Pack Your Bags Quotes

Pack your bags, we're going on a guilt trip!

We’re so self-important. Everybody’s going to save something now. “Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.” And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. Save the planet, we don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet. I’m tired of this shit. I’m tired of f-ing Earth Day. I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren’t enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet. Not in the abstract they don’t. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They’re worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me. The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles … hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages … And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn’t going anywhere. WE are! We’re going away. Pack your shit, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Maybe a little Styrofoam … The planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ’cause that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, “Why are we here?” Plastic… asshole.

And then it happens all at once and unexpectedly. That is how things happen, I suppose. You pack your bags and find yourself walking yourself home.

I got uncertain from this, I'll be perfect from now on. But all my promises, they're out the window once you're gone. You pack your bags. You say I love you but I cannot stay.

Dark shadows of grief haunted his expression. More than any one person should be asked to bear. But that was the problem with grief. No one ever asked for it. It arrived with its bags packed for an extended stay. It settled into your best guest room and demanded to be waited on all day long, and which it finally shuffled out the door, it left behind permanent scratches on your furniture.

Sometimes, the only way to exorcise old ghosts is to pack your bags and move in with them.

But no matter what happens, the earth keeps turning. Monday always comes and eventually, sometimes excruciatingly slowly, that Monday is followed by a Friday. You take tests, hand in papers you wrote at two in the morning the day they were due, and your shoes get worn out, and the pollen in the air increases so that you go through an entire package of tissues during the SATs, and you wander through the crowds at parties looking for Natalie Banks because you came with her, and you watch her take off for the backyard with a senior who seems to be in the backyard with a different girl at every party, and you learn to play chess with your dad, and you eat too much ice cream, and your favorite television drama has its two-hour season finale, and then suddenly the school year ends and you pack your bags for Tennessee.

I don’t think we’re in love anymore. I think about sex constantly. I hate your parents. I’m pretty sure they hate me. Do you have any idea how fucked up this is? I’ve been sleeping with my back to you for months now, and you haven’t touched me once. I almost went home with the guy who gave me change at the bank. I almost asked his name. I don’t think we’re in love anymore. We don’t kiss like we used to. Your lips are always cold and mine are always chapped. Neither of us even apologize. I haven’t shaved in days and you haven’t noticed. I am insatiable. I am a disaster just waiting to remember the storm in her bones. I am proud of this. I want someone to fuck me so hard that something inside of me snaps and I can’t stop screaming ‘I love you, oh my God, I love you.’ I don’t think we’re in love anymore. Sometimes, I genuinely think the sky is bleeding, and I don’t know how to stop it. I don’t think I am capable of staying put. My bags are already packed. I’ve been waiting for you to check the bedroom. I don’t think we’re in love anymore. I don’t know whose fault it is. Let’s stop trying to make a broken thing work. We were brave for trying. We were brave for trying.

Whoever had said in the guidebooks that the bum bag was a sensible device against theft had lied; no single item of dressware ever invented cried out "mug me" more than a pouch of zip-up plastic suspended by your groin.

This life is a hospital in which each patient is possessed by the desire to change beds. One wants to suffer in front of the stove and another believes that he will get well near the window. It always seems to me that I will be better off there where I am not, and this question of moving about is one that I discuss endlessly with my soul "Tell me, my soul, my poor chilled soul, what would you think about going to live in Lisbon? It must be warm there, and you'll be able to soak up the sun like a lizard there. That city is on the shore; they say that it is built all out of marble, and that the people there have such a hatred of the vegetable, that they tear down all the trees. There's a country after your own heart -- a landscape made out of light and mineral, and liquid to reflect them!" My soul does not reply. "Because you love rest so much, combined with the spectacle of movement, do you want to come and live in Holland, that beatifying land? Perhaps you will be entertained in that country whose image you have so often admired in museums. What do you think of Rotterdam, you who love forests of masts and ships anchored at the foot of houses?" My soul remains mute. "Does Batavia please you more, perhaps? There we would find, after all, the European spirit married to tropical beauty." Not a word. -- Is my soul dead? Have you then reached such a degree of torpor that you are only happy with your illness? If that's the case, let us flee toward lands that are the analogies of Death. -- I've got it, poor soul! We'll pack our bags for Torneo. Let's go even further, to the far end of the Baltic. Even further from life if that is possible: let's go live at the pole. There the sun only grazes the earth obliquely, and the slow alternation of light and darkness suppresses variety and augments monotony, that half of nothingness. There we could take long baths in the shadows, while, to entertain us, the aurora borealis send us from time to time its pink sheaf of sparkling light, like the reflection of fireworks in Hell!" Finally, my soul explodes, and wisely she shrieks at me: "It doesn't matter where! It doesn't matter where! As long as it's out of this world!

When Pidge wakes up, let me know, okay?” he said in a soft voice. “I got spaghetti, and pancakes, and strawberries, and that oatmeal shit with the chocolate packets, and she likes Fruity Pebbles cereal, right, Mare?” he asked, turning. When he saw me, he froze. After an awkward pause, his expression melted, and his voice was smooth and sweet.“Hey, Pigeon.” I couldn’t have been more confused if I had woken up in a foreign country. Nothing made sense. At first I thought I had been evicted, and then Travis comes home with bags full of my favorite foods. He took a few steps into the living room, nervously shoving his hands in his pockets. “You hungry, Pidge? I’ll make you some pancakes. Or there’s uh…there’s some oatmeal. And I got you some of that pink foamy shit that girl’s shave with, and a hairdryer, and a… a….just a sec, it’s in here,” he said, rushing to the bedroom. The door opened, shut, and then he rounded the corner, the color gone from his face. He took a deep breath and his eyebrows pulled in. “Your stuff’s packed.” “I know,” I said. “You’re leaving,” he said, defeated.

He was breathing heavily. “I honestly don’t understand what’s wrong with you,” he said. “You’re telling me to pack my bags, to leave our house, knowing you’re going to have a baby?” “And this surprises you why? Have you seen what’s been happening in our house?” “Stop talking to me like this in our bed, Tatiana. My white flag is up,” said Alexander. “I have no more.” “My white flag is up, too, Shura,” she said. “You know when mine went up? June 22, 1941.

I'm packing my life in a bag again, saying goodbye and writing the last letters. It's been a long journey, back and forth, hide and seek, but this time it's different. This time I am different. I'm not sure where I want to end up but I know how to get there, or at least the first direction, the first turn, the first sunset. I'm longing for peace. I'm longing for borrowed guitars and detachment. Horizons, cheap whiskey straight from the bottle and your hands in mine.

The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones. Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag, and even now as you memorize the order of the planets, something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps, the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay. Whatever it is you are struggling to remember, it is not poised on the tip of your tongue, not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen. It has floated away down a dark mythological river whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall, well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle. No wonder you rise in the middle of the night to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war. No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

If you cannot understand my argument, and declare "It's Greek to me", you are quoting Shakespeare; if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you recall your salad days, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you act more in sorrow than in anger; if your wish is farther to the thought; if your lost property has vanished into thin air, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy, if you have played fast and loose, if you have been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a virtue of necessity, insisted on fair play, slept not one wink, stood on ceremony, danced attendance (on your lord and master), laughed yourself into stitches, had short shrift, cold comfort or too much of a good thing, if you have seen better days or lived in a fool's paradise -why, be that as it may, the more fool you , for it is a foregone conclusion that you are (as good luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare; if you think it is early days and clear out bag and baggage, if you think it is high time and that that is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out even if it involves your own flesh and blood, if you lie low till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play, if you have your teeth set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason, then - to give the devil his due - if the truth were known (for surely you have a tongue in your head) you are quoting Shakespeare; even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing, if you wish I was dead as a door-nail, if you think I am an eyesore, a laughing stock, the devil incarnate, a stony-hearted villain, bloody-minded or a blinking idiot, then - by Jove! O Lord! Tut tut! For goodness' sake! What the dickens! But me no buts! - it is all one to me, for you are quoting Shakespeare.

all bags are pack ready to go i am standing here outside your door i hate to wake you up to say goodbye dawn is braking its early morn the taxi waiting he blowing his horn already i am so lonesome i could die so kiss me and smile for me tell me that you'll wait for me and hold me like you never let me go cause leaving on a jet plane don't know when ill be back again oh babe i hate to go there so many let you down so many time i played around i tell you know that don't mean a thing every plase i go i'll think of you every song i sing i'll sing for you.

The idea that Sophie could die had always been there, ever since the first diagnosis, and yet it seemed like a bad place on a map, an Ivory Coast, somewhere not urgently frightening because fear itself kept you away from the place. You thought of it as somewhere braver people went, or at least as somewhere you'd have plenty of time to pack your bags for.

Your cat doesn’t like you? How come?” I shrug. “I don’t know. He’s very mean though and I think about telling him to pack his kitty bags and move out.

When he makes you doubt yourself: Your worth. Your strength. Your dreams. Pack your bags and go. Go — B

Pack your bags and move cities and countries. Nothing will enrich you than travel does.

Holy shit. Rowen Sterling. Glowing. Married. I suppose now’s the time to start packing our bags for the apocalypse.” Jesse slugged my arm. Rowen got the other. “Holy shit. Garth Black. Present. Accounted for. Sober. Quick, no time to pack your bags for the apocalypse because it’s here.

Boys are adorable. Boys trail off their sentences in an appealing way. Boys bring a knapsack to work. Boys get haircuts from their roommate, who “totally knows how to cut hair.” Boys can pack up their whole life in a duffel bag and move to Brooklyn for a gig if they need to. Boys have “gigs.” Boys are broke. And when they do have money, they spend it on a trip to Colorado to see a music festival. Boys don’t know how to adjust their conversation when they’re talking to their friends or to your parents. They put parents on the same level as their peers and roll their eyes when your dad makes a terrible pun. Boys let your parents pay for dinner when you all go out. It’s assumed.

I hate going to sleep because adults do so many things when you’re not around, like pack their bags and leave.

When you don't want to be somewhere and there is no way to get your body out of the situation, your brain sometimes packs a bag and thumbs a ride anywhere it can go.

I'm staying right here," grumbled the rat. "I haven't the slightest interest in fairs." "That's because you've never been to one," remarked the old sheep . "A fair is a rat's paradise. Everybody spills food at a fair. A rat can creep out late at night and have a feast. In the horse barn you will find oats that the trotters and pacers have spilled. In the trampled grass of the infield you will find old discarded lunch boxes containing the foul remains of peanut butter sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, cracker crumbs, bits of doughnuts, and particles of cheese. In the hard-packed dirt of the midway, after the glaring lights are out and the people have gone home to bed, you will find a veritable treasure of popcorn fragments, frozen custard dribblings, candied apples abandoned by tired children, sugar fluff crystals, salted almonds, popsicles,partially gnawed ice cream cones,and the wooden sticks of lollypops. Everywhere is loot for a rat--in tents, in booths, in hay lofts--why, a fair has enough disgusting leftover food to satisfy a whole army of rats." Templeton's eyes were blazing. " Is this true?" he asked. "Is this appetizing yarn of yours true? I like high living, and what you say tempts me." "It is true," said the old sheep. "Go to the Fair Templeton. You will find that the conditions at a fair will surpass your wildest dreams. Buckets with sour mash sticking to them, tin cans containing particles of tuna fish, greasy bags stuffed with rotten..." "That's enough!" cried Templeton. "Don't tell me anymore I'm going!

What do you have to say for yourself, boy?" Cgerise "Sorry, Ma, I'm a sexy demon magnet?" Nick "Cherise!" Bubba "Don't you even take that tone with me, Mr. Triple-Threat-I-don't-have-to-listen-to-anyone-because-I'm-the-size-of-a-tabk. You're in the doghouse, buster. You might as well pack a bag 'cause you're going to be in there so long your name's going to be engraved on the mailbox." Cherise "Ah, what'd I do, cher?" Bubba "You dragged my baby into danger, and you-- Are you one of them?" Cherise "I'm going with whatever answer doesn't get me swatted with that bat." Savitar "Cherise, calm down. What are you doing here?" Bubba "What do you think? I'm protecting my boys. Both of you ... Because Mark values his own life and inparticular his male body parts, he called me after he got off the phone with you to tell me what the two of you were doing. You didn't honestly believe that I've been ignorant of what you and Mark do at night all these years? Did you?" Cherise "Um, yeah." Bubba "Well then you're a fool,Michael Burdette. And I'm not." Cherise

When we consider the major themes of Venezuelan socialism, we can see right away that every one of them parallels the themes of the American left. American leftists are wannabe Maduros pretending to take their cues from Sven. If we continue to move in the direction that the left is taking us, we are going to end up not where the Scandinavians are but where the Venezuelans are. Pack your bags, and make sure you label them correctly. It’s not “Stockholm, here we come” but “Caracas, here we come.” It won’t be pretty.

[A]nd, once again, she was confronted by the gulf between expectation and reality, no sun on her face, no union with nature, no laughter with friends, no sex. No matter how carefully you packed your bag, there was no protection against this furious disappointment.

You will pack your bags tonight. You are leaving for Eli, near the northern border. There you will remain,” Gaétan said.

looking enraptured while Orion murmured to me that their kind could step right into the pages of a story. They didn’t just see it in their head, they lived every word, the whole thing playing out in their minds as if they were the main character, and that sounded pretty awesome. It must have been incredible to experience your favourite books first hand, to fall so deeply between the pages that it seemed as if those worlds really existed. “Which book would you go into?” I asked Orion, brushing my fingers over the thick stubble on his jaw. “There is no story I would choose to live in but ours,” he answered simply, and damn this man to hell for his silver tongue. My heart all but packed up its bags and moved out of my chest to go and live in his instead. He already owned it that completely anyway.

ME: Hey dad, do you believe in ghost? DAD: There is no such thing as ghosts. ME: but our maid said theres ghosts… DAD: Pack your bags!! Meet me out in the car now! ME: Why? DAD: WE DON’T HAVE A MAID!!!!

Cautionary tale ladies, never marry a man who quotes the movie Wall Street like it’s his Bible. If Gordon Gekko is his idol, it’s time to pack your bags. Trust me, I wish somebody had given me the heads up.

Your Grace seems out of breath. I do hope you’re not being chased by an overly enthusiastic heiress?” “Pack a light bag, Craven,” Maximus snapped. “We’re going to London to help a murderous lunatic escape from Bedlam.

I think we worship these stories of leaving it all behind and going somewhere new, but I’m beginning to see that every one of those stories has the same truth holding up this romantic idea of leaving: The stuff you’re not facing will follow you. It will get in the car too. It will pack a bag too. Leaving isn’t the key; changing is. I’m learning that life isn’t about the destinations we can boast about getting to; it’s about all the walking in between that feels pointless when you try to take a picture of it because no one will understand it like you do. It’s the in between stuff that fleshes out a story—gives it guts and transformation. It’s not about the scenery changing or the person you say good night to. The traveler must be the one to change. That’s what makes the story good.

friendship nostalgia i miss the days when my friends knew every mundane detail about my life and i knew every ordinary detail about theirs adulthood has starved me of that consistency​ ​that us those walks around the block those long conversations when we were too lost in the moment to care what time it was when we won-and celebrated when we failed and celebrated even harder when we were just kids now we have our very important jobs that fill up our very busy schedules we have to compare calendars just to plan coffee dates that one of us will eventually cancel because adulthood is being too exhausted to leave our apartments most days i miss belonging to a group of people bigger than myself it was that belonging that made life easier to live how come no one warned us about how we'd graduate and grow apart after everything we'd been through how come no one said one of life's biggest challenges would be trying to stay connected to the people that make us feel alive no one talks about the hole a friend can leave inside you when they go off to make their dreams come true in college we used to stay up till 4 in the morning dreaming of what we'd do the moment we started earning real paychecks now we finally have the money to cross everything off our bucket lists but those lists are collecting dust in some lost corridor of our minds sometimes when i get lonely ​i​ still search for them i'd give anything to go back and do the foolish things we used to do i feel the most present in your presence when we're laughing so hard the past slides off our shoulders and worries of the future slip away the truth is​ ​i couldn't survive without my friends they know exactly what i need before i even know that i need the way we hold each other is just different so forget grabbing coffee i don't want to have another dinner where we sit across from each other at a table reminiscing about old times when we have so much time left to make new memories with how about you go pack your bags and i'll pack mine you take a week off work i'll grab my keys and let's go for ride we've got years of catching up to do

home, it’s different. I mean yes, you want money and a job, but there’s a hundred other things you do for getting by, especially older people and farmers with the crops, tomato gardens and such. Hunting and fishing, plus all the woman things, making quilts and clothes. Whether big or small, you’ve always got the place you’re living on. I’ve known people to raise a beef in the yard behind their rented trailer. I was getting the picture now on why June’s doom castle had freaked me out. Having some ground to stand on, that’s our whole basis. It’s the bags of summer squash and shelly beans everybody gives you from their gardens, and on from there. The porch rockers where the mammaws get together and knit baby clothes for the pregnant high school girls. Sandwiches the church ladies pack for the hungrier kids to take home on weekends.

No, no, no. No way!” I shook my head and looked at the offending black motorcycle. “I am not getting on that thing!” “Sophie, it’s a motorcycle, it doesn’t bite.” I turned my head to look at the beast. “Really? It looks like it could bite, to me.” “Please, Sophie,” he held out a helmet. I crossed my arms over my chest. “What if I fall off?” “You’re supposed to hang on to me, Soph. What happened to my mighty little she-wolf?” “She packed her bags and left,” I said.

I thought about packing my bags, I thought about jumping out a window, I sat on the bed and thought, I thought about you. What kind of food did you life, what was your favorite song, who was the first girl you kissed, and where, and how, I'm running out of room, I want an infinitely long blank book and forever.

You know, I'm really trying to cut down on this stuff. But..." Peabody ripped into the pack of cookies. "Thing is, weird, McNab doesn't think I'm chubby. And when a guy sees you naked, he knows where the extra layers are." "Peabody, do you have some delusion that I want to hear how McNab sees you naked?" She crunched into a cookie. "I'm just saying. Anyway, you know we have sex, so you've probably reached the conclusion we're naked when we're having it. You being an ace detective and all." "Peabody, in the chain of command, you may, on rare occasions and due to my astonishing good nature, respond to sarcasm with sarcasm. You are not permitted to lead with it. Give me a damn cookie." "They're coconut crunchies. You hate coconut." "Then why did you buy coconut?" "To piss you off." Grinning now, Peabody pulled another pack of cookies from her bag. "Then I bought chocolate chip, just for you." "Well, hand them over then." "Okay, so ..." Peabody ripped open the second pack, offered Eve a cookie. "Anyway, McNab's got a little, bitty butt, and hardly any shoulders. Still -- " "Stop. Stop right there. If I get an image of a naked McNab in my head, you're going back to traffic detail." Peabody munched, hummed, waited. "Damn it! There he is." Hooting with laughter, Peabody polished off the last cookie. "Sorry. Dallas, I'm sorry. I couldn't help it. Kinda cute, isn't he?

Yes, my bug-out bag is packed,” Faith said and grimaced. “‘Where’s your bug-out bag?’ ‘Is your bug-out bag packed?’ ‘What’s your inventory?’ ‘Why did I get the insane parents?

to Russell Vernon Hunter New York Spring 1932 My dear Vernon Hunter Your letter gives me such a vivid picture of some thing I love in space — love almost as passionately as I can love a person — that I am almost tempted to pack my little bag and go — but I will not go to it right this morning — No matter how much I love it — There is some thing in me that must finish jobs once started — when I can —. So I am here — and what you write of me is there The cockscomb is here too — I put it in much cold water and it came to life from a kind of flatness it had in the box when I opened it — tho it was very beautiful as it lay in the box a bit wilted when I opened it —. I love it — Thank you. I must confess to you — that I even have the desire to go into old Mexico — that I would have gone — undoubtedly — if it were only myself that I considered — You are wise — so wise — in staying in your own country that you know and love — I am divided between my man and a life with him — and some thing of the outdoors — of your world — that is in my blood — and that I know I will never get rid of — I have to get along with my divided self the best way I can —. So give my greetings to the sun and the sky — and the wind — and the dry never ending land —Sincerely Georgia O'Keeffe

You wish that a gang of unwashed hippies would break into your house and murder your family and write death to pigs in human blood on your walls because you don’t want to pack bag lunches anymore?

Hey,’ Wildgirl says, ‘let me into your backpack. I’ve got a light on my keys that I totally forgot about.’ I turn my back to her and feel her fumbling with the zip of my pack. It’s a lot lighter now. ‘I’m glad you hung on to your bag. I would have had to kick your ass if you lost all my stuff.’ I probably wouldn’t mind that, although if I were given a choice, I’d opt for another kiss. It’s the first time I’ve been so close to someone since I’ve changed. Kissing felt better than I remembered, but it also felt like it was something I had to be careful about. It never felt that way before.

People in the real world always say, when something terrible happens, that the sadness and loss and aching pain of the heart will “lessen as time passes,” but it isn’t true. Sorrow and loss are constant, but if we all had to go through our whole lives carrying them the whole time, we wouldn’t be able to stand it. The sadness would paralyze us. So in the end we just pack it into bags and find somewhere to leave it. That is what Miploris is: a kingdom where lone storytelling travelers come slowly wandering from all directions, dragging unwieldy luggage full of sorrow. A place where they can put it down and go back to life. And when the travelers turn back, they do so with lighter steps, because Miploris is constructed in such a way that irrespective of what direction you leave it, you always have the sun up ahead and the wind at your back.

Hadia can come and go as she pleases and she is supported. Welcomed home and bade farewell extravagantly: the Quran held above her as she passes beneath it, the bag of frozen food packed for her to defrost later, long hugs and will you please call us more often? It should be a joke, he thinks, but it isn’t—how different it is for you if you stay in line, keep your head down, do as you’re told. It is as though to be loved at all you must be obedient. To be respected you must tame yourself. Usually, the night before Hadia left, he felt the same anxiety one felt as a child during the last hours of Sunday, but tonight he feels nothing.

God never prefabs or mass-produces people. No slapdash shaping. “I make all things new,” he declares (Rev. 21:5 NKJV). He didn’t hand you your granddad’s bag or your aunt’s life; he personally and deliberately packed you. . .

First of all, you're going to talk to her and get the whole story. I know you're in shock but sitting around here all day fingering your va**na isn't going to make anything better. So man-up. Go talk to her. You spent all these years trying to find her and here she is, right in front of you. So she's got a little baggage. Who doesn't?" "A little baggage? Drew, she has a son. That's more than a little baggage," I complained. "Wake up and look in the mirror baby-daddy. He's your son too. And you spent the last few years trying to f**k her out of your system with some chick you could barely stand. That's not just baggage, that's luggage, bags, suitcases, carry-ons, back-packs and Clinique make-up bags.

Removing yourself from the familiar and opting for the unfamiliar opens up the unknown. And within the unknown there are questions we have never asked ourselves; experiences we have never imagined; lessons we have never had a chance to learn. What we ultimately need when we are stuck within a bubble, is change. Another perspective of seeing and knowing what is possible. Traveling will open that up for you. The world will play its role; all you need to do, is pack your bags and allow it to happen.

Don’t forget to raise your voice when their words hurt your soul. Don’t forget to shove, when they try to hush you. If every time you look at yourself, and all that you can see is the ruined mascara, dry lips and burning eyes Girl, that’s the proof for you to pack your bags and leave. If they bury you with the roses and burn you alive with their words Girl, that’s the proof for you to pack your bags and leave. Don’t forget to raise your voice when their words hurt your soul. Don’t forget to shove, when they try to hush you.

There is very little that is natural left in people when they stray from the cities. Day hiking in Gore-Tex with a bag of trail mix and a cell phone in a fanny pack and a bottle of iced chai tea clipped to your belt isn’t actually natural, it’s tourism, or worse, voyeurism.

I’d been trying to escape the rez for years. After all, Indian reservations were created by white men to serve as rural concentration camps, and I think that’s still their primary purpose. So, of course, I ran away from home in third grade. I packed a small bag with comic books, peanut butter sandwiches, and my eyeglasses, and made it almost two miles down the road before my mother found me. After that incident, she often said, “Junior, you were born with a suitcase in your hand.” That might have been a complimentary thing to say to a nomad. But my

I have come to your group for somewhere to belong, I promise I shall adapt before too long, I will accept anything you ask me to, I have come a long way, I have run away from home' 'But you are not like us', the pigeon said to her 'You cannot come and pretend you do, Pack your bags and go somewhere new, You can't even sing our song, This is not your home' All the other pigeons stopped talking and stared And their looks made it clear that they also shared That Romy could no longer stay and Romy felt there was no other way But to accept and fly away.

IF U CAN'T RUN WITH THE PACK CONTTER YOURSELF 2 BE HUNTED BY THE PACK DON'T TURN YOUR BACK ON THE WOLFPACK U MIGHT WINE UP IN A BODY BAG NWO WOLFPACK IS ALWAYS AND I DO MEAN ALWAYS WILL BE 4-LIFE 2 SWEET IF U'RE NOT DOWN WITH WWE'S OWN D-GENERATION X THEN I HAVE ONLY 2 WORDS 4 U SUCK IT

Beginnings can be delicate or explosive. They can start almost invisibly or arrive with a big bang. Beginnings hold the promise of new lessons to be learned, new territory to be explored, and old lessons to be recalled, practiced, and appreciated. Beginnings hold ambiguity, promise, fear, and hope. Don’t let the lessons, the experiences of the past, dampen your enthusiasm for beginnings. Just because it’s been hard doesn’t mean it will always be that difficult. Don’t let the heartbreaks of the past cause you to become cynical, close you off to life’s magic and promise. Open yourself wide to all that the universe has to say. Let yourself begin anew. Pack your bags. Choose carefully what you bring, because packing is an important ritual. Take long some humility and the lessons of the past. Toss in some curiosity and excitement and what you haven’t yet learned. Say your good-byes to whose you’re leaving behind. Don’t worry who you will meet or where you will go. The way has been prepared. The people you are to meet will be expecting you. A new journey has begun. Let it be magical. Let it unfold. Take time now to honour the beginning.

He returned an hour later with two bags from CVS—Gatorade, Advil, a Matchbox car, a Rubik’s Cube, a pack of Bazooka gum, a little puzzle with a picture of a kitten. He set them on the foot of her bed, as if he couldn’t bring himself to get too close to her. “For your…um…lady-stomach,” he murmured.

Aunt Abi shuffled to the edge of her sofa in earnest. ‘Look, Kirabo, don’t delude yourself. Everything about us, our entire world, is built on how men react to us. So yes, in that respect we elongate because men can be inept. They are also supposed to guide them to the bean if you are still dry. Child, never let a man rush you. Tell him I am not ready, show him how to use his member to whip the labia, slow and gentle at first, then fast. Within a minute, you are ready. If you land on the kind of husband who does not know what to do, pack your bags and come home – hmm, hmm. An inept husband is a life sentence.

They lined the floor of the cabins with the four- and five-millimeter-thick sheets and filled the wells of their seats—designed to accommodate parachute packs—from the bags of shot. They even had a rhyme about it: Yesli hochesh byt’ otsom, zakrivay yaitso svintsom. “If you want to be a dad, cover your balls in lead.

Now you've done it." His tone was quietly playful. I couldn't help it.I looked up at him questioningly. "You've added a third word to your repitoire. Hi,thanks,and now yes." His lips turned up at the corners,and the heat rushed to my face. He noticed. "At least that much hasn't changed." I turned back to my notebook,my hands trembling. He leaned toward me. "Now that we have our first conversation out of the way, do you want to tell me where you've been?" From the way he spoke I knew his smile was gone. I could feel little beads of sweat form on my forehead. "You left me.Without a word," he said. He sounded tentative, as if he were trying to keep his voice even. I took in a deep breath,but I couldn't figure out what he was feeling. There wasn't one singular emotion that was stronger than the others. "Don't you have anything to say to me?" He waited. My heart felt like it would burst through my chest into a million little pieces,and I could see this wasn't going to work. I started to close my book. "Don't-" he blurted, and I froze. "Don't go.You don't have to talk to me.I'm the one who should go." His voice sounded achingly sad. I could hear him packing his bag. Say something.Say something. "Um..." Jack paused, as if further movement might stop my words. He was the reason I came back.I couldn't scare him off. As hard as it would be to talk to him,it would be much harder to watch him walk out that door. "No," I said. I took a shaky breath. "You don't...have to leave. Please." He took his book back out and put it on his desk. I followed,setting my own books out. "Thank you," Jack whispered. We didn't talk for the rest of the hour.

When you pack your bags for a big trip, you never know what's in store for you. The Apollo astronauts on their way to and from the Moon photographed their home planet. It was a natural thing to do, but it had consequences that few foresaw. For the first time, the inhabitants of Earth could see their world from above—the whole Earth, the Earth in color, the Earth as an exquisite spinning white and blue ball set against the vast darkness of space. Those images helped awaken our slumbering planetary consciousness. They provide incontestable evidence that we all share the same vulnerable planet. They remind us of what is important and what is not. They were the harbingers of Voyager's pale blue dot.

Certainly, an ethical and evolved life entails a whole lot of doing things one doesn’t particularly want to do and not doing things one very much does, regardless of gender. But an ethical and evolved life also entails telling the truth about oneself and living out that truth. Leaving a relationship because you want to doesn’t exempt you from your obligation to be a decent human being. You can leave and still be a compassionate friend to your partner. Leaving because you want to doesn’t mean you pack your bags the moment there’s strife or struggle or uncertainty. It means that if you yearn to be free of a particular relationship and you feel that yearning lodged within you more firmly than any of the other competing and contrary yearnings are lodged, your desire to leave is not only valid, but probably the right thing to do. Even if someone you love is hurt by that.

Teller would pay dearly for what he had said. Later that summer, on a visit to Los Alamos, Teller spotted an old friend, Bob Christy, in the dining hall. Walking over to greet him with outstretched hand, Teller was stunned when Christy refused to shake hands and abruptly turned his back. Standing close by was a furious Rabi, who said, “I won’t shake your hand, either, Edward.” Stunned, Teller went back to his hotel room and packed his bags.

He was the one, however, with whom no one wanted his or her picture taken, the one to whom no one wanted to introduce his son or daughter. Louis and Gage knew him; they had met him and faced him down in New England, some time ago. He was waiting to choke you on a marble, to smother you with a dry-cleaning bag, to sizzle you into eternity with a fast and lethal boggie of electricity—Available at Your Nearest Switchplate or Vacant Light Socket Right Now. There was death in a quarter bag of peanuts, an aspirated piece of steak, the next pack of cigarettes. He was around all the time, he monitored all the checkpoints between the mortal and the eternal. Dirty needles, poison beetles, downed live wires, forest fires. Whirling roller skates that shot nurdy little kids into busy intersections. When you got into the bathtub to take a shower, Oz got right in there too—Shower with a Friend. When you got on an airplane, Oz took your boarding pass. He was in the water you drank, the food you ate. Who’s out there? you howled into the dark when you were frightened and all alone, and it was his answer that came back: Don’t be afraid, it’s just me. Hi, howaya? You got cancer of the bowel, what a bummer, so solly, Cholly! Septicemia! Leukemia! Atherosclerosis! Coronary thrombosis! Encephalitis! Osteomyelitis! Hey-ho, let’s go! Junkie in a doorway with a knife. Phone call in the middle of the night. Blood cooking in battery acid on some exit ramp in North Carolina. Big handfuls of pills, munch em up. That peculiar blue cast of the fingernails following asphyxiation—in its final grim struggle to survive the brain takes all the oxygen that is left, even that in those living cells under the nails. Hi, folks, my name’s Oz the Gweat and Tewwible, but you can call me Oz if you want—hell, we’re old friends by now. Just stopped by to whop you with a little congestive heart failure or a cranial blood clot or something; can’t stay, got to see a woman about a breach birth, then I’ve got a little smoke-inhalation job to do in Omaha. And that thin voice is crying, “I love you, Tigger! I love you! I believe in you, Tigger! I will always love you and believe in you, and I will stay young, and the only Oz to ever live in my heart will be that gentle faker from Nebraska! I love you . . .” We cruise . . . my son and I . . . because the essence of it isn’t war or sex but only that sickening, noble, hopeless battle against Oz the Gweat and Tewwible. He and I, in our white van under this bright Florida sky, we cruise. And the red flasher is hooded, but it is there if we need it . . . and none need know but us because the soil of a man’s heart is stonier; a man grows what he can . . . and tends it.

Bryce declined to answer. Her father smiled slightly. “I can connect the dots. You arrive from off-world, bearing a knife that matches the Starsword. The dagger from the prophecy, no?” His eyes gleamed with greed. “Not seen since the First Wars. If I were to guess, you managed to reach a place I have long desired to go.” He glanced up at the orrery. “You might want to reconsider before packing your bags,” Bryce said. “They don’t take kindly to assholes.

When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip—to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting. After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The flight attendant comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.” “Holland?!?” you say. “What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.” But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay. The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It’s just a different place. So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met. It’s just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around . . . and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills . . . and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts. But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy . . . and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.” And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away . . . because the loss of that dream is a very, very significant loss. But . . . if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things . . . about Holland.

By December 1975, a year had passed since Mr. Harvey had packed his bags, but there was still no sign of him. For a while, until the tape dirtied or the paper tore, store owners kept a scratchy sketch of him taped to their windows. Lindsey and Samuel walked in the neighboorhood or hung out at Hal's bike shop. She wouldn't go to the diner where the other kids went. The owner of the diner was a law and order man. He had blown up the sketch of George Harvey to twice its size and taped it to the front door. He willingly gave the grisly details to any customer who asked- young girl, cornfield, found only an elbow. Finallly Lindsey asked Hal to give her a ride to the police station. She wanted to know what exactly they were doing. They bid farewell to Samuel at the bike shop and Hal gave Lindsey a ride through a wet December snow. From the start, Lindsey's youth and purpose had caught the police off guard. As more and more of them realized who she was, they gave her a wider and wider berth. Here was this girl, focused, mad, fifteen... When Lindsey and Hal waited outside the captain's office on a wooden bench, she thought she saw something across the room that she recognized. It was on Detective Fenerman's desk and it stood out in the room because of its color. What her mother had always distinguished as Chinese red, a harsher red than rose red, it was the red of classic red lipsticks, rarely found in nature. Our mother was proud of her ability fo wear Chinese red, noting each time she tied a particular scarf around her neck that it was a color even Grandma Lynn dared not wear. Hal,' she said, every muscle tense as she stared at the increasingly familiar object on Fenerman's desk. Yes.' Do you see that red cloth?' Yes.' Can you go and get it for me?' When Hal looked at her, she said: 'I think it's my mother's.' As Hal stood to retrieve it, Len entered the squad room from behind where Lindsey sat. He tapped her on the shoulder just as he realized what Hal was doing. Lindsey and Detective Ferman stared at each other. Why do you have my mother's scarf?' He stumbled. 'She might have left it in my car one day.' Lindsey stood and faced him. She was clear-eyed and driving fast towards the worst news yet. 'What was she doing in your car?' Hello, Hal,' Len said. Hal held the scarf in his head. Lindsey grabbed it away, her voice growing angry. 'Why do you have m mother's scarf?' And though Len was the detective, Hal saw it first- it arched over her like a rainbow- Prismacolor understanding. The way it happened in algebra class or English when my sister was the first person to figure out the sum of x or point out the double entendres to her peers. Hal put his hand on Lindsey's shoulder to guide her. 'We should go,' he said. And later she cried out her disbelief to Samuel in the backroom of the bike shop.

Travelers,” she rasps. “I see you have made your way through my swamp. What is it that you seek?” Oak steps forward and bows. “Honored lady, finder of lost things, we have come to ask you to use your power in our behalf.” From his pack, he pulls a bottle of honey wine, along with a bag of powdery white doughnuts and a jar of chili oil, and sets them down on the earth in front of her. “We’ve brought gifts.” The Thistlewitch looks us over. I do not think she is particularly impressed.

Girls who land broken are easy prey. If you’re lucky enough to come down on your feet, your instincts scream to bolt straight for the trees. You drop your parachute, pluck that bag from the ground (surely it contains something you need), and run like hell, breath tight and blood pounding because boys-who-are-men are being air-dropped here, too. Lord only knows what got loaded into their bags, but it does not matter because they do terrible things in packs, boys-who-are-men, things they’d never have the hate to do alone.

There was death in a quarter bag of peanuts, an aspirated piece of steak, the next pack of cigarettes. He was around all the time, he monitored all the checkpoints between the mortal and the eternal. Dirty needles, poison beetles, downed live wires, forest fires. Whirling roller skates that shot nurdy little kids into busy intersections. When you got into the bathtub to take a shower, Oz got right in there too—Shower with a Friend. When you got on an airplane, Oz took your boarding pass. He was in the water you drank, the food you ate. Who’s out there? you howled into the dark when you were frightened and all alone, and it was his answer that came back: Don’t be afraid, it’s just me. Hi, howaya? You got cancer of the bowel, what a bummer, so solly, Cholly! Septicemia! Leukemia! Atherosclerosis! Coronary thrombosis! Encephalitis! Osteomyelitis! Hey-ho, let’ s go! Junkie in a doorway with a knife. Phone call in the middle of the night. Blood cooking in battery acid on some exit ramp in North Carolina. Big handfuls of pills, munch em up. That peculiar blue cast of the fingernails following asphyxiation—in its final grim struggle to survive the brain takes all the oxygen that is left, even that in those living cells under the nails. Hi, folks, my name’s Oz the Gweat and Tewwible, but you can call me Oz if you want— hell, we’re old friends by now. Just stopped by to whop you with a little congestive heart failure or a cranial blood clot or something; can’t stay, got to see a woman about a breach birth, then I’ve got a little smoke-inhalation job to do in Omaha.

ASSIMILATION We never unpacked, dreaming in the wrong language, carrying our mother’s fears in our feet— if he raises his voice we will flee if he looks bored we will pack our bags unable to excise the refugee from our hearts, unable to sleep through the night. The refugee’s heart has six chambers. In the first is your mother’s unpacked suitcase. In the second, your father cries into his hands. The third room is an immigration office, your severed legs in the fourth, in the fifth a uterus—yours? The sixth opens with the right papers. I can’t get the refugee out of my body, I bolt my body whenever I get the chance. How many pills does it take to fall asleep? How many to meet the dead? The refugee’s heart often grows an outer layer. An assimilation. It cocoons the organ. Those unable to grow the extra skin die within the first six months in a host country. At each and every checkpoint the refugee is asked are you human? The refugee is sure it’s still human but worries that overnight, while it slept, there may have been a change in classification.

The law might not recognize it, but fifteen‘s a girl and sixteen a woman, and you get no map from one land to the next. They air-drop you in, booting a bag of Kissing Potion lip gloss and off-the-shoulder blouses after you. As you‘re plummering, trying to release your parachute and grab for that bag at the same time, they holler out "your are pretty", like they‘re giving you some sort of gift, some vital key, but really, it‘s meant to distract you from yanking your cord. Girls who land broken are easy prey. If you‘re lucky enough to come down on your feet, your instincts scream to bolt straight for the trees. You drop your parachute, pluck that bag from the ground (surely it contains something you need), and run like hell, breath tight and blood pounding because boys-who-are-men are being air-droped here, too. Lord only knows what got loaded into their bags, but it does not matter because they do terrible things in packs, boys-who-are-men, things they‘d never have the hate to do alone...we were racing to survive the open-field sprint from girl to woman.

TECHNIQUE #25 THE NUTSHELL RÉSUMÉ Just as job-seeking top managers roll a different written rèsumè off their printers for each position they're applying for, let a different true story about your professional life roll off your tongue for each listener. Before responding to "What do you do?" ask yourself, "What possible interest could this person have in my answer? Could he refer business to me? Buy from me? Hire me? Marry my sister? Become my buddy?" Wherever you go, pack a nutshell about your own life to work into your communications bag of tricks.

Let me see if I understand this," Jaenelle said. [...] "You and Falonar have decided to go your own ways," Jaenelle said with a patience that made Surreal wary. She shrugged. "It was a mutual decision." The bastard. "Uh-huh. So you packed your bags..." "It was his eyrie," Surreal cut in. "I certainly didn't want to live there." And I didn't want to watch him courting Nurian in ways he never thought to court me. "...and left Ebon Rih without telling Lucivar." "Who would have strung Falonar up by the heels"... or by the balls, which might have been interesting to watch... "before having a little chat." "No," Jaenelle said, "he would have waited for Chaosti to show up, and then he would have strung Falonar up by the heels." She paused. "Maybe by the heels." Which just confirmed why Surreal had slipped away from Ebon Rih before Lucivar had time to notice. As the Warlord Prince of Ebon Rih dealing with a Warlord Prince who was his second-in-command, Lucivar would have been nasty and explosive. Chaosti, the Warlord Prince of the Dea al Mon and a kinsman on her mother's side, would have approached Falonar with the protective viciousness that made Warlord Princes such a deadly facet of Blood society. Dealing with the male relatives she'd acquired since coming to Kaeleer was so much fun. "And you entered the Hall through one of the side doors to avoid seeing Daemon, who's working in his study and would have met you before you got out of the great hall." Feeling more wary by the minute, Surreal did her best to look indifferent. "No reason for him to get involved in this." Sweet Darkness, please don't let him think this is any business of his. "Besides, I don't need either of them getting all snarly and protective over something that was a mutual decision." "So instead of mentioning this to either of them, you went to the Keep and told Saetan." Surreal winced. "Well, I figured I should tell someone before leaving Ebon Rih." "Uh-huh. So you told the High Lord of Hell, the patriarch of this family, the man from whom Daemon and Lucivar inherited the temper you were trying to avoid." Jaenelle pushed the quilt aside and swung her legs over the side of the couch to sit up straight. "Did I miss something ?

We couldn’t live for two minutes without them, yet even after a billion years mitochondria behave as if they think things might not work out between us. They maintain their own DNA. They reproduce at a different time from their host cell. They look like bacteria, divide like bacteria, and sometimes respond to antibiotics in the way bacteria do. In short, they keep their bags packed. They don’t even speak the same genetic language as the cell in which they live. It is like having a stranger in your house, but one who has been there for a billion years.

When we’re in line for food, Peter reaches for a brownie and I say, “Don’t--I brought cookies,” and he gets excited. “Can I have one now?” he asks. I pull my Tupperware out of my bag and Peter grabs one. “Let’s not share with anybody else,” he says. “Too late,” I say, because our friends have spotted us. Darrell is singing, “Her cookies bring all the boys to the yard,” as we walk up to the table. I set the Tupperware down on the table and the boys wrestle for it, snatching cookies and gobbling them up like trolls. Pammy manages to snag one and says, “Y’all are beasts.” Darrell throws his head back and makes a beastlike sound, and she giggles. “These are amazing,” Gabe groans, licking chocolate off his fingers. Modestly I say, “They’re all right. Good, but not amazing. Not perfect.” I break a piece off of Peter’s cookie. “They taste better fresh out of the oven.” “Will you please come over to my house and bake me cookies so I know what they taste like fresh out of the oven?” Gabe bites into another one and closes his eyes in ecstasy. Peter snags one. “Stop eating all my girlfriend’s cookies!” Even a year later, it still gives me a little thrill to hear him say “my girlfriend” and know that I’m her. “You’re gonna get a gut if you don’t quit with that shit,” Darrell says. Peter takes a bite of cookie and lifts up his shirt and pats his stomach. “Six-pack, baby.” “You’re a lucky girl, Large,” Gabe says. Darrell shakes his head. “Nah, Kavinsky’s the lucky one.” Peter catches my eye and winks, and my heart beats quicker. I have a feeling that when I’m Stormy’s age, these everyday moments will be what I remember: Peter’s head bent, biting into a chocolate chip cookie; the sun coming through the cafeteria window, bouncing off his brown hair; him looking at me.

But before you call PETA, let me explain. I think all dogs should be off leashes, biting people! That's what they want to be doing, running in packs like the wild canines I saw in Bucharest that seem so happy to attack you, snarling and yapping when you get out of a cab. Dogs don't want to be home with their owners stuck in some sort of sick S&M relationship, sentenced to a lifetime of human caresses! How would you like to take a shit with someone following you around, waiting to pick it up with a plastic newspaper bag? Talk about humiliating! Also, I hate to tell you this, but can't you see? Your cat hates you

Love Me Like There's No Tomorrow You had to kill the conversation You always had the upper hand Got caught in love and stepped in sinking sand You had to go and ruin all our plans Packed your bags and you're leaving home Got a one-way ticket and you're all set to go But we have one more day together, so Love me like there's no tomorrow Hold me in your arms, tell me you mean it This is our last goodbye and very soon it will be over But today just love me like there's no tomorrow I guess we drift alone in separate ways I don't have all that far to go God knows I learnt to play the lonely man I've never felt so low in all my life We were born to be just losers So I guess there's a limit on how far we go But we only have one more day together so Love me like there's no tomorrow Hold me in your arms, tell me you mean it This is our last goodbye and very soon it will be over But today just love me like there's no tomorrow Tomorrow god knows just where I'll be Tomorrow who knows just what's in store for me Anything can happen but we only have one more day together, yeah Just one more day forever, so Love me like there's no tomorrow Hold me in your arms, tell me you mean it This is our last goodbye and very soon it will be over But today just love me like there's no tomorrow

My aversion to over-packing and its uptight cousin, over-planning, stems from the belief that neither tendency is a fake problem. These are not amusing tics. They are not superfluous reflections on the personality of the packer, but profound ones. They suggest a dubiousness of other lifestyles (racist), a conviction that the world won’t have what you need (princess), and a lack of faith that you’ll continue being human when it doesn’t (misanthrope). Plus, you’ll probably have to check your bags. And how hard is it, really? It’s just the one planet. I think by now we can all agree that the foundation of world travel goes something like “bring a cardigan.

I didn’t pack very much. Some clothes, some weapons. I threw out the perishable food, and stripped my bed of its sheets and blankets. Akos helped in silence, his arm still wrapped in a bandage. His bag of possessions was already on the table. I had watched him pack some clothes and some of the books I had given him, his favorite pages folded over. Though I had already read all those books, I wanted to open them again just to search out the parts he most treasured; I wanted to read them as if immersed in his mind. “You’re acting weird,” he said once we were finished, and all there was left to do was wait. “I don’t like going home,” I said. It was true, at least. Akos looked around, and shrugged. “Seems like this is your home. There’s more of you in here than anywhere in Voa.” He was right, of course. I was happy that he knew what “more of me” really was--that he might know as much about me, from observation, as I knew about him. And I did know him. I could pick him out in a crowd from his gait alone. I knew the shade of the veins that showed on the backs of his hands. And his favorite knife for chopping iceflowers. And the way his breath always smelled spiced, like hushflower and sendes leaf mixed together. “Maybe next time I’ll do more to my room,” he said. You won’t be back next time, I thought. “Yeah.” I forced a smile. “You should.

If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it, what would it say and why? “Discipline equals freedom.” Everyone wants freedom. We want to be physically free and mentally free. We want to be financially free and we want more free time. But where does that freedom come from? How do we get it? The answer is the opposite of freedom. The answer is discipline. You want more free time? Follow a more disciplined time-management system. You want financial freedom? Implement long-term financial discipline in your life. Do you want to be physically free to move how you want, and to be free from many health issues caused by poor lifestyle choices? Then you have to have the discipline to eat healthy food and consistently work out. We all want freedom. Discipline is the only way to get it. What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you’ve ever made? Ever since I have had a home with a garage, I have had a gym in my garage. It is one of the most important factors in allowing me to work out every day regardless of the chaos and mayhem life delivers. The convenience of being able to work out any time, without packing a gym bag, driving, parking, changing, then waiting for equipment . . . The home gym is there for you. No driving. No parking. No little locker to cram your gear into. In your home gym, you never wait for equipment. It is waiting for you. Always. And, perhaps most important: You can listen to whatever music you want, as loud as you want. GET SOME.

It is now time to face the fact that English is a crazy language — the most loopy and wiggy of all tongues. In what other language do people drive in a parkway and park in a driveway? In what other language do people play at a recital and recite at a play? Why does night fall but never break and day break but never fall? Why is it that when we transport something by car, it’s called a shipment, but when we transport something by ship, it’s called cargo? Why does a man get a hernia and a woman a hysterectomy? Why do we pack suits in a garment bag and garments in a suitcase? Why do privates eat in the general mess and generals eat in the private mess? Why do we call it newsprint when it contains no printing but when we put print on it, we call it a newspaper? Why are people who ride motorcycles called bikers and people who ride bikes called cyclists? Why — in our crazy language — can your nose run and your feet smell?Language is like the air we breathe. It’s invisible, inescapable, indispensable, and we take it for granted. But, when we take the time to step back and listen to the sounds that escape from the holes in people’s faces and to explore the paradoxes and vagaries of English, we find that hot dogs can be cold, darkrooms can be lit, homework can be done in school, nightmares can take place in broad daylight while morning sickness and daydreaming can take place at night, tomboys are girls and midwives can be men, hours — especially happy hours and rush hours — often last longer than sixty minutes, quicksand works very slowly, boxing rings are square, silverware and glasses can be made of plastic and tablecloths of paper, most telephones are dialed by being punched (or pushed?), and most bathrooms don’t have any baths in them. In fact, a dog can go to the bathroom under a tree —no bath, no room; it’s still going to the bathroom. And doesn’t it seem a little bizarre that we go to the bathroom in order to go to the bathroom? Why is it that a woman can man a station but a man can’t woman one, that a man can father a movement but a woman can’t mother one, and that a king rules a kingdom but a queen doesn’t rule a queendom? How did all those Renaissance men reproduce when there don’t seem to have been any Renaissance women? Sometimes you have to believe that all English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane: In what other language do they call the third hand on the clock the second hand? Why do they call them apartments when they’re all together? Why do we call them buildings, when they’re already built? Why it is called a TV set when you get only one? Why is phonetic not spelled phonetically? Why is it so hard to remember how to spell mnemonic? Why doesn’t onomatopoeia sound like what it is? Why is the word abbreviation so long? Why is diminutive so undiminutive? Why does the word monosyllabic consist of five syllables? Why is there no synonym for synonym or thesaurus? And why, pray tell, does lisp have an s in it? If adults commit adultery, do infants commit infantry? If olive oil is made from olives, what do they make baby oil from? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian consume? If pro and con are opposites, is congress the opposite of progress? ...

Besides, you hate shopping.” “No, I don’t.” “It’s not like we’re only visiting one store. There’s going to be a lot of browsing around shoe stores and boutiques and going bag-hunting in the mall. You wouldn’t last five minutes in that jungle.” “Hey, I wear clothes, I’ve seen women’s clothes. I’m pretty sure I could cope in a mall.” “Trey, let me cast your mind back to the time when as a punishment for being a bastard I took you to Victoria’s Secret and tried on a load of lingerie for you, but then never bought any.” His pained expression made her smile. “You remember how you were sweating and huffing and puffing and asking how long before we could go home?” “That was because you’d just made me watch you model all kinds of kinky shit, got me hard as a rock, and then expected me to walk without being in agony.

He unlocked the safe and pulled out three guns and several magazines, as well as his FIB badge, an extra harness, and an extra pair of knives. Some of these disappeared to various concealed locations under his clothes and the rest went in his duffel bag. I blinked at the haul. “Are you planning to go to war? Sure you don’t want to pack an assault rifle as well?” He looked up from the bag. “You have met yourself, right?” He zipped the bag closed. “So should I get a gun too?” “I’d fear the day.” He grabbed a blazer and pulled it over his shoulder rig. “You do have a good blade,” he said, nodding toward the dagger concealed in my boot. “It was a gift.” “I never doubted as much. If you’re going to carry a dagger, you need to learn to use it.” I frowned at him. “I know how to use it. I stick the pointy end in things I don’t like.

it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip—to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting. After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The flight attendant comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.” “Holland?!?” you say. “What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.” But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay. The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It’s just a different place. So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met. It’s just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around . . . and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills . . . and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts. But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy . . . and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.” And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away . . . because the loss of that dream is a very, very significant loss. But . . . if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things . . . about Holland.

into my room. *   *   * The last time I had sex was the night I left my husband. I packed my bags while he was at work and loaded most of them into the car. The furniture, the mementos, everything except my clothes was his to keep—where I was going, I wouldn’t need them. Then I waited in the hallway, sitting on a suitcase. Aiden arrived home at the usual time. The door jammed on my suitcase as he flicked on the light. “Hey,” he said, “what are you doing?” “Leaving you,” I said. Aiden continued hooking his coat on the hall tree. “Oh yeah?” “Mmm-hmm,” I said. “You seem to be taking it well.” He turned, taking in my suitcase and somber expression. “You’re … serious?” I’d never threatened to leave him before, but we had a certain way of talking, a light way, that made everything seem like a joke. As I held his gaze and nodded, realization dawned. “Shit, Anna.” He raked his hands through his hair. “I know we have problems but—” “I have Alzheimer

PORK AND BEANS BREAD Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position. 15-ounce can of pork and beans (I used Van Camp’s) 4 eggs, beaten (just whip them up in a glass with a fork) 1 cup vegetable oil (not canola, not olive—use vegetable oil) 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 cups white (granulated) sugar 1 teaspoon baking soda ½ teaspoon baking powder ½ teaspoon salt 1 and ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon 1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts (measure after chopping—I used pecans) 3 cups all-purpose flour (pack it down in the cup when you measure it) Prepare your pans. Spray two 9-inch by 5-inch by 3-inch-deep loaf pans with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray.   Don’t drain the pork and beans. Pour them into a food processor or a blender, juice and all, and process them until they’re pureed smooth with no lumps.   Place the beaten eggs in a large mixing bowl. Stir in the pureed pork and beans and mix them in well.   Add the vegetable oil and the vanilla extract. Mix well.   Add the sugar and mix it in. Then mix in the baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Stir until everything is incorporated.   Stir in the chopped nuts.   Add the flour in one-cup increments, stirring after each addition.   Spoon half of the batter into one loaf pan and the other half of the batter into the second loaf pan.   Bake at 350 degrees F. for 50 to 60 minutes. Test the bread with a long food pick inserted in the center. If it comes out sticky, the bread needs to bake a bit more. If it comes out dry, remove the pans from the oven and place them on a wire rack to cool for 20 minutes.   Run the sharp blade of a knife around inside of all four sides of the pan to loosen the bread, and then tip it out onto the wire rack.   Cool the bread completely, and then wrap it in plastic wrap. At this point the bread can be frozen in a freezer bag for up to 3 months.   Hannah and Lisa’s Note: If you don’t tell anyone the name of this bread, they probably won’t ever guess it’s made with pork and beans.

When I was a young lad, we knew what we could want and how to get it, and we knew we'd have something to show for it at the end of the day. A crop, or a flock, or a house, or a family. There's great strength in that. Now there's too many things you're told to want, there's now ay to get them all, and once you're done trying, what have you got to show for it at the end? You've made a buncha phone calls selling electricity plans, maybe, or had a buncha meetings about nothing; you've got your hole offa some bitta fluff you met on the internet, got yourself some likes on the aul' YouTube. Nothing you can put your hands on. The women do be grand anyway; they're adaptable. But the young men don't know what to be doing with themselves at all. There's a few of them, like Fergal O'Connor who you met there, that keep their feet on the ground regardless. The rest are hanging themselves, or they're getting drunk and driving into ditches, or they're overdosing on the aul' heroin, or they're packing their bags.

argumentative.” “Sorry. It wasn’t on the schedule.” “Sarcasm’s also typical, but it’s unbecoming.” Susan opened her briefcase, checked the contents. “We’ll talk about all this when I get back. I’ll make an appointment with Dr. Bristoe.” “I don’t need therapy! I need a mother who listens, who gives a shit about how I feel.” “That kind of language only shows a lack of maturity and intellect.” Enraged, Elizabeth threw up her hands, spun in circles. If she couldn’t be calm and rational like her mother, she’d be wild. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” “And repetition hardly enhances. You have the rest of the weekend to consider your behavior. Your meals are in the refrigerator or freezer, and labeled. Your pack list is on your desk. Report to Ms. Vee at the university at eight on Monday morning. Your participation in this program will ensure your place in HMS next fall. Now, take my garment bag downstairs, please. My car will be here any minute.” Oh, those seeds were sprouting, cracking that fallow ground and pushing painfully through. For the first time in her life, Elizabeth looked straight

OK, now imagine two little Jimmies in a pack on your pack, or, better still, something inert but weighty, something that doesn’t want to be lifted, that makes it abundantly clear to you as soon as you pick it up that what it wants is to sit heavily on the ground—say, a bag of cement or a box of medical textbooks—in any case, forty pounds of profound heaviness. Imagine the jerk of the pack going on, like the pull of a down elevator. Imagine walking with that weight for hours, for days, and not along level asphalt paths with benches and refreshment booths at thoughtful intervals but over a rough trail, full of sharp rocks and unyielding roots and staggering ascents that transfer enormous amounts of strain to your pale, shaking thighs. Now tilt your head back until your neck is taut, and fix your gaze on a point two miles away. That’s your first climb. It’s 4,682 steep feet to the top, and there are lots more like it. Don’t tell me that seven miles is not far. Oh, and here’s the other thing. You don’t have to do this. You’re not in the army. You can quit right now. Go home. See your family. Sleep in a bed.

Forgetfulness" The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones. Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag, and even now as you memorize the order of the planets, something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps, the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay. Whatever it is you are struggling to remember, it is not poised on the tip of your tongue or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen. It has floated away down a dark mythological river whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle. No wonder you rise in the middle of the night to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war. No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

Small Change Snack Tips 1. Limit a snack to approximately 200 calories maximum. 2. Turn coffee or a tea into a snack by adding a cup of low-fat milk or soymilk. 3. Do not have a carbohydrate alone (such as an apple or a serving of crackers); you will still be hungry. Instead, pair a carb with a lean protein or healthy fat. Have low-fat cheese with your apple, or some peanut butter on your whole grain crackers. 4. It’s okay to have carbs alone before bed (such as a piece of fruit) because it doesn’t need to keep you full—you’re about to go to sleep. 5. Don’t double dip. For instance, don’t do string cheese and nuts, or string cheese and yogurt. Instead, choose one high-fiber carb and one lean protein or healthy fat; otherwise your calories (and fat) can add up. 6. When you eat straight from the bag, box, or can, you’ll consume more. Preportion items like nuts in resealable snack-size bags. 7. Try to keep snacktime to three hours after you have eaten. If you eat it too close to your last meal, it won’t do its job for the next meal. 8. If buying an energy bar, read the label and look for more fiber and protein, less calories and fat. 9. Just because it’s a “100-calorie pack” doesn’t mean it is a healthy snack. Make sure it offers some fiber and protein or healthy fat—and if not, skip it.

Saying goodbye to everyone, I picked up my bag and began walking away as a deep husky voice called my name. I didn’t stop walking, but looked over my shoulder in time to see Brandon walking around the table toward me, and Chase holding the brunette’s head away from his as he watched us, she just continued onto his neck. Falling into step with me, he held out a hand, “We haven’t met yet, I’m Brandon Taylor.” Dear Lord that voice could warm me on the coldest day of the year. “Harper Jackson, nice to meet you.” He smiled as he held the door open for me, “You too. You seem to know the rest of the guys pretty well though we’re just meeting, they said you’re Bree’s roommate?” “Uh, yeah. I am, but I don’t really know them well. I’ve only talked to them for a total of about ten minutes before today.” “Really?” The corners of his mouth twitched up, “You seem to make quite an impression in a short amount of time then.” “Oh I definitely made an impression with them.” I muttered. He looked at me quizzically but I shook my head so he wouldn’t push it. We stopped walking when we got to the path that would take me to the dorms and him to his next class. I turned towards him and shamelessly took in his worn jeans resting low on his narrow hips and fitted black shirt before going back to his face. I hadn’t realized how tall he was when we were walking out, but he had to be at least a foot taller than me. His height and muscled body made me want to curl up in his arms, it looked like I’d fit perfectly there. I nervously bit my bottom lip while I watched his cloudy eyes slowly take in my small frame. It didn’t feel like the guys at the party, looking at me like I was something to eat. His eyes made me feel beautiful, and it thrilled me that they were on me. Thrilled me that they were on me? Get a grip Harper you just met him two seconds ago. “Come on PG, let’s go.” Chase grabbed my arm and started dragging me away. “Chase! Stop!” I yanked my arm out and shot him a dirty look. “What is your problem?” “I’m taking you and Bree to the house, and you need to pack for the weekend so let’s go.” He grabbed for me again but I dodged his hand. “The weekend, what?” “You’re staying with me, go pack.” I narrowed my eyes and started to turn towards Brandon, “Fine, hold on.” “Harper.” “Go away Chase, I’ll meet you in the room in a minute. Go find Bree.” He moved to stand closer behind me so I just sighed and gave Brandon a lame smile. “Sorry, apparently I have to go. I’ll see you tonight?” I don’t know why I asked, he actually lived there. A sexy smile lit up his face as his hand reached out to quickly brush against my arm, “See you then.” With a hard nod directed towards Chase, he turned and walked away.

Go grab one of those little baskets over there,” I said to Connor as I pointed by the door. “You aren’t seriously buying that much, are you?” “Ok Mr. Black, if you must know the truth, it’s my PMS time.” He took a step back and put his hands up, “Whoa, enough said.” I grinned as I picked up a bag of Fritos, Cheetos, a Hersey bar(king size), a Twix bar, a small pack of chocolate donuts, 3 cans of coke, a bag of tiny twist pretzels and a jar of Nutella. Connor looked in the basket and then at me with a horrified look on his face. “Hey, you’re the one who wanted to take me on this road trip. I’m just trying to keep the peace because without these foods for a woman at that time of the month,” I waved my hand. “Well, you don’t really want to know.” I put the basket on the counter. The cashier overheard our conversation, she looked at Connor and said, “Trust her; we girls are two sheets short of psycho when it comes to our special little time.” He just stood there and looked at both of us, speechless, as she rang up the food. She gave me the total, and I looked at Connor. He looked at me in confusion, “Really? You want me to pay for this crap?” The cashier leaned over the counter and looked him straight in the eyes, “Remember, 2 sheets short of psycho.” He pulled out his wallet and paid as he was mumbling under his breath. He took the bag and headed out. I looked at the cashier and high fived her, “Thank you.

Lady Rose, you grow lovelier every time I see you.” Had it been a stranger who spoke she might have been flustered, but since it was Archer, Grey’s younger brother, she merely grinned in response and offered her hand. “And your eyesight grows poorer every time you see me, sir.” He bowed over her fingers. “If I am blind it is only by your beauty.” She laughed at that, enjoying the good-natured sparkle in his bright blue eyes. He was so much more easy-natured than Grey, so much more full of life and flirtation. And yet, the family resemblance could not be denied even if Archer’s features were a little thinner, a little sharper. How would Grey feel if she found a replacement for him in his own brother? It was too low, even in jest. “Careful with your flattery, sir,” she warned teasingly. “I am trolling for a husband you know.” Archer’s dark brows shot up in mock horror. “Never say!” Then he leaned closer to whisper. “Is my brother actually fool enough to let you get away?” Rose’s heart lurched at the note of seriousness in his voice. When she raised her gaze to his she saw only concern and genuine affection there. “He’s packing my bags as we speak.” He laughed then, a deep, rich sound that drew the attention of everyone on the terrace, including his older brother. “Will you by chance be at the Devane musicale next week, Lord Archer?” “I will,” he remarked, suddenly sober. “As much as it pains me to enter that viper’s pit. I’m accompanying Mama and Bronte. Since there’s never been any proof of what she did to Grey, Mama refuses to cut the woman. She’s better than that.” Archer’s use of the word “cut” might have been ironic, but what a relief knowing he would be there. “Would you care to accompany Mama and myself as well?” He regarded her with a sly smile. “My dear, Lady Rose. Do you plan to use me to make my brother jealous?” “Of course not!” And she was honest to a point. “I wish to use your knowledge of eligible beaux and have you buoy my spirits. If that happens to annoy your brother, then so much the better.” He laughed again. This time Grey scowled at the pair of them. Rose smiled and waved. Archer tucked her hand around his arm and guided her toward the chairs where the others sat enjoying the day, the table before them laden with sandwiches, cakes, scones, and all kinds of preserves, cream, and biscuits. A large pot of tea sat in the center. “What are you grinning at?” Grey demanded as they approached. Archer gave his brother an easy smile, not the least bit intimidated. “Lady Rose has just accepted my invitation for both she and her dear mama to accompany us to the Devane musicale next week.” Grey stiffened. It was the slightest movement, like a blade of grass fighting the breeze, but Rose noticed. She’d wager Archer did too. “How nice,” he replied civilly, but Rose mentally winced at the coolness of his tone. He turned to his mother. “I’m parched. Mama, will you pour?” And he didn’t look at her again.

Syn finished with dispatch then called his first officer. While waiting for the phone to be answered he told Furi to pack a bag with whatever he would need for the next couple of days. Furi didn’t move. “Furious,” Syn growled. He wanted to get the hell out of that apartment just in case Sasha wanted to come finish the job. “I’m not leaving. She is not going to run me out of my own damn place.” Furi jutted out his chin in defiance. Syn forgot about his phone call and came to stand directly in front of Furi. “Go and pack a bag now. That crazy bitch is not going to get a second chance if I have anything to say about it.” “You don’t have anything to say about it.” “The hell I don’t,” Syn barked. “Your foolish pride will get you killed. Let's deal with her and then you’re more than welcome to come home. Don’t let your stubbornness make you an easy target, because that’s just stupid.” “You calling me stupid?” Furi snapped right back. Syn rolled his eyes in frustration. “Are you fuckin’ kiddin’ me? Furious we don’t have time for this Mickey Mouse bullshit right now. Go get your shit and let’s move.” Syn went over to the only window in Furi’s apartment and stood watch while Furi threw some clothes, toiletries, books and a laptop into a bag, grumbling curses the entire time. Syn let him say whatever he wanted to, as long as he was doing what needed to be done. Furi had a large duffle draped over his shoulder when he came to stand in front of Syn. “Done, Detective. Anything else you want to order me to do?” Syn took a quick calming breath. He took Furi’s duffle off his shoulder and set it gently at his feet. He put his arms around Furi’s waist and pulled him to him. “I’m not trying to order you around. I just can’t let anyone hurt you.” Syn squeezed his eyes shut.

So your theory is that Nancy plans to marry Samuel, pass off as her own the child he fathered on her maid, and then raise it, assuming it’s a boy, to be heir to the title. That doesn’t gain Nancy much, does it? It’s not her son, and she’s not Samuel’s only lover. He and his mistress and the son get everything; she gets only the privilege of knowing she’s married to a seducer.” Dom ignored the fact that some of what she said made sense. “She gains an exalted rank as mother to the new viscount. She gains a husband she’s always coveted. And she might not even care if Samuel was having an affair with her maid--you said yourself that Nancy wasn’t fond of the intimate side of marriage.” The moment Jane paled, he realized what he’d said. Something highly inappropriate. Something that revealed just how frank he and Jane had been in their conversations. God only knew what Blakeborough would make of that. Bloody hell. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t help Dom’s situation with Jane any. Not that any of this would. Damn Nancy for coming between them yet again. Jane’s gaze turned stormy as she poked him in the chest. “You’ve got it all figured out, don’t you? But as usual, you ignore all the ways that your theory doesn’t fit.” He stared her down. “Such as what?” Again she poked him in the chest. “Why did Samuel mention coming to London to see a doctor if they were sure that Nancy had lost the baby?” Another poke. “Why did she leave York in such strange circumstances that she roused our suspicions?” Poke. “Why did she not even pack bags for the journey?” When she started to poke him once more, he grabbed her hand. “Perhaps she and Barlow worked up the scheme once she got to York.” Jane snatched her hand free. “And she didn’t try to return to Rathmoor Park to allay the servants’ suspicions or pack or even take her dogs?” “Nancy didn’t take her dogs?” Sadler echoed. “That’s not right, not right at all. That girl carries those deuced dogs everywhere. Many is the trip I’ve taken with her when I’ve had to endure the mutts in my lap.” Sadler approached to stand beside Jane. “I tell you, the only way she’d leave them behind is if Barlow abducted her and forced her to do his bidding. That’s what has happened. I know it!” With a smug lift of her eyebrow, Jane crossed her arms over her chest and dared Dom to refute that. He couldn’t. Because until he could investigate more, he simply couldn’t be sure of the truth, damn it.

Am I mistaken to think that even back then, in the vivid present, the fullness of life stirred our emotions to an extraordinary extent? Has anywhere since so engrossed you in its ocean of details? The detail, the immensity of the detail, the force of the detail, the weight of the detail—the rich endlessness of detail surrounding you in your young life like the six feet of dirt that’ll be packed on your grave when you’re dead. Perhaps by definition a neighborhood is the place to which a child spontaneously gives undivided attention; that’s the unfiltered way meaning comes to children, just flowing off the surface of things. Nonetheless, fifty years later, I ask you: has the immersion ever again been so complete as it was in those streets, where every block, every backyard, every house, every floor of every house—the walls, ceilings, doors, and windows of every last friend’s family apartment—came to be so absolutely individualized? Were we ever again to be such keen recording instruments of the microscopic surface of things close at hand, of the minutest gradations of social position conveyed by linoleum and oilcloth, by yahrzeit candles and cooking smells, by Ronson table lighters and Venetian blinds? About one another, we knew who had what kind of lunch in the bag in his locker and who ordered what on his hot dog at Syd’s; we knew one another’s every physical attribute—who walked pigeon-toed and who had breasts, who smelled of hair oil and who oversalivated when he spoke; we knew who among us was belligerent and who was friendly, who was smart and who was dumb; we knew whose mother had the accent and whose father had the mustache, whose mother worked and whose father was dead; somehow we even dimly grasped how every family’s different set of circumstances set each family a distinctive difficult human problem. And, of course, there was the mandatory turbulence born of need, appetite, fantasy, longing, and the fear of disgrace. With only adolescent introspection to light the way, each of us, hopelessly pubescent, alone and in secret, attempted to regulate it—and in an era when chastity was still ascendant, a national cause to be embraced by the young like freedom and democracy. It’s astonishing that everything so immediately visible in our lives as classmates we still remember so precisely. The intensity of feeling that we have seeing one another today is also astonishing. But most astonishing is that we are nearing the age that our grandparents were when we first went off to be freshmen at the annex on February 1, 1946. What is astonishing is that we, who had no idea how anything was going to turn out, now know exactly what happened. That the results are in for the class of January 1950—the unanswerable questions answered, the future revealed—is that not astonishing? To have lived—and in this country, and in our time, and as who we were. Astonishing.

REACHING GAMES To encourage your baby to reach and to expand her horizons, try holding attractive toys just out of her reach: above her head, in front of her, to the sides. See how close you have to get the toy before she makes her move. Remember, the object here is not to tease or torture the baby, it’s to have fun. You can add another layer of complexity by putting the out-of-reach object on a blanket or towel. Then slowly pull the blanket and show her how it gets closer. Will she try that herself? TOUCHING GAMES Try this: let your baby play with a small toy without letting her see it (you could do this in the dark or with her hands in a paper bag). Then put that toy together with several other toys she’s never played with. Many babies this age will pick up the familiar toy. Although this may sound fairly easy, it isn’t. You’re asking your baby to use two senses—touch and vision—at the same time, and to recognize by sight something she’s touched but not seen. If your baby isn’t ready for this one, don’t worry. Just try it again in a few weeks. It’s a concept that can take a while to develop. IF … THEN … GAMES There are thousands of things you can do to reinforce cause-and-effect thinking. Rattles, banging games, rolling a ball back and forth, and splashing in the pool are excellent. So is blowing up your cheeks and having the baby “pop” them with her hands. Baby gyms—especially the kind that make a lot of noise when smacked—are also good, but be sure to pack them up the moment your baby starts trying to use the gym to pull herself up; they’re meant to be used while sitting or lying down and aren’t sturdy enough to support much weight. OBJECT PERMANENCE GAMES When your baby is about six or seven months old, the all-important idea that objects can exist even when they’re out of sight finally starts sinking in. • Object permanence develops in stages. If you’re interested in seeing how, try this: Show your baby a toy. Then, while she’s watching, “hide” it under a pillow. If you ask her where the toy is, she’ll probably push the pillow out of the way and “find” it. But if you quickly move the toy to another hiding place when she’s not looking, she’ll continue to look for it in the first hiding place. • Peek-a-boo and other games that involve hiding and finding things are great for developing object permanence. Peek-a-boo in particular teaches your baby an excellent lesson: when you go away, you always come back. This doesn’t sound like much, but making this connection now lets her know she can count on you to be there when she needs you and will help her better cope with separation anxiety (see page 222).

Plastics: Most curbside recycling pickups do not accept plastic bags, plastic sleeves, or Tyvek envelopes. Proactively requesting your senders not to mail any is the best way to avoid them. However, when your request is ignored, you can set the materials aside for reuse or check the list of items accepted in plastic bag collection bins such as those offered at grocery stores, as many accept more than grocery bags. Alternatively, you can send Tyvek envelopes for recycling (see “Resources”). Such parcel stuffers as bubble wrap (no tape attached), packing peanuts, or Styrofoam (entire pads only) are accepted at participating UPS stores for reuse. Alternatively, you can call the Plastic Loose Fill Council’s Peanut Hotline (1-800-828-2214) for the names of local businesses that also accept them for reuse.

Break your moving process down into small, simple, and only necessary steps. Making a list of your stuff is an unnecessary step. 1 Schedule a pre-pack day for each room. On that day, remove items that don’t belong in that room—for instance, dishes go in the kitchen so they get packed with kitchen items, clothes go to the bedroom closet, and cosmetics and soap go to the bathroom. We are trying to avoid boxes of “miscellaneous.” Go through every item in the room, placing as many items as possible in the trash or in donation bags that you can drop off at a charity by the end of the day.

One night, about eight months after he had arrived in Japan, I was in bed reading. For some reason, we got into an argument about Air Force regulations. Jack was asserting that not all regulations were good ones, and he insisted that there were some you could simply turn a blind eye to. "Wow, I hope you're never a commander with an attitude like that," I retorted, looking back down at my book. Then, like a bull about to charge, Jack leaned over me, clenched his fists, staring at me. He had lost his temper countless times before, but this time seemed different. Slowly, and without making eye contact, I slipped out of bed. My intention was to pack my bag, not for the first time, and go stay with a girlfriend of mine who lived nearby. But as I slowly stepped by him, I suddenly found myself on the floor. It took me a minute to figure out how I had gotten there. Shocked, I looked up, realizing that he had kicked me in the back and sent me flying into the dresser.