency to my voice. “You heard me,” Marlboro Man said, still smiling. He knew this would catch me by surprise. Just then my brother Mike laid on the horn again. He leaned out of the window and yelled at the top of his lungs, “C’mon! I am gonna b-b-be late for lunch!” Mike didn’t like being late. Marlboro Man laughed. “Be right there, Mike!” I would have laughed, too, at the hilarious scene playing out before my eyes. A ring. A proposal. My developmentally disabled and highly impatient brother Mike, waiting for Marlboro Man to drive him to the mall. The horn of the diesel pickup. Normally, I would have laughed. But this time I was way, way too stunned. “I’d better go,” Marlboro Man said, leaning forward and kissing my cheek. I still grasped the diamond ring in my warm, sweaty hand. “I don’t want Mike to burst a blood vessel.” He laughed out loud, clearly enjoying it all. I tried to speak but couldn’t. I’d been rendered totally mute. Nothing could have prepared me for those ten minutes of my life. The last thing I remember, I’d awakened at eleven. Moments later, I was hiding in my bathroom, trying, in all my early-morning ugliness, to avoid being seen by Marlboro Man, who’d dropped by unexpectedly. Now I was standing on the front porch, a diamond ring in my hand. It was all completely surreal. Marlboro Man turned to leave. “You can give me your answer later,” he said, grinning, his Wranglers waving good-bye to me in the bright noonday sun. But then it all came flashing across my line of sight. The boots in the bar, the icy blue-green eyes, the starched shirt, the Wranglers…the first date, the long talks, my breakdown in his kitchen, the movies, the nights on his porch, the kisses, the long drives, the hugs…the all-encompassing, mind-numbing passion I felt. It played frame by frame in my mind in a steady stream. “Hey,” I said, walking toward him and effortlessly sliding the ring on my finger. I wrapped my arms around his neck as his arms, instinctively, wrapped around my waist and raised me off the ground in our all-too-familiar pose. “Yep,” I said effortlessly. He smiled and hugged me tightly. Mike, once again, laid on the horn, oblivious to what had just happened. Marlboro Man said nothing more. He simply kissed me, smiled, then drove my brother to the mall.

know my way around here now!” The group, impressed, followed Kells. “Why can’t I go, too?” Belinda asked. “Because I have plans for you, Miss Jessup,” he drawled. He caught her hand in his and led her toward the white frame house. “What sort of plans?” she asked suspiciously. He paused with a secretive grin. “What do you think?” He leaned closer, threatening her mouth with his, so that when he spoke she felt his clean, minty breath on her lips. “Well, I could be thinking about how big and soft the sofa in the living room is,” he murmured. “And how well two people would fit on it.” She could barely breathe. Her heart was thumping madly against her rib cage. “Or,” he added, lifting his head, “I might have something purely innocent in mind. Why not come with me and find out?” He tugged at her hand and she fell into step beside him, just when she’d told herself she wasn’t about to do that. He led her up the steps and into the house. It was cool and airy, with light colored furniture and sedate throw rugs. There were plain white priscilla curtains at the windows, and the kitchen was spacious and furnished in white and yellow. “It’s very nice,” she said involuntarily, turning around to look at her surroundings.

When she hit the threshold to the portego, she pulled up, bracing her arms against the door frame to keep from spilling into the big open room. Luca sat on a divan facing the Last Supper mosaic. Two unfamiliar men in mud-caked boots sat opposite him. Red woolen doublets peeked out from underneath tarnished breastplates. Silver broadswords dangled from their waists. They all stopped speaking when she appeared in the doorway. The two men immediately averted their eyes. Luca reddened. “Cassandra,” he said haltingly, as if it were a struggle to merely form the three syllables of her name. Cass realized she was standing in the portego in only her nightdress, having left Siena’s cloak in the kitchen. “Molte scuse,” she said, and darted for her room. Much as she was curious about the men, she had no desire to stand there being gawked at.

She watched as her sister appeared at the kitchen door and, as always, was struck by her beauty; while she was blonde and fair-skinned, Julia was dark and exotic. Her thick mane of mahogany hair framed her fine-featured face, the weight she had recently lost only serving to highlight her luminous, almond-shaped, amber eyes and high cheekbones.

Dimitri walks slowly into the kitchen. I follow, a few paces behind. He pulls out a chair, sits down at my breakfast table, and closes his eyes. My avatar pops up on the kitchen wallscreen. She’s back to her cartoon robot self. “You’re not going to let me go,” she says, “are you?” “No,” Dimitri says. “I am not.” “If I can’t go, you can’t either,” says the avatar. He stands, lifts his chair, and smashes my back window. He uses the chair back to poke the remaining glass out of the frame, then leans out and looks down. “It’s a long way down,” my avatar says. “I am aware,” says Dimitri. It’s actually about thirty feet to the ground from here. There’s a flat-roofed building across the alley, maybe ten feet below the level of my window and fifteen or twenty feet away. Dimitri glances back at me, then across the alley. He heaves a deep sigh, and sits down again. “Excuse me,” I say, “but would someone please explain to me what, exactly, is going on?” “You called in a crowbar,” says my avatar. Dimitri leans back, and knits his hands behind his head. “I did.

Finally, every society develops a system of aesthetic standards that get manifested in everything from decorative art, music, and dance to the architecture and planning of buildings and communities. There are many different ways we could examine artistic systems. One way of thinking about it is to observe the degree to which a society's aesthetics reflect clear lines and solid boundaries versus fluid ones. Many Western cultures favor clean, tight boundaries whereas many Eastern cultures prefer more fluid, indiscriminate lines. In most Western homes, kitchen drawers are organized so that forks are with forks and knives are with knives. The walls of a room are usually uniform in color, and when a creative shift in color does occur, it usually happens at a corner or along a straight line midway down the wall. Pictures are framed with straight edges, molding covers up seams in the wall, and lawns are edged to form a clear line between the sidewalk and the lawn. Why? Because we view life in terms of classifications, categories, and taxonomies. And cleanliness itself is largely defined by the degree of order that exists. It has little to do with sanitation and far more to do with whether things appear to be in their proper place. Maintaining boundaries is essential in the Western world; otherwise categories begin to disintegrate and chaos sets in.13 Most Americans want dandelion-free lawns and roads with clear lanes prescribing where to drive and where not to drive. Men wear ties to cover the adjoining fabric on the shirts that they put on before going to the symphony, where they listen to classical music based on a scale with seven notes and five half steps. Each note has a fixed pitch, defined in terms of the lengths of the sound waves it produces.14 A good performance occurs when the musicians hit the notes precisely. In contrast, many Eastern cultures have little concern in everyday life for sharp boundaries and uniform categories. Different colors of paint may be used at various places on the same wall. And the paint may well “spill” over onto the window glass and ceiling. Meals are a fascinating array of ingredients where food is best enjoyed when mixed together on your plate. Roads and driving patterns are flexible. The lanes ebb and flow as needed depending on the volume of traffic. In a place like Cambodia or Nigeria, the road space is available for whichever direction a vehicle needs it most, whatever the time of day. And people often meander along the road in their vehicles the same way they walk along a path. There are many other ways aesthetics between one place and another could be contrasted. But the important point is some basic understanding of how cultures differ within the realm of aesthetics. Soak in the local art of a place and chalk it up to informing your strategy for international business.

In my little house I have my worktable, I have my Smith-Corona, my mattress, my box springs, my bed frame. I have a couch I found on the street in Pacific Grove. I have kitchen utensils—a pot, a teakettle, a frying pan. I have one spoon and one fork. I have a knife. I have no TV, no radio, no stereo. This is before computers, so no email, no Instagram, no social media. I have no correspondents. I write to nobody—not friends, not family. Nobody. And nobody writes to me. My day goes like this. I wake before dawn, eat a breakfast for a lumberjack. Four eggs, raw milk, potatoes, tomatoes. Bacon or sausage are too weak for me. Liver. A big slab for power. I walk for an hour. The sun is coming up now.

I dashed down the narrow steps. When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I turned into the hallway and came up short. A lumberjack was standing there. Or at least, that’s what he looked like. A really young, really hot lumberjack. He was tall and broad, with midnight black hair that curled around his ears and across his brow, creating the perfect frame for his startling blue eyes. He was wearing an unbuttoned red plaid flannel shirt that was so thick it was almost a jacket. Beneath that he wore a black turtleneck sweater. He was turned slightly so I couldn’t see his other hand. Lumberjacks carried axes. I had a flashback to The Shining. My heart hammered against my ribs. I didn’t know this guy. Who was he? And where was Mom? He grinned. “Hey.” “Who are you?” I snapped, jerking the sides of my robe together and tying the sash. His eyebrows shot up. “Most people I know respond to a greeting with another greeting.” “Well, I’m not someone you know, am I? For all I know you’re a serial killer.” He chuckled. How could anyone chuckle in the morning? “Do I look like a serial killer?” he asked. I guessed not, but still… “What are you doing here?” I demanded. “Your mom hired my dad to do some repairs. They’re in the kitchen discussing details.” “So you just decided to make yourself at home?” He narrowed his eyes. “Your mom said I could look around. I’ve never been in this house before, but it’s always interested me because of the turrets. I have this thing for turrets. I’m Josh Wynter, by the way.” “And do you become Josh Summer in June?” I asked.

What did you say?” Jentry said in low, terrifying tone from somewhere behind me. The edge in his voice was enough to make Linda and me stiffen for a few seconds before Linda’s head snapped up and she turned on her mom charm. “Oh, you know how ladies are, always standing around gossipin’. Go on now, son, just put the food anywhere.” He set the large dishes down on the counter closest to the door, then took slow steps toward us. “What the fuck did you just say,” he demanded again; this time it was no longer a question. “Jentry, don’t,” I pleaded as he neared us. “Young man!” Linda said in a horrified tone. “I am so very disappointed in what has come out of your mouth this weekend. I raised yo—” “Raised me better? Is that what you were going to say?” Jentry huffed as he took the last few steps to place himself between us. “Really, don’t,” I said through clenched teeth, and rocked forward so I could reach for his arm to pull him away, but he held a hand out behind him to stop me. When he continued speaking, his dangerous tone was laced with disappointment. “In a few days I’ve seen more than enough from you to know that you aren’t the woman who raised me. The woman who raised me wasn’t so threatened by her son’s girlfriend that she’d pretend she wasn’t there. The woman who raised me wasn’t so heartless that she’d tear down the same girl every chance she got just because she was hurting. We’re all hurting. Rorie’s fucking hurting, too.” “She has ruined this family!” Linda seethed; her entire frame shook from her anger. Jentry took a step back toward me. His hand was still outstretched, but now looked like it was reaching for me. “You know, I’ve been going crazy trying to figure some things out since I got home, but I’m starting to put a lot together just from this conversation. The woman who raised me also taught me to respect women. And I do. I respect women who deserve it, and Rorie does. Because she loves Declan, too. She’s grieving, too. And throughout everything you’ve done, she’s never said a word. She wouldn’t tell me what you were doing even when I figured out that it was you, and when I did, she said it was deserved. What kind of woman makes a girl think she deserves the bullshit you’ve put her through?” Jentry grabbed on to my forearm and pulled me close to him as he took another step back, away from Linda, toward the door leading out of the kitchen area. Linda watched our movements with a mixture of emotions. There was shock and hurt at Jentry’s words, but whenever her eyes flickered back in my direction, anger unlike anything I’d yet to see from her burned there. Jentry turned us around and came to a halt when we found Kurt standing just inside the doorway holding two dishes, staring at us in shock and confusion. “Do you want to tell me why you’re talking to your mother that way?” he asked. Jentry’s head tilted to the side. “No.” “No?” Kurt’s tone was rougher and rang with authority as Jentry began leading us out of the room. “No,” Jentry confirmed. “Because if I tell you now, I’m gonna say a lot that I’ll regret.” Jentry

No. No… No!’ the fear ebbed my voice, cut through me like a knife. I ran, bare feet slipping and sliding over the floorboards. I turned the corner and headed for the backdoor. Run. Run. I must run. As soon as I reached the backdoor in the kitchen, pulling the barn door from the hinges, I felt his gaze upon me. Cinders and kindling crunched at my feet; what had once been my lovely mahogany kitchen furniture was now little more than firewood. My crockery and china splintered in shards and as I turned to face him, I felt them dig into my skin, cut me with every shiver that bolted through my frame. ‘You wanted Hemlock House. You have, Hemlock House.’ His voice was dark, cruel and yet hauntingly light. As if cooing, whispering to a newborn. He was lounging against the countertop as if waiting for breakfast, as if waiting for something so meaningless.

They spent three more long days in the whitened mountain ash trees on the whitened bay. Tatiana baked pies in Nellie’s big kitchen. Alexander read all the papers and magazines from stem to stern and talked post-war politics to Tatiana and Jimmy, and even to indifferent Nellie. In Nellie’s potato fields, Alexander built snowmen for Anthony. After the pies were in the oven, Tatiana came out of the house and saw six snowmen arrayed like soldiers from big to little. She tutted, rolled her eyes and dragged Anthony away to fall down and make angels in the snow instead. They made thirty of them, all in a row, arrayed like soldiers. On the third night of winter, Anthony was in their bed restfully asleep, and they were wide awake. Alexander was rubbing her bare buttocks under her gown. The only window in their room was blizzarded over. She assumed the blue moon was shining beyond. His hands were becoming very insistent. Alexander moved one of the blankets onto the floor, silently; moved her onto the blanket, silently; laid her flat onto her stomach, silently, and made love to her in stealth like they were doughboys on the ground, crawling to the frontline, his belly to her back, keeping her in a straight line, completely covering her tiny frame with his body, clasping her wrists above her head with one hand. As he confined her, he was kissing her shoulders, and the back of her neck, and her jawline, and when she turned her face to him, he kissed her lips, his free hand roaming over her legs and ribs while he moved deep and slow! amazing enough by itself, but even more amazingly he turned her to him to finish, still restraining her arms above her head, and even made a brief noise not just a raw exhale at the feverish end...and then they lay still, under the blankets, and Tatiana started to cry underneath him, and he said shh, shh, come on, but didn’t instantly move off her, like usual. “I’m so afraid,” she whispered. “Of what?” “Of everything. Of you.” He said nothing. She said, “So you want to get the heck out of here?” “Oh, God. I thought you’d never ask.” “Where do you think you’re going?” Jimmy asked when he saw them packing up the next morning. “We’re leaving,” Alexander replied. “Well, you know what they say,” Jim said. “Man proposes and God disposes. The bridge over Deer Isle is iced over. Hasn’t been plowed in weeks and won’t be. Nowhere to go until the snow melts.” “And when do you think that might be?” “April,” Jimmy said, and both he and Nellie laughed. Jimmy hugged her with his one good arm and Nellie, gazing brightly at him, didn’t look as if she cared that he had just the one. Tatiana and Alexander glanced at each other. April! He said to Jim, “You know what, we’ll take our chances.” Tatiana started to speak up, started to say, “Maybe they’re right—” and Alexander fixed her with such a stare that she instantly shut up, ashamed of questioning him in front of other people, and hurried on with the packing. They said goodbye to a regretful Jimmy and Nellie, said goodbye to Stonington and took their Nomad Deluxe across Deer Isle onto the mainland. In this one instant, man disposed. The bridge had been kept clear by the snow crews on Deer Isle. Because if the bridge was iced over, no one could get any produce shipments to the people in Stonington. “What a country,” said Alexander, as he drove out onto the mainland and south.

Pharisees angrily labeled Jesus a “blasphemer” for claiming He was no garden-variety prophet, but the very Son of God, they were not telling the truth, but their experience of His words was “accurate” within their frame of reference. In the same way, it’s accurate for us to label how God sometimes behaves as “brutal,” but it’s not true. Five years or so ago I was slowly realizing that I’d compartmentalized God for most of my life—I did not (could not?) understand the stories about Him, or His dealings with me, in an integrated way. No one had been more tender or kind to me in my life—there’s a greatness to God’s love for me that is palpable and … fundamental. There are tears I need to cry that release only when I’m alone in His presence. There are raw places in my heart that only He knows how to access and nurture. There are secrets about my soul that only He can speak to. But He has a fearsome and nearly inexplicable side—revealed in Joshua 10 and 11 and everywhere else in the Bible—that I didn’t know what to do with. It’s as if I was offered a five-course meal of God and told the waiter to take the beet-and-brussels-sprout salad back to the kitchen; I’d rejected the parts of God that made me feel sick to my stomach. And here’s something that served only to deepen my dissonance: I’d experienced a deeper love than I’ve ever known from Him during times of great brutality in my life.

Foreword Reviews Magazine. Foreword Reviews. Summer 2014 issue. "By way of introduction to Vivienne Kruger’s Balinese Food, bear in mind that eight degrees south of the equator, this modest-sized lava rich, emerald green island rests among the 17,508 remote, culturally distinct constellation of Indonesian islands. It is home to three million mortals who believe they are protected by an unfathomable number of Bali-Hindu goddesses and gods that inhabit the island’s sacred mountain peaks. The Balinese are unlike almost any other island people in that they are suspicious, even distrustful of the sea, believing mischievous spirits and negative powers dwell there—the underworld, as it were. Yes, they eat seafood, they just mostly let other Indonesians do the fetching. Fittingly, Kruger’s masterful use of language; dogged, on the ground conversations with thousands of Balinese cooks and farmers; and disarming humanity leads to a culinary-minded compendium unlike almost any other. Bali, you got the scribe you deserved. What made Kruger’s work even more impressive is the fact that almost nothing about Balinese food history has been written down over the years. She writes: “Like so many other traditions in Bali, cooking techniques and eating habits are passed down verbally by elders to their children and grandchildren who help in the kitchen. However, Indonesia has an old orally transmitted food culture because the pleasure of storytelling is entwined with the pleasure and effort of cooking and eating.” Balinese Food is framed around twenty-one chapters, including the all-important Sacred Ceremonial Cuisine, Traditional Village Foods, the Cult of Rice, Balinese Pig, Balinese Duck, and specialized cooking techniques like saté, banana leaf wrappers, and the use of bumbu, a sacred, powerful dry spice paste mixture. In the chapter Seafood in Bali, she lists a popular, fragrant accompaniment called Sambal Matah—chopped shallots, red chilies, coconut oil, and kaffir lime juice—that is always served raw and fresh, in this case, alongside a simple recipe for grilled tuna. An outstanding achievement in the realm of island cooking and Indonesian history, Balinese Food showcases the Balinese people in the most flattering of ways.

Close your eyes sweetheart.” “Why?” I dragged out the word a bit. Brandon stepped close and placed his lips to my ear, his fingers gently rubbing my swollen stomach. “I have a surprise for you, will you please close them?” I obeyed and he took my hands to lead me to another room, my jaw dropped when I finally opened them. “When did you do this?” I glanced around at our bedroom that was dim, the only light coming from candles, and the huge bouquets of orange lilies. At least another two dozen lilies had the stems cut off and were lying on the bed. He kissed me gently and walked me to the bed, “I made sure you were kept busy for a while. You really thought Bree wouldn’t know where to put the nursery and kitchen items?” He sat me down and bent over, kissing me again. “Thank you Brandon, for everything.” “Harper, I will love you forever, and I promise to take care of you and our kids for the rest of my life.” He leaned over and pulled something out of a nightstand drawer, then dropped to one knee, my mouth popped open and my eyes widened. “Will you please marry me?” Of course tears started streaming down my face as I nodded my head and managed to squeak out, “Yes!” I pulled Brandon’s face to mine and kissed him until I couldn’t think straight anymore. I gasped when he opened the black box and there lay a thick white gold band with three large round diamonds on top. He pulled it out and gently placed it on the ring finger of my left hand. I laughed when the ring instantly fell to one side from the weight of it and pressed my lips to Brandon’s, pulling him onto the bed with me. His large frame curled around my body as he kissed me passionately and slowly made his way to my stomach, which he kissed tenderly and told Gummy Bear that Mommy and Daddy were getting married.

ant to spruce up your bathroom? Don't hesitate to hang pictures in there. Plaques, posters, framed magazine covers-whatever strikes your fancy. Mirrors and clocks are naturals too. Flowers are always a plus. Seashells are also at home in the bathroom. Put them in a bowl, hang them, or glue them to a frame. Add favorite bathroom accessories such as lamps and scented candles. Potpourri gives everything a special ambience. Put in a few unexpected touches to make your bathroom unique. A guaranteed hope-producer is spending time with children. Get down on the floor and talk to them. And listen to them. Let their youth and enthusiasm rub off on you. And here's the best tip of all, taken from Psalm 39:7: "But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in you." May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him. ey, if little things can drag you down, then little things can also pick you up! Here are a few ideas. • Always keep something green in a little vase or pot by your kitchen sink. And I'm not talking about cash-I'm talking plants.

Where’s the pizza?” Something warm and furry came and leaned against my right leg. I reached down to pet Rocky, a black lab who was going gray around his eyes and muzzle. “Rocky wants to know where the pizza is, too.” “He’s the reason the food is in the kitchen. Last time we kept it out here on the picnic table, he helped himself to half of a large bacon pepperoni pizza and then he threw up in my mom’s closet. She was cleaning dog barf out of her shoes for days.” I squatted down and rubbed Rocky’s ears. “I bet you were framed, huh, buddy?” He leaned into the ear rub and sighed. “I bet it was the cat, wasn’t it?” He sighed again like he was agreeing with me. “Nice try, but there isn’t that much barf in a cat,” Trevor said.

The new place he’d live would have tall wide windows to let in so much light. The walls would be bare, not cluttered with frames, and it would be so clean inside. He would pick a place close to a grocery store so he could go shopping every day after classes. He would keep ferns of course, but would also have vases of flowers and bowls of fruit and the whole house would smell like their ripening. He would take one painting of his mom, just one so it had more meaning. His bedroom would be the biggest room in the house. Even if he had to share it with the kitchen or put his bed in the living room. He’d have a mattress big enough to make snow angels.

Bringing her over to the kitchen island, I lift her little frame, sitting her on the edge and removing the mask. I toss it on the floor, her long black hair remaining a tangled mess over her face. She looks wild and untamed, and every bit the dirty doll I’ve always imagined. “You ready for some cock?” I ask, pulling her panties to the side and plunging my fingers back inside her.

Annie has been with me for years and is a tremendous talker. She starts immediately and discusses the war news. Annie says that the war will be over quite soon now and the major will be back before I know where I am. . . . Cannot help feeling that Annie is a trifle too optimistic, but am comforted all the same, and repair to the kitchen in a cheerful frame of mind.

His eyes darted around the hallway, across the woven blue rug and up to the framed photos of baguettes and cheese wedges that covered the walls. His skin warmed from the heat coming out of the nearby kitchen. The smell of butter and cream mingled together like the tastiest candle you could ever light. He'd never had the food at Lyon, but he already knew what he was missing.

248 Meanwhile, the Solymites [or dwellers in Jerusalem] made a descent along with the polluted Egyptians, and treated the people so impiously and savagely that the domination of the Shepherds seemed like a golden age to those who witnessed the present enormities. 249 For not only did they set towns and villages on fire, pillaging the temples and mutilating images of the gods without restraint, but they also made a practice of using the sanctuaries as kitchens to roast the sacred animals which the people worshipped: and they would compel the priests and prophets to sacrifice and butcher the beasts, afterwards casting the men forth naked. 250 It is said that the priest who framed their constitution and their laws was a native of Hêliopolis, named Osarsêph after the god Osiris, worshipped at Hêliopolis; but when he joined this people, he changed his name and was called Moses.

we had the goldfish and they went around and around in the bowl on the table near the purple drapes across our front picture window and my mother, poor fish, always smiling, wanting to appear happy, she always told me, "be happy, Henry," and she was right: it's better to be happy if you can be but my father beat her two or three times a week while raging through his 6 foot two frame because he couldn't defeat what was attacking him. my mother, poor fish, poor goldfish, poor nothing fish, wanting to be happy, being beaten two or three times a week and telling me to be happy: "Henry, smile! why don't you smile? and then, she always did to show me how, and it was the saddest smile I ever saw upon the earth, like hell and hell and hell and hell, and nothing else one day all the goldfish died, all five of them, they floated on top of the water, on their sides, the eye on each top side still open, and when my father got home he threw them to the cat there on the kitchen floor and we watched as my mother smiled

AS A CHILD I developed a terrible fear of being anorexic. This was brought on by an article I had read in a teen magazine, which was accompanied by some upsetting images of emaciated girls with hollow eyes and folded hands. Anorexia sounded horrible: you were hungry and sad and bony, and yet every time you looked in the mirror at your eighty-pound frame, you saw a fat girl looking back at you. If you took it too far, you had to go to a hospital, away from your parents. The article described anorexia as an epidemic spreading across the nation, like the flu or the E. coli you could get from eating a Jack in the Box hamburger. So I sat at the kitchen counter, eating my dinner and hoping I wasn’t next. Over and over, my mother tried to explain that you didn’t just become anorexic overnight.

Let me go find my woman cuz you not about to threaten shit on my ass,” Krude said, looking Monica up and down. He threw the plate and spoon on the counter, stormed his tall ass to the door frame, and looked around without walking about the kitchen. “Megan, that dread head girl in here talkin’ about shooting me!” “I’ll give her a thousand dollars if she does it!” Megan yelled back, and Monica started to get up from her seat. Baby grabbed her wrist and shook his head no. “Let me come talk to my new best friend!

Jack is right. Besides, we have no choice. We rush back to the front door. The giants must have left it open when they came outside. They are really bad with safety. It’s like they’re asking for us to rob them! In the kitchen, I listen for goose sounds, but then realize I have no idea what sounds a goose makes. Like a duck? I definitely don’t hear quacking. Or anything, really. “Let’s try the bedroom,” Jack suggests. We go down the hallway and sneak into the giants’ bedroom. They have an enormous bed the size of an Olympic swimming pool. Above the bed is a huge photograph in a gold frame of Magnus and

She must have been kicked unseen or brushed by a car. Too young to know much, she was beginning to learn To use the newspapers spread on the kitchen floor And to win, wetting there, the words, “Good dog! Good dog!” We thought her shy malaise was a shot reaction. The autopsy disclosed a rupture in her liver. As we teased her with play, blood was filling her skin And her heart was learning to lie down forever. Monday morning, as the children were noisily fed And sent to school, she crawled beneath my youngest’s bed. We found her twisted limp but still alive. In the car to the vet’s, on my lap, she tried To bite my hand and died. I stroked her warm fur And my wife called in a voice imperious with tears. Though surrounded by love that would have upheld her, Nevertheless she sank and, stiffening, disappeared. Back home, we found that in the night her frame, Drawing near to dissolution, had endured the shame Of diarrhea and had dragged across the floor To a newspaper carelessly left there. Good dog. - John Updike, ‘Dog’s Death

Over Stock Art is an online art gallery of hand painted art and frame shop, original prints on canvas, and hand carved ceramic tiles.

The speech started as an acknowledgment of political icons—Roosevelt, Obama, and Bill Clinton—and mixed in applause lines for constituencies Hillary wanted to court, including African Americans, Hispanics, the LGBT community, and women of all races and sexual orientations. She sprinkled in bromides about economic opportunity and how “prosperity can’t just be for CEOs.” But there was no overarching narrative explaining her candidacy, no framing of Hillary as the point of an underdog spear, no emotive power. “America can’t succeed unless you succeed,” she offered in a trite tautology. “That is why I am running for president of the United States.” Even those in her camp who defended the speech acknowledged that there were too many cooks in the kitchen, that the text was too watered down to serve as a call to action, and that Hillary was less than inspiring. And these were the kinder criticisms. “That speech had a simple mission, which was a requirement,” said one source close to Hillary. “This was the chance to make a credible persuasive case for why she wants to be president. She had to answer the why question. It’s not because of her mother. Her mother’s an inspiration, but that is not why. It has to sort of feel like kind of a call to action, a galvanizing, ‘I’m bringing us together around this larger-than-all-of-us’ idea or cause, and I don’t think it did that. I don’t think it did either of those.

They pulled up to 195 Madison Street - a tall narrow six-story redbrick and limestone-trimmed tenement house indistinguishable from all the tenement houses on all the other streets of tenements. The bars and ladders of a fire escape ran up the left side of the building; sooty stone scrolls, shields, and flowers framed the second- and third-story windows. This was the place where they had to live? Two blocks from the commercial madness of East Broadway; two blocks from the filthy snout of the East River, smelling of fish, ships, and garbage; three blocks from the brain-rattling racket of the elevated train; three blocks from the playground of the Henry Street Settlement; practically in the shadow of the construction side of the twin-towered Manhattan Bridge. Every three blocks they passed more people than the entire population of Rakov. Half a million Jews packed the one and a half square miles of the Lower East Side in 1909; 702 people per acre in the densest acres. It was one of the most crowded places on earth, and all of them seemed to be swarming outdoors on the June afternoon that Gishe Sore and her family arrived. Aside from the crisscross steel girders of the Manhattan Bridge at the end of the street, it was all tenement houses as far as she could see. Tenements and bodies. In every room of every building, bodies fought for a ray of light and a sip of air. Bodies slept four to a bed and on two chairs pushed together; bodies sat hunched over sewing machines in parlors and sunless back bedrooms and at kitchen tables heaped with cloth and thread; bodies ate, slept, woke, and cleared out for the next shift of bodies to cycle through. Toilets in the hall or in courtyard outhouses; windows opening, if they opened at all, onto fetid air shafts; no privacy; no escape from the racket and smell of neighbors; no relief from summer heat or blasting winter furnaces. This was the place her American children had brought them to live?

MARV SITS OPPOSITE ME, the gun on the kitchen table between us, still wrapped in the Ziploc bag. Outside the wind gusts, rattling the windows in their frames. I must have sat here a thousand times, but now it’s as if I’m seeing it for the first time. The ceiling stained and cracked from snowmelt, exposing the wooden laths behind. The counters stripped for firewood, the cupboards underneath long since laid bare.

A few days later, I was hunting under the bathroom sink for a bottle of window cleaner. Which I had, in my naivete, assumed only cleaned windows. As per the label. While cleaning the mirror I’d been using the kitchen cleaner, which had falsely labeled itself as “all-purpose.” It was not all-purpose and made bathroom mirrors streaky. “Deceitful advertising,” I mumbled to myself. Once I found the window cleaner, the internet recommended I not use paper towels but since this wasn’t 1996, we didn’t have any newspaper. I also highly doubted that Tyler had microfiber cloths. The paper towels worked well enough. Which freed me up to indulge in one of my favorite pastimes: daydreaming about Tyler. It was one of the few ways to make chores entertaining. I imagined him coming home, finding me in the bathroom, washing the mirror. He would sneak in behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist, nuzzling my neck. I’d lean against his brawny frame, loving the way he felt and how he touched me. Shivers of anticipation would rack my frame, making me rely on his strength to keep me upright. Then he’d whisper words hotly against my ear. “There’s something I want to ask you.” My rib cage would constrict my breathing, my heart speeding like a jackhammer. “Yes?” “Madison . . . how did you get the mirror so clean?” Ugh. It had been so long since I’d been with someone that even my fantasies were lame.

She took down the framed manuscript from the kitchen wall. It was Kendra's prized possession, and part of her felt guilty for what she planned, but it had to be done. She carefully removed the parchment from its frame, then searched through the piles of translations and notes on the kitchen table. Finally she found the Secret Scroll on the chair where Kendra had been the night before. She carried both manuscripts upstairs and set them on her desk. Next she gathered paints and brushes and sat down. She studied the artwork on the Secret Scroll, then slowly began copying its rich patterns of gold, red, and blue onto Kendra's old manuscript. It was late afternoon when she finished. She studied her work. She had managed to copy the exotic birds and animals hidden in the foliage on the borders, and even the detailed picture of the goddess locking the jaws of hell. Her work was rough, but at a distance it would fool Toby or any of the Regulators, especially since they were afraid to touch it. Satisfied, she went to her closet. She searched through her clothes until she found the strapless top with the slit in the front. She slipped it over her head, then grabbed a silky black skirt and stepped into it. She carried her stiletto boots to the bed and tugged them on. At last she drew black liquid eyeliner over her top lid, added green glitter shadow, rolled thick mascara on her lashes, and brushed her hair. She added gloss to her lips and rubbed sparkle lotion over her arms and chest. Then she remembered the dragon stencils. Soon, she had a sinuous dragon adorning her thigh between the bottom of her skirt and the top of her boots. She liked the look. She turned in front of the full-length mirror behind the bathroom door. "Dynamite," she whispered. Her reflection thrilled her. She looked vamped-out and mystical. At once, she sensed the fierce power of the dragon rising in her. She felt like an invincible goddess-warrior.

There was wall-to-wall cotton shag carpeting in beige, holding metal-framed Van Keppel-Green lounges and chairs, a KLH stereo system, wooden walls rising to a high ceiling, a mahogany bar that separated from the rest of the room the cookerie where I could scramble up some eggs and ham for late night snacks. There were four cushioned stools in front of the bar proper, and a glass shelf display of bottles behind, that opened into the kitchen on the far side. Ferns and cactus in brass pots and barrels added a kind of outdoorsy look to the whole place.

And I hope you find out who is so obviously trying to put my clients out of business that they’re willing to not only trash their restaurant, but also frame one of them for murder.

However, there is a small but undeniable part of herself that takes comfort in imagining the detailed journey home: landing in Gatwick, a train to Victoria Station, the tube to King’s Cross, another train that rolls through the countryside, small towns, and swelling cities, and eventually to Newcastle, then a forty-minute Metro to South Shields, a two-mile walk (her rolling luggage listing consistently to her left), and it’s warm and sunny even though it is never warm and sunny often enough in northern England, and finally she’s standing before their semidetached home with the brick walls and a white trellis, and she walks through the small garden and through the back door, then to the kitchen to sit with Mum and Dad at their ridiculous little table with the ugly yellow vinyl tablecloth and they both glance over the frames of their reading glasses and smile that wan I-see-you-dear smile.

In the next room, my son, stout but saggy-kneed, clings to the crib bars like a prisoner. Menthol steam from the vaporizer has made a ghost of him. His ringlets are plastered to his head, and coughs rack his small frame. The animal suffering that’s rattling him throws ice water on me, and I enjoy a surge of unalloyed love for him, followed by panic, followed by guilt. He sees me rushing toward him and abruptly drops his outstretched arms an instant to say, No pants? His head’s tilted with bald curiosity. Which cracks me up, and he laughs till the coughs start exploding through him again, by which point I’ve cleaved him to me, both of us sweating. His diaper’s sagging from the vaporizer’s work, but fresh steam is his lifeline. Carrying him to the bathroom, I crank on the shower. But before I change him, before I squirt the syrupy acetaminophen into his mouth, I haul him whooping down the stairs to the kitchen. I open the stove where a near empty bottle of Jack Daniels squats like the proverbial troll under the bridge. Needing neither glass nor ice, I press my lips to the cool mouth, and it blows into my lungs so I can keep on.

Not pausing, Justin grabbed my laptop and opened applications for me to return to college, the moon framed in our kitchen, winking in the window from behind a slate storm-cloud. He asked me questions from the forms aloud, marking my responses—applying me to schools in New York City.

came home from work one evening to find his youngest son, Tim, kicking and screaming on the living room floor. He was to start kindergarten the next day and was protesting that he would not go. Stan’s normal reaction would have been to banish the child to his room and tell him he’d just better make up his mind to go. He had no choice. But tonight, recognizing that this would not really help Tim start kindergarten in the best frame of mind, Stan sat down and thought, “If I were Tim, why would I be excited about going to kindergarten?” He and his wife made a list of all the fun things Tim would do such as finger painting, singing songs, making new friends. Then they put them into action. “We all started finger-painting on the kitchen table—my wife, Lil, my other son Bob, and myself, all having fun. Soon Tim was peeping around the corner. Next he was begging to participate. ‘Oh, no! You have to go to kindergarten first to learn how to finger-paint.’ With all the enthusiasm I could muster I went through the list talking in terms he could understand—telling him all the fun he would have in kindergarten. The next morning, I thought I was the first one up. I went downstairs and found Tim sitting sound asleep in the living room chair. ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked. ‘I’m waiting to go to kindergarten. I don’t want to be late.’ The enthusiasm of our entire family had aroused in Tim an eager want that no amount of discussion or threat could have possibly accomplished.

Freeze Frame, with Forsynthia You will bind me in my aquarelle, my skin blue as Canterbury bells. Call me mademoiselle before you execute, like the hand- tinted photo of the dancer, Margarete Gertrude Zelle, arms scissoring the air, fending bullets and flowers as she pirouettes. You will find me in the zero hour sipping a whiskey sour with a cherry, my hair yellow, not sallowed or frizzed like the Bishop's flower. In a bell-shaped dress trimmed in snow-white florets, I smell of fever, soil as I pose in the doorcase. You refer to me as daughter of gnawed bones I am property of _______. A profile in the slanted rain. I am versatile. You call me Lily of the Nile, fingering umbels as you scour the floor in search of my shadow. Hours sift and flow and form a canted frame where you lean one elbow statuesque as a window sash. You've captured me, you say, mid-bloom, in your eye frame, in the process of photograph and pose and polyphonic prose, the kitchen lit by my ante- bellum skirt, the yellow spikes of forsythia going up in flame. Simone Muench, Notebook. Knife. Mentholatum. (New Michigan Press 2003)

cooking in a foreign kitchen and discovering the many links between the food and the culture—these intense joys frame the deeper pleasure of learning to live another kind of life. To bury the grape tendril in such a way that it shoots out new growth I recognize easily as a metaphor for the way life must change from time to time if we are to go forward in our thinking.