Plug Love Quotes

We love being mentally strong, but we hate situations that allow us to put our mental strength to good use.

Ann, I love you. I hope my car starts. I hope the sink isn't plugged up. I'm glad I didn't fuck a groupie. I'm glad I'm not very good at getting into bed with strange females. I'm glad I'm an idiot. I'm glad I don't know anything. I'm glad I haven't been murdered. When I look at my hands and they are still on my wrists, I think to myself, I am lucky.

When we first started out I had a really big issue and a lot of my loved ones had a really big issue with the fact that I was totally in pain up there and there was a time when I tried to hurt myself off stage, but I got over that. Like, you should never want to hurt yourself. You should love yourself. Sometimes you have to kind of die inside in order to rise from your own ashes and believe in yourself and love yourself and become a new person and I think that that is going to be a lot of what the next record is about, not to plug it or anything. Like, it's going to talk about dying and coming back to become what you totally want to become. We are all becoming what we want to become.

When we begin to set boundaries with people we love, a really hard thing happens: they hurt. They may feel a hole where you used to plug up their aloneness, their disorganization, or their financial irresponsibility. Whatever it is, they will feel a loss. If you love them, this will be difficult for you to watch. But, when you are dealing with someone who is hurting, remember that your boundaries are both necessary for you and helpful for them. If you have been enabling them to be irresponsible, your limit setting may nudge them toward responsibility.

This is an apology letter to the both of us for how long it took me to let things go. It was not my intention to make such a production of the emptiness between us playing tuba on the tombstone of a soprano to try and keep some dead singer’s perspective alive. It’s just that I coulda swore you had sung me a love song back there and that you meant it but I guess sometimes people just chew with their mouth open so I ate ear plugs alive with my throat hoping they’d get lodged deep enough inside the empty spots that I wouldn’t have to hear you leaving

Sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank God for Bavarian sugar cookies. And, fortunately, when there aren't any cookies, we can still find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin, or a kind and loving gesture, or subtle encouragement, or a loving embrace, or an offer of comfort, not to mention hospital gurneys and nose plugs, an uneaten Danish, soft-spoken secrets, and Fender Stratocasters, and maybe the occasional piece of fiction. And we must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, which we assume only accessorize our days, are effective for a much larger and nobler cause. They are here to save our lives. I know the idea seems strange, but I also know that it just so happens to be true.

Oh for the love of God put a butt plug in the male tough-guy crap.

I am not a finished poem, and I am not the song you’ve turned me into. I am a detached human being, making my way in a world that is constantly trying to push me aside, and you who send me letters and emails and beautiful gifts wouldn’t even recognise me if you saw me walking down the street where I live tomorrow for I am not a poem. I am tired and worn out and the eyes you would see would not be painted or inspired but empty and weary from drinking too much at all times and I am not the life of your party who sings and has glorious words to speak for I don’t speak much at all and my voice is raspy and unsteady from unhealthy living and not much sleep and I only use it when I sing and I always sing too much or not at all and never when people are around because they expect poems and symphonies and I am not a poem but an elegy at my best but unedited and uncut and not a lot of people want to work with me because there’s only so much you can do with an audio take, with the plug-ins and EQs and I was born distorted, disordered, and I’m pretty fine with that, but others are not.

Nothing can fill you up,” she stated. “Nope,” he agreed again. “You won’t let it.” “Barrel’s got a hole in the bottom, buddy, everything leaks out no matter how much you pour in.” She was silent a moment then she whispered, “Right.” She turned to the door and his hand gripped his bourbon so hard he had to focus everything on loosening his grip or the glass would shatter. Before she opened it, she turned back. “You don’t know, Cal, you have no idea. You’ve shut yourself up for so long in this fucking house with your tragic memories, you have no idea what’s about to walk out your door. Kate, Keira and me, we could have plugged that hole. We could have filled you so full, you’d be bursting. We would have loved that chance. We’d have given it everything we had, no matter the time that slid by, graduations, weddings, grandbabies, you’d have been a part of us and we’d have given everything we had to keep you so full, you’d be bursting.” Cal didn’t reply. “Joe,” she whispered, “you let me walk out this door, you’ll lose your chance.” Cal didn’t move. Vi waited. Cal stayed seated.

I could make better pie-type love with a new stove! I heard his disembodied voice shout back, “Dick territory, babe. Don’t even think about it unless I’m there.” “Chick territory,” I kept shouting. “A stove’s in the kitchen!” “It’s got a plug and weighs over fifty pounds. Totally dick,” he shot back on his own shout. I gave in, turning to the plans while giggling. Totally dick. My old may was funny.

I have it on very good authority that I have a lovely pee-pee, so lay off.

I couldn't think of anything other than her and the components of her. For example, her red hair. But was I so primitive I let myself be bewitched by hair? I mean, really. Hair! It's just hair! Everyone has it! She puts it up, she lets it down. So what? And why did all the other parts of her have me wheezing with delight? I mean, who hasn't got a back, or a belly, or armpits? This whole finicky obsession serves to humiliate me even as I write it, sure, but I suppose it isn't that abnormal. That's what first love is all about. What happens is you meet a love object and immediately a hole inside you starts aching, the hole that is always there but you don't notice until someone comes along, plugs it up, and then runs away with the plug.

I love the imagery of struggle. I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient. Allow me to inform you, though, that when you sit in a room with a set of other finalists, and kindly people bring a huge transparent bag of poison and plug it into your arm, and you either read or don't read a book while the venom sack gradually empties itself into your system, the image of the ardent solider is the very last one that will occur to you. You feel swamped with passivity and impotence: dissolving in powerlessness like a sugar lump in water.

That’s what first love is all about. What happens is you meet a love object and immediately a hole inside you starts aching, the hole that is always there but you don’t notice until someone comes along, plugs it up, and then runs away with the plug.

I think you just want to be in love because you think it's supposed to happen now. But love doesn't happen on schedule. It sneaks up when you least expect it. You can't plug it in into that little day planner of yours. You can't make it happen.

I pull my iPod out of my backpack and plug it in. It's the first thing I do every time I get in it, like a ritual. Music soothes the soul; at least it helps soothe mine.

Is it true that you don’t love me anymore?” “Yes.” “Why? Because I lied to you? Because I left you? Because I humiliated you?” “No. Just when I felt deceived, abandoned, humiliated, I loved you very much, I wanted you more than in any other moment of our life together.” “And then?” “I don’t love you anymore because, to justify yourself, you said that you had fallen into a void, an absence of sense, and it wasn’t true.” “It was.” “No. Now I know what an absence of sense is and what happens if you manage to get back to the surface from it. You, you don’t know. At most you glanced down, you got frightened, and you plugged up the hole with Carla’s body.

She knew they were all afraid. But love and disease are both like electricity, Weetzie thought. They are always there -- you can't see or smell or hear, touch or taste them, but you know they are there like a current in the air. We can choose, Weetzie thought, we can choose to plug into the love current instead.

You do not need cell towers to reach God, you just need to plug into your heart because “He is with you wherever you are” (57:4), from the closest atom to the farthest star.

As Harold took a bite of Bavarian sugar cookie, he finally felt as if everything was going to be ok. Sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank God for Bavarian sugar cookies. And, fortunately, when there aren't any cookies, we can still find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin, or a kind and loving gesture, or subtle encouragement, or a loving embrace, or an offer of comfort, not to mention hospital gurneys and nose plugs, an uneaten Danish, soft-spoken secrets, and Fender Stratocasters, and maybe the occasional piece of fiction. And we must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, which we assume only accessorize our days, are effective for a much larger and nobler cause. They are here to save our lives. I know the idea seems strange, but I also know that it just so happens to be true.

This week in live current events: your eyes. All power can be dangerous: Direct or alternating, you, socket to me. Plugged in and the grid is humming, this electricity, molecule-deep desire: particular friction, a charge strong enough to stop a heart or start it again; volt, re-volt-- I shudder, I stutter, I start to life. I've got my ion you, copper-top, so watch how you conduct yourself. Here's today's newsflash: a battery of rolling blackouts in California, sudden, like lightning kisses: sudden, whitehot darkness and you're here, fumbling for that small switch with an urgent surge strong enough to kill lesser machines. Static makes hair raise, makes things cling, makes things rise like a gathering storm charging outside our darkened house and here I am: tempest, pouring out mouthfulls of tsunami on the ground, I've got that rain-soaked kite, that drenched key. You know what it's for, circuit-breaker, you know how to kiss until it's hertz.

Villanelle - Roland Leighton Violets from Plug Street Wood, Sweet, I send you oversea. (It is strange they should be blue, Blue, when his soaked blood was red, For they grew around his head; It is strange they should be blue.) Violets from Plug Street Wood- Think what they have meant to me- Life and Hope and Love and You (And you did not see them grow Where his mangled body lay Hiding horror from the day; Sweetest it was better so.) Violets from oversea, To your dear, far, forgetting land These I send in memory, Knowing you will understand.

You don't know, Cal, you have no idea. You've shut yourself up for so long in this fucking house with your tragic memories, you have no idea what's about to walk out your door. Kate, Keira and me, we could have plugged that hole. We could have filled you so full,you'd be bursting. We would have loved that chance. We'd have given it everything we had.

Our relationship died the same day Lily did; we just let our love stay on life support a little longer, but I’m pulling the plug.

I'm not entirely sure there is a formula for this,' I say. But I wish there were. I would have followed it, plugging in all my data for x and all of Ethan's for y. And I would have worked out the results before involving my emotions, and I wouldn't feel as I feel now--like I've been dumped for real by an imaginary guy.

He tried to talk to me in the car, but I just put my sunglasses on, plugged my earbuds in, and blasted Beyoncé all the way back to New York City. When life gives you lemons, put Lemonade on repeat play.

What happens is you meet a love object and immediately a hole inside you starts aching, the hole that is always there but you don’t notice until someone comes along, plugs it up, and then runs away with the plug.

Darling Daddy, Poor Saffy. She had a big fight in the boys toilets on Monday, did you know? A very big fight and Sarah helped and it was terrifying. Said a boy in my class who has a brother who was there. Saffy washed her hands and said Never Ever Never Dare You Touch My Brother. (Indigo). And the plug holes were blocked with hair. Love from Rose. -Sarah's mother has given us soup. Soup soup soup and then it was all gone. L.F.R.

Lately, in this city I love, this neighborhood I love, all I seem to notice are the intrusions. Hot Air. Reeking garbage. Lunatic neighbors...I am inventing filters. Air filters. Stinking garbage filters. Lunatic-neighbor filters... Sometimes I imagine plugging a big air conditioner to the front of my head so I can block the rest of the world out. That's not right.

You know, the first time I saw you in that bar it was as if someone plugged me into an electrical socket. Everything in my head lit up. I could have written ten songs, answered the age-long question about the meaning of love, and asked you to marry me on the spot.

They hang around, hitting on your friends or else you never hear from them again. They call when they’re drunk, or finally get sober, they’re passing through town and want dinner, they take your hand across the table, kiss you when you come back from the bathroom. They were your loves, your victims, your good dogs or bad boys, and they’re over you now. One writes a book in which a woman who sounds suspiciously like you is the first to be sadistically dismembered by a serial killer. They’re getting married and want you to be the first to know, or they’ve been fired and need a loan, their new girlfriend hates you, they say they don’t miss you but show up in your dreams, calling to you from the shoe boxes where they’re buried in rows in your basement. Some nights you find one floating into bed with you, propped on an elbow, giving you a look of fascination, a look that says I can’t believe I’ve found you. It’s the same way your current boyfriend gazed at you last night, before he pulled the plug on the tiny white lights above the bed, and moved against you in the dark broken occasionally by the faint restless arcs of headlights from the freeway’s passing trucks, the big rigs that travel and travel, hauling their loads between cities, warehouses, following the familiar routes of their loneliness.

Reasercher 101, I do not long for the old, unreachable days. When I'm plugged in I can go anywhere, do and learn anything. Today, for instance, I visited a tiny library in Portugal. I learned how the Shakers weave baskets and I discovered my best friend in middle school loves blood-orange sorbet. Okay, I also learned that a certain pop star actually believes she's a fairy, an honest-to-goodness fairy from the fey people, but my point is access. Access to information. I don't even have to look out my window to see what the eather is like. I can have the weather delivered every morning to my phone. What could be better? Sincerely, Wife 22 Wife 22, Getting caught in the rain? All the best, Researcher 101

She knew they were all afraid. But love and disease are both like electricity, Weetzie thought. They are always there—you can’t see or smell or hear, touch, or taste them, but you know they are there like a current in the air. We can choose, Weetzie thought, we can choose to plug into the love current instead.

Come Hell or High Water" usually depends on the kind of plug you use in the bath tub

Do you have any idea how to work this thing?” “Not at all, but I would assume you have to plug it in first.

I want to plug my heart into his and upload the past three and a half years right into his soul.

There is an energy in the world, a spark, an electricity that everything is plugged into. The Greeks called it zoe, the mystics call it “Spirit,” and Obi-Wan called it “the Force.

I tried to flush the garbage ass hoe, but the sewer didn’t want her ass. So, I beat her disrespectful ass. Bitch’ll think twice before she pops off on another taken man.

But to a woman for whom the mere mention of a “ladies’ tea” elicits a nervous sweat, sometimes being plugged in felt a bit like being assimilated.

A book itself is a little machine; what is the relation (also measurable) of this literary machine to a war machine, love machine, revolutionary machine, etc.—and an abstract machine that sweeps them along? We have been criticized for overquoting literary authors. But when one writes, the only question is which other machine the literary machine can be plugged into, must be plugged into in order to work.

I reach over and take her hand. It's soft and warm, and fits exactly in mine, and to be honest I'm not really expecting anything, but suddenly my entire body is wired, as if I've been plugged directly into the sun.

The next day, when I came home from the library, there was a small, used red record player in my room. I found my mother in the kitchen and spotted a bandage taped to her arm. “Ma,” I asked. “Where did you get the money for the record player?” “I had it saved,” she lied. My father lived well, had a large house and an expensive imported car, wanted for little, and gave nothing. My mother lived on welfare in a slum and sold her blood to the Red Cross to get me a record player. “Education is everything, Johnny,” she said, as she headed for the refrigerator to get me food. “You get smart like regular people and you don’t have to live like this no more.” She and I were not hugging types, but I put my hand on her shoulder as she washed the dishes with her back to me and she said, in best Brooklynese, “So go and enjoy, already.” My father always said I was my mother’s son and I was proud of that. On her good days, she was a good and noble thing to be a part of. That evening, I plugged in the red record player and placed it by the window. My mother and I took the kitchen chairs out to the porch and listened to Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony from beginning to end, as we watched the oil-stained waters of the Mad River roll by. It was a good night, another good night, one of many that have blessed my life.

Romantic love is pure fantasy. It destroys a woman's common sense; there simply is no place for it within the walls of a rational mind. You're better off eating a plug of chocolate!" Rachel in Small Pleasures: Mya's Story

I'm sorry," she whispers. "You're sorry? You've been dating Toph for the last month,and you're sorry?" "It just happened.I meant to tell you, I wanted to tell you-" "But you lost control over your mouth? Because it's easy,Bridge. Talking is easy. Look at me! I'm talking right-" "You know it wasn't that easy! I didn't mean for it to happen,it just did-" "Oh,you didn't mean to wreck my life? It just 'happened'?" Bridge stands up from behind her drums. It's impossible,but she's taller than me now. "What do you mean,wreck your life?" "Don't play dumb,you know exactly what I mean. How could you do this to me?" "Do what? It's not like you were dating!" I scream in frustration. "We certainly won't be now!" She sneers. "It's kind of hard to date someone who's not interested in you." "LIAR!" "What,you ditch us for Paris and expect us to put our lives on hold for you?" My jaw drops. "I didn't ditch you. They sent me away." "Ooo,yeah.To Paris.Meanwhile,I'm stuck here in Shitlanta, Georgia, at the same shitty school,doing shitty babysitting jobs-" "If babysitting my brother is so shitty, why do you do it?" "I didn't meant-" "Because you want to turn him against me, too? Well.Congratulations, Bridge. It worked. My brother loves you and hates me. So you're welcome to move in when I leave again,because that's what you want, right? My life?" She shakes with fury. "Go to hell." "Take my life.You can have it. Just watch out for the part where my BEST FRIEND SCREWS ME OVER!" I knock over a cymbal stand,and the brass hits the stage with an earsplitting crash that reverberates through the bowling alley. Matt calls my name.Has he been calling it this entire time? He grabs my arm and leads me around the electrical cords and plugs and onto the floor and away,away,away. Everyone in the bowling alley is staring at me.

when i was a little boy, i needed my speedracer nightlight plugged into its wall outlet next to the bed to keep me calm in the darkness, so i could relax and fall asleep...now as a grown man, i find that i am no different, just my nightlight is now a person

Start disconnecting yourself from bad relationships, fear, gossip, depression, drama, and negative thinking. Plug into the SOURCE of power, strength, peace, joy, hope, and love. As a result, you will have all of the RESOURCES, that you need to succeed in life.

I find myself wanting to tell him every thought I’ve had while he’s been gone, wanting to describe every moment I’ve spent without him, every feeling I have right now. I want to plug my heart into his and upload the past three and a half years right into his soul.

While she worked on her clothes, he walked to the small closet at the back of his office. He kept extras there. Extra guns. Extra ammo. Bulletproof vest. The tiniest bit of C-4. And an extra kit complete with lube and a still-packaged anal plug. Just the basics. What every man needed to survive the apocalypse.

E L James, Party Games you’re looking kind of smug inserting that god damn anal plug giving me your kinky love after writing Fifty Shades you’re acting like some kind of renegade giving me your kinky love sit me on a dildo and spin me right around chain me up and hang me upside down giving me your kinky love god damn you E L James making me into some kind of party game giving me your kinky love put me in a dream and wheel in the Fucking Machine god damn you E L James spank a hand on my bum see how much I can cum god damn you E L James stand me up and sit me down lay me out and roll me about god damn you E L James BDSM electro impulses up my brainstem god damn you E L James cast me in a submissive role-play with my genitals on display god damn you E L James suspend me high in the air slap me around like I don’t care god damn you E L James take that whip off the shelf make me forget myself god damn you E L James Why are you wearing oven mittens? branding iron your name written inner goddess don’t keep in hidden god damn you E L James holy crap my mind has snapped to forget one thing that I have heard I’m never going to use the safe-word god damn you E L James By R.M.Romarney

He wasn’t undercover, damn it. He put that shit right out there. It was probably why he didn’t date much. Hello, my name is Kai and I would really like to hurt you. But only if you enjoy getting hurt. How about some coffee? We could talk about the proper use of exotic anal plugs. Yeah, that sent the ladies running and not into his arms.

Well, honey, I’m a sixty-three-year-old fat woman with sore feet, high blood pressure, and the beginnings of diabetes. I know I don’t have all that much time left, and I can either spend it moping and complaining about the things I never got to in life, or I can do something I love and help people along the way. I decided to keep plugging ’til I drop.

But what about you, Miss Spider?’ asked James. ‘Aren’t you also much loved in the world?’ ‘Alas, no,’ Miss Spider answered, sighing long and loud. ‘I am not loved at all. And yet I do nothing but good. All day long I catch flies and mosquitoes in my webs. I am a decent person.’ ‘I know you are,’ said James. ‘It is very unfair the way we Spiders are treated,’ Miss Spider went on. ‘Why, only last week your own horrible Aunt Sponge flushed my poor dear father down the plug-hole in the bathtub.’ ‘Oh, how awful!’ cried James. ‘I watched the whole thing from a corner up in the ceiling,’ Miss Spider murmured. ‘It was ghastly. We never saw him again.’ A large tear rolled down her cheek and fell with a splash on the floor.

You can’t just check out and think it will all be over. It won’t be over for anyone who loves you. You’ll only leave them to run after the pieces that scatter in the angry wind. You’ll leave them desperately trying to solve the problems you wouldn’t . . . all while plugging their own wounds. Even if you’re like me, single without children, you could impact generations.

But it’s a class-divided society. It’s a rich cultural environment, full of galleries and incredible restaurants and museums and shows. But unless you’re wealthy, the city requires sacrifice to enjoy those things. Unless you are rich, you struggle every day. You grind. You ride the subway for two hours just to work at Starbucks. But there’s also nowhere else to be for professional networking. You can access the movers and shakers. You can be a mover and a shaker if you work hard enough. Just plug yourself into the scene, whatever your scene is. But what ends up happening— or what ended up happening to me— is an unplugging form family life, an unplugging from the things that make you feel whole and rooted. While living in New York, I eventually came to realize that for every good thing about the city, there was also a dark side. We go to New York to make our careers, but we end up stepping over homeless people on the sidewalk on our way to work. Successful New Yorkers can ignore those dark sides, but I could not.

Before sinkage, as they call it at the mortuary, a body must be washed, disinfected, drained, plugged and made-up. These chores were regularly done at home not so many years ago but they weren't chores then, they were acts of love. What would you do? Pass the body into the hands of strangers? The body that has lain beside you in sickness and in health. The body your arms still long for dead or not. You were intimate with every muscle, privy to the eyelids moving in sleep. This is the body where your name is written, passing into the hands of strangers.

plugged in my headphones. In the sermon, King uses the parable of the neighbor who knocks upon his friend’s door at midnight, seeking three loaves to feed a hungry traveler. The man’s need is great, King reminds us, because the loaves of bread he seeks are spiritual loaves. The bread of faith, the bread of hope, the bread of love. The man’s friend refuses him. “Do not bother me; the door is now shut,” his friend says, “and my children are with me in bed, I cannot get up and give you anything.” In his tremendous tenor, his voice rolling with the calm power and depth of the sea, King explains that the man continues to persistently knock; he will not be denied. He urges us to embrace the hope, faith, and love necessary to continue our struggle for justice in midnight’s darkest hour. With faith in his friend’s generosity, and out of a deep need to provide loaves to his visitor, the man knocks. “Midnight is a confusing hour when it is difficult to be faithful.” His voice sonorous, King intones, “The weary traveler by midnight who asks for bread is really seeking the dawn. Our eternal message of hope is that dawn will come.

This is a word we use to plug holes with. It’s the right size for those warm blanks in speech, for those red heart- shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing like real hearts. Add lace and you can sell it. We insert it also in the one empty space on the printed form that comes with no instructions. There are whole magazines with not much in them but the word love, you can rub it all over your body and you can cook with it too. How do we know it isn’t what goes on at the cool debaucheries of slugs under damp pieces of cardboard? As for the weed- seedlings nosing their tough snouts up among the lettuces, they shout it. Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising their glittering knives in salute. Then there’s the two of us. This word is far too short for us, it has only four letters, too sparse to fill those deep bare vacuums between the stars that press on us with their deafness. It’s not love we don’t wish to fall into, but that fear. this word is not enough but it will have to do. It’s a single vowel in this metallic silence, a mouth that says O again and again in wonder and pain, a breath, a finger grip on a cliffside. You can hold on or let go.

To summarize, I’ve presented two different ways people think about their working life. The first is the craftsman mindset, which focuses on what you can offer the world. The second is the passion mindset, which instead focuses on what the world can offer you. The craftsman mindset offers clarity, while the passion mindset offers a swamp of ambiguous and unanswerable questions. As I concluded after meeting Jordan Tice, there’s something liberating about the craftsman mindset: It asks you to leave behind self-centered concerns about whether your job is “just right,” and instead put your head down and plug away at getting really damn good. No one owes you a great career, it argues; you need to earn it—and the process won’t be easy. With this in mind, it’s only natural to envy the clarity of performers like Jordan Tice. But here’s the core argument of Rule #2: You shouldn’t just envy the craftsman mindset, you should emulate it. In other words, I am suggesting that you put aside the question of whether your job is your true passion, and instead turn your focus toward becoming so good they can’t ignore you. That is, regardless of what you do for a living, approach your work like a true performer.

Now: I am an affectionate man but I have much trouble showing it. When I was younger I used to worry so much about being alone - of being unlovable or incapable of love. As the years went on, my worries changed. I worried that I had become incapable of having a relationship, of offering intimacy. I felt as though the world lived inside a warm house at night and I was outside, and I couldn't be seen - because I was out there in the night. But now I am inside that house and it feels just the same. Being alone here now, all of my old fears are erupting - the fears I thought I had buried forever by getting married: fear of loneliness; fear that being in and out of love too many times itself makes you harder to love; fear that I would never experience real love; fear that someone would fall in love with me, get extremely close, learn everything about me and then pull the plug; fear that love is only important up until a certain point after which everything is negotiable. For so many years I lived a life of solitude and I thought life was fine. But I knew that unless I explored intimacy and shared intimacy with someone else then life would never progress beyond a certain point. I remember thinking that unless I knew what was going on inside of someone else's head other than my own I was going to explode.

Holy One, there is something I wanted to tell you, but there have been errands to run, bills to pay, arrangements to make, meetings to attend, friends to entertain, washing to do . . . and I forget what it is I wanted to say to you, and mostly I forget what I’m about or why. O God, don’t forget me, please, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Eternal One, there is something I wanted to tell you, but my mind races with worrying and watching, with weighing and planning, with rutted slights and pothole grievances, with leaky dreams and leaky plumbing and leaky relationships I keep trying to plug up; and my attention is preoccupied with loneliness, with doubt, and with things I covet; and I forget what it is I want to say to you, and how to say it honestly or how to do much of anything. O God, don’t forget me, please, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Almighty One, there is something I wanted to ask you, but I stumble along the edge of a nameless rage, haunted by a hundred floating fears of terrorists of all kinds, of losing my job, of failing, of getting sick and old, having loved ones die, of dying . . . I forget what the real question is that I wanted to ask, and I forget to listen anyway because you seem unreal and far away, and I forget what it is I have forgotten. O God, don’t forget me, please, for the sake of Jesus Christ . . . O Father . . . in Heaven, perhaps you’ve already heard what I wanted to tell you. What I wanted to ask is forgive me, heal me, increase my courage, please. Renew in me a little of love and faith, and a sense of confidence, and a vision of what it might mean to live as though you were real, and I mattered, and everyone was sister and brother. What I wanted to ask in my blundering way is don’t give up on me, don’t become too sad about me, but laugh with me, and try again with me, and I will with you, too. What I wanted to ask is for peace enough to want and work for more, for joy enough to share, and for awareness that is keen enough to sense your presence here, now, there, then, always.27

Of course!” he said. “I’d love to chat, but I’ve got to get this email out.” He grabbed some headphones from around his neck, put them over his ears, and returned to his laptop. And get this—his headphones weren’t even plugged in! They were those sound-canceling ones! The whole ride to Redmond he never spoke to me again. Now, Audrey, for the past five years we always figured Bernadette was the ghastly one. Turns out her husband is as rude and antisocial as she is! I was so miffed that when I got to work, I Googled Bernadette Fox. (Something I can’t believe I’ve waited until now to do, considering our unhealthy obsession with her!) Everyone knows Elgin Branch is team leader of Samantha 2 at Microsoft. But when I looked her up, nothing appeared. The only Bernadette Fox is some architect in California. I checked all combinations of her name—Bernadette Branch, Bernadette Fox-Branch. But our Bernadette, Bee’s mom, doesn’t exist as far as the Internet is concerned.

That story, of course, isn’t unique to California, or to beavers. Europeans began despoiling North American ecosystems the moment they set boots on the stony shore of the New World. You’re probably familiar with most of the colonists’ original environmental sins: They wielded an ax against every tree, lowered a net to catch every fish, turned livestock onto every pasture, churned the prairie to dust. In California’s Sierra Nevada, nineteenth-century gold miners displaced so much sediment that the sludge could have filled the Panama Canal eight times.14 We are not accustomed to discussing the fur trade in the same breath as those earth-changing industries, but perhaps we should. The disappearance of beavers dried up wetlands and meadows, hastened erosion, altered the course of countless streams, and imperiled water-loving fish, fowl, and amphibians—an aquatic Dust Bowl. Centuries before the Glen Canyon Dam plugged up the Colorado and the Cuyahoga burst into flame, fur trappers were razing stream ecosystems. “[Beavers’] systematic and widespread removal,” wrote Sharon Brown and Suzanne Fouty in 2011, “represents the first large-scale Euro-American alteration of watersheds.

Richard Lovelace makes a compelling case that the best defense is a good offense. “The ultimate solution to cultural decay is not so much the repression of bad culture as the production of sound and healthy culture,” he writes. “We should direct most of our energy not to the censorship of decadent culture, but to the production and support of healthy expressions of Christian and non-Christian art.”10 Public protests and boycotts have their place. But even negative critiques are effective only when motivated by a genuine love for the arts. The long-term solution is to support Christian artists, musicians, authors, and screenwriters who can create humane and healthy alternatives that speak deeply to the human condition. Exploiting “Talent” The church must also stand against forces that suppress genuine creativity, both inside and outside its walls. In today’s consumer culture, one of the greatest dangers facing the arts is commodification. Art is treated as merchandise to market for the sake of making money. Paintings are bought not to exhibit, nor to grace someone’s home, but merely to resell. They are financial investments. As Seerveld points out, “Elite art of the New York school or by approved gurus such as Andy Warhol are as much a Big Business today as the music business or the sports industry.”11 Artists and writers have been reduced to “talent” to be plugged into the manufacturing process. That approach may increase sales, but it will suppress the best and highest forms of art. In the eighteenth century, the world nearly lost the best of Mozart’s music because the adults in the young man’s life treated him primarily as “talent” to exploit.

I’m fine, Sierra. Really.” “No, you’re not fine. Brit, I’m your best friend. I’ll be here before and after your boyfriends. So spill your guts. I’m all ears.” “I loved him.” “No shit, Sherlock. Tell me something I don’t know.” “He used me. He had sex with me to win a bet. And I still love him. Sierra, I am pathetic.” “You had sex and didn’t tell me? I mean, I thought it was a rumor. You know, of the untrue kind.” I lean my head in my hands in frustration. “I’m just kidding. I don’t even want to know. Okay, I do, but only if you want to tell me,” Sierra says. “Forget about that now. I saw the way Alex always looked at you, Brit. That’s why I laid off you for liking him. There was no way he was acting. I don’t know who told you about a supposed bet--” I look up. “He did. And his friends confirmed it. Why can’t I let him go?” Sierra shakes her head, as if erasing the words I’ve said. “First things first.” She grabs my chin and forces me to look at her. “Alex had feelings for you, whether he admitted it to you or not, whether there was a bet or not. You know that, Brit, or you wouldn’t be clutching those hand warmers like that. Second of all, Alex is out of your life and you owe it to yourself, to his goofy friend Paco, and to me to keep plugging along even if it’s not easy.” “I can’t help but think he pushed me away on purpose. If I could only talk to him, I can get answers.” “Maybe he doesn’t have the answers. That’s why he left. If he wants to give up on life, to ignore what’s right in front of him, so be it. But you show him that you’re stronger than that.” Sierra is right. For the first time I feel I can make it through the rest of senior year. Alex took a piece of my heart that night we made love, and he’ll forever hold it. But that doesn’t mean my life has to be on hold indefinitely. I can’t run after ghosts. I’m stronger now. At least, I hope I am.

The chorus of criticism culminated in a May 27 White House press conference that had me fielding tough questions on the oil spill for about an hour. I methodically listed everything we'd done since the Deepwater had exploded, and I described the technical intricacies of the various strategies being employed to cap the well. I acknowledged problems with MMS, as well as my own excessive confidence in the ability of companies like BP to safeguard against risk. I announced the formation of a national commission to review the disaster and figure out how such accidents could be prevented in the future, and I reemphasized the need for a long-term response that would make America less reliant on dirty fossil fuels. Reading the transcript now, a decade later, I'm struck by how calm and cogent I sound. Maybe I'm surprised because the transcript doesn't register what I remember feeling at the time or come close to capturing what I really wanted to say before the assembled White House press corps: That MMS wasn't fully equipped to do its job, in large part because for the past thirty years a big chunk of American voters had bought into the Republican idea that government was the problem and that business always knew better, and had elected leaders who made it their mission to gut environmental regulations, starve agency budgets, denigrate civil servants, and allow industrial polluters do whatever the hell they wanted to do. That the government didn't have better technology than BP did to quickly plug the hole because it would be expensive to have such technology on hand, and we Americans didn't like paying higher taxes - especially when it was to prepare for problems that hadn't happened yet. That it was hard to take seriously any criticism from a character like Bobby Jindal, who'd done Big Oil's bidding throughout his career and would go on to support an oil industry lawsuit trying to get a federal court to lift our temporary drilling moratorium; and that if he and other Gulf-elected officials were truly concerned about the well-being of their constituents, they'd be urging their party to stop denying the effects of climate change, since it was precisely the people of the Gulf who were the most likely to lose homes or jobs as a result of rising global temperatures. And that the only way to truly guarantee that we didn't have another catastrophic oil spill in the future was to stop drilling entirely; but that wasn't going to happen because at the end of the day we Americans loved our cheap gas and big cars more than we cared about the environment, except when a complete disaster was staring us in the face; and in the absence of such a disaster, the media rarely covered efforts to shift America off fossil fuels or pass climate legislation, since actually educating the public on long-term energy policy would be boring and bad for ratings; and the one thing I could be certain of was that for all the outrage being expressed at the moment about wetlands and sea turtles and pelicans, what the majority of us were really interested in was having the problem go away, for me to clean up yet one more mess decades in the making with some quick and easy fix, so that we could all go back to our carbon-spewing, energy-wasting ways without having to feel guilty about it. I didn't say any of that. Instead I somberly took responsibility and said it was my job to "get this fixed." Afterward, I scolded my press team, suggesting that if they'd done better work telling the story of everything we were doing to clean up the spill, I wouldn't have had to tap-dance for an hour while getting the crap kicked out of me. My press folks looked wounded. Sitting alone in the Treaty Room later that night, I felt bad about what I had said, knowing I'd misdirected my anger and frustration. It was those damned plumes of oil that I really wanted to curse out.

Reading the transcript now, a decade later, I’m struck by how calm and cogent I sound. Maybe I’m surprised because the transcript doesn’t register what I remember feeling at the time or come close to capturing what I really wanted to say before the assembled White House press corps: That MMS wasn’t fully equipped to do its job, in large part because for the past thirty years a big chunk of American voters had bought into the Republican idea that government was the problem and that business always knew better, and had elected leaders who made it their mission to gut environmental regulations, starve agency budgets, denigrate civil servants, and allow industrial polluters do whatever the hell they wanted to do. That the government didn’t have better technology than BP did to quickly plug the hole because it would be expensive to have such technology on hand, and we Americans didn’t like paying higher taxes—especially when it was to prepare for problems that hadn’t happened yet. That it was hard to take seriously any criticism from a character like Bobby Jindal, who’d done Big Oil’s bidding throughout his career and would go on to support an oil industry lawsuit trying to get a federal court to lift our temporary drilling moratorium; and that if he and other Gulf-elected officials were truly concerned about the well-being of their constituents, they’d be urging their party to stop denying the effects of climate change, since it was precisely the people of the Gulf who were the most likely to lose homes or jobs as a result of rising global temperatures. And that the only way to truly guarantee that we didn’t have another catastrophic oil spill in the future was to stop drilling entirely; but that wasn’t going to happen because at the end of the day we Americans loved our cheap gas and big cars more than we cared about the environment, except when a complete disaster was staring us in the face; and in the absence of such a disaster,

It was awful. It was three in the morning. And I finally said, “Chip, I’m not sleeping in this house.” We were broke. We couldn’t go to a hotel. There was no way we were gonna go knock on one of our parents’ doors at that time of night. That’s when I got an idea. We happened to have Chip’s parents’ old RV parked in a vacant lot a few blocks down. We had some of our things in there and had been using it basically as a storage unit until we moved in. “Let’s get in the RV. We’ll go find somewhere to plug it in, and we’ll have AC,” I said. As we stepped outside, the skies opened up. It started pouring rain. When we finally got into the RV, soaking wet, we pulled down the road a ways and Chip said, “I know where we can go.” It was raining so hard we could barely see through the windshield, and all of a sudden Chip turned the RV into a cemetery. “Why are you pulling in to a cemetery?” I asked him. “We’re not going to the cemetery,” Chip said. “It’s just next to a cemetery. There’s an RV park back here.” “Are you kidding me? Could this get any worse?” “Oh, quit it. You’re going to love it once I get this AC fired up.” Chip decided to go flying through the median between the two rows of RV parking, not realizing it was set up like a culvert for drainage and rain runoff. That RV bounced so hard that, had it not been for our seat belts, we would’ve both been catapulted through the roof of that vehicle. “What was that?!” “I don’t know,” Chip said. I tried to put it in reverse, and then forward, and then reverse again, and the thing just wouldn’t move. I hopped out to take a look and couldn’t believe it. There was a movie a few years ago where the main character gets his RV caught on this fulcrum and it’s sitting there teetering with both sets of wheels up in the air. Well, we sort of did the opposite. We went across this valley, and because the RV was so long, the butt end of it got stuck on the little hill behind us, and the front end got stuck on the little hill in front of us, and the wheels were just sort of hanging there in between. I crawled back into the RV soaking wet and gave Jo the bad news. We had no place to go, no place to plug in so we could run the AC; it was pouring rain so we couldn’t really walk anywhere to get help. And at that point I was just done. We wound up toughing it out and spending the first night after our honeymoon in a hot, old RV packed full of our belongings, suspended between two bumps in the road.

The morning was already setting up to be hectic, and Jon thanked his lucky stars that Jessie was so good at his job and a constant spark-plug of activity. Oh god, you did not just think Jessie was a spark-plug? You really are getting old. Next thing you know you’ll being saying whipper-snappers and break a hip getting out of bed. He shook his head. I guess I had a good run. Jessie quickly re-entered the office. “Alright. Elisabeth has her caffeine fix and said she’ll be down to say goodbye in a few. So let’s get this bad boy going for the week. Travel plans are done for next month and meetings for the week are in you planner so I’m assuming they’ll be no more complaining about flying coach class this time?” Jessie gave a sly wink and kept organizing his desk. “Yes. And for that I thank you for that my color-coding, hyper computer organized planner. We have to make sure the next presentation for Chicago is ready in three weeks; the storyboards for the new campaign ideas have to be finished by Tuesday the 16th so we can get them shipped before I head out there.” “And let’s not forget our important morning ritual.” Jon looked at Jessie with a question about to form before the realization hit him. His expression changed from confused to stern. “No cat videos Jessie. I swear. Enough of the cat videos.” “C’mon. You know you love them and they brighten your dour moods. Look at this one.” Jessie turned his screen and Jon begrudgingly looked at the cute little puppy and kitten with captions over them. “How can you not love this?” Jessie smiled. “The cute little kitty tells the playful puppy not to do it and yet the puppy bonks the little kitty on the head with his little puppy paw. “Boop Boop.” And then the cat swipes at the puppy and it falls off the bed. You know this is internet gold.” Jon smiled. “Can we get back to work?” Jessie nodded and then walked up to Jon - without hesitating, he bonked him lightly on the head. “Boop.” He paused and added, “I think this puppy is onto something.” Jessie grinned ear to ear still. “I pledge, from now on if something makes me as happy as this bonking picture I’m just going to say Boop boop.” Jon stood stone-faced but a second later, could not stop his smile. “I am not amused.” Jon shook the smile away. “Now, if you’re done boop booping me, there is something else I want to talk with you about.” Jessie looked at Jon with a quizzical smile. “Not to blow my own horn but I have a new and brilliant thought my young apprentice.” Jessie opened his mouth to comment on the blowing horn, but Jon held up his hand and cut him off. “Stop it.” Jessie closed his mouth and swallowed the sexual innuendo-laced comment he had forming on the tip of his tongue.

MY PROCESS I got bullied quite a bit as a kid, so I learned how to take a punch and how to put up a good fight. God used that. I am not afraid of spiritual “violence” or of facing spiritual fights. My Dad was drafted during Vietnam and I grew up an Army brat, moving around frequently. God used that. I am very spiritually mobile, adaptable, and flexible. My parents used to hand me a Bible and make me go look up what I did wrong. God used that, as well. I knew the Word before I knew the Lord, so studying Scripture is not intimidating to me. I was admitted into a learning enrichment program in junior high. They taught me critical thinking skills, logic, and Greek Mythology. God used that, too. In seventh grade I was in school band and choir. God used that. At 14, before I even got saved, a youth pastor at my parents’ church taught me to play guitar. God used that. My best buddies in school were a druggie, a Jewish kid, and an Irish soccer player. God used that. I broke my back my senior year and had to take theatre instead of wrestling. God used that. I used to sleep on the couch outside of the Dean’s office between classes. God used that. My parents sent me to a Christian college for a semester in hopes of getting me saved. God used that. I majored in art, advertising, astronomy, pre-med, and finally English. God used all of that. I made a woman I loved get an abortion. God used (and redeemed) that. I got my teaching certification. I got plugged into a group of sincere Christian young adults. I took courses for ministry credentials. I worked as an autism therapist. I taught emotionally disabled kids. And God used each of those things. I married a pastor’s daughter. God really used that. Are you getting the picture? San Antonio led me to Houston, Houston led me to El Paso, El Paso led me to Fort Leonard Wood, Fort Leonard Wood led me back to San Antonio, which led me to Austin, then to Kentucky, then to Belton, then to Maryland, to Pennsylvania, to Dallas, to Alabama, which led me to Fort Worth. With thousands of smaller journeys in between. The reason that I am able to do the things that I do today is because of the process that God walked me through yesterday. Our lives are cumulative. No day stands alone. Each builds upon the foundation of the last—just like a stairway, each layer bringing us closer to Him. God uses each experience, each lesson, each relationship, even our traumas and tragedies as steps in the process of becoming the people He made us to be. They are steps in the process of achieving the destinies that He has encoded into the weave of each of our lives. We are journeymen, finding the way home. What is the value of the journey? If the journey makes us who we are, then the journey is priceless.

It was that very same attitude that had caused the heaviness on her heart right now. The phone calls she had received came from people who had spent all year spending money on the things they wanted: new cars, TVs, clothes and going out to eat and now they had nothing left to give to someone else. "When did it happen?" she wondered, "-- this change in people's thinking." What happened to the times when even a small gift was greatly appreciated because you knew the person had sacrificed so much in order to buy or make it? What happened to the times when parents, spouses and children worked so hard in order to be able to give that special gift to someone they loved? When did it become acceptable to call on your expensive cell phone, from your favorite restaurant, to let others know that you can't buy them a gift this year because you can't afford it? Had she been mistaken all this time in her understanding of gift giving? With a droop in her shoulders she turns and walks toward the little tree. How could it have lost its sparkle in a matter of moments? Why do the presents under it suddenly look less gaily wrapped? With tears gently rolling down her cheeks, she stoops to turn off the tree's lights. As she reaches for the plug, her hand accidentally brushes her Bible laying on the table. She looks up through the blur, her eyes alight upon the passage on the open page. "For God so LOVED the world that he GAVE his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." A sweet peace starts warming her heart. She begins to smile and her tears are flowing even more freely now -- not from sadness, but from joy. The lights on the little tree become brighter and brighter, lighting up the whole room with it's sparkle. The gifts under it look more beautiful than those in the most expensive department stores for, in that moment, she realizes that she wasn't wrong to love, to sacrifice and to want to give gifts to the people she loves. Hadn't God Himself so loved us that He gave, with the greatest of sacrifices, the most wonderful gift, His Son. She was so glad that God hadn't spent His time in heaven selfishly using all His resources for Himself. She was thankful that He hadn't sent her a message saying, "Sorry, but I can't afford to give you a gift this year." In those few moments of heartbreak she had learned something more. She had learned what God must feel like to have the gift that He sacrificed so much to give be rejected and scorned. How hurtful to take away the blessing of giving from someone or to reject their gift. Yes, it seemed to be popular to say, "We can't afford to exchange gifts this year", but it didn't matter. She would continue to love, sacrifice and give, always following her heavenly Father's example.

A box sat on top of Jade’s pillows, wrapped in green paper with a white bow. He frowned slightly. Who would’ve left a gift on Jade’s bed? “You have a present.” “What?” Jade turned her head when he gestured toward the box. Confusion filled her eyes. She sat up and reached for the box. “I don’t understand.” Zach sat by her again and wrapped his arm around her waist. “Maybe there’s a card.” After searching beneath the large white bow, Jade pulled out a small envelope. Zach looked over her shoulder as she withdrew the card and read it aloud. “‘To Mom and Zach. Have fun tonight. Bre.’” Zach chuckled, both at Breanna’s card and at Jade’s blush. “Your daughter has quite a sense of humor.” “My daughter deserves to be spanked.” She lifted the box onto her lap. “I’m afraid to open it.” “Would you like me to? It’s addressed to both of us.” “I’m even more afraid for you to open it.” “Go ahead. It can’t be that bad.” “You don’t know my daughter.” Untying the bow, Jade raised the lid and pulled apart the bright green tissue paper. Several sex toys lay in the box. She gasped. “Oh, my God. I can’t believe she did this!” She started to push the tissue paper back over the contents, but Zach held her hand to stop her. “Wait. Let’s see what she bought.” “I am going to kill her, after I beat her.” Chuckling, Zach dug through the box, lifting the different items as he came to them. “Cock ring. Chocolate body paint. Stay-hard gel.” He looked into Jade’s eyes. “I don’t think I’ll need that tonight.” Her cheeks turned a deep pink. He dropped a kiss on her lips before beginning to explore again. “Anal beads. Ben-Wa balls. Fur-lined handcuffs. Nipple clamps. Lemon-flavored nipple cream.” His gaze dipped to her breasts. “Interesting.” She huffed out a breath. “Can we close the box now?” “Not yet. I like it when you blush.” Zach grinned when Jade scowled at him. “This is completely spoiling the mood.” “I won’t have any problem getting hard again.” “Zach!” Ignoring her outraged tone, he continued to sift through the items. “Lifelike dildo.” He held it up to eye level. “Close, but not quite as big as I am.” Jade covered her eyes with one hand. “I don’t believe this,” she muttered. “Butt plug. Wait, I’m wrong. It’s a vibrating butt plug. Very interesting. I hope you have batteries. Never mind. Breanna included several packages.” “Okay, that’s enough.” Jade tried to jerk the box out of his reach, but Zach held on to the side. “There’re only a couple more items. We might as well see what they are.” “I don’t care what they are.” “You might care about one of them.” Zach held up a large box of condoms. “Oh.” He turned the box in his hand. “I’m flattered, but I don’t think I’ll be able to use one hundred of these tonight.” “One hundred?” “All different types, sizes, and colors.” Jade laughed. “Oh, Bre.” She pushed her hair behind one ear. “What’s the last thing?” “Cherry-flavored lubricant. It looks like she thought of everything.” “You must think my daughter is crazy.” “I think your daughter loves you very much and wants you to be happy.” “That’s true. But we won’t use all this…stuff.” “Who says we won’t?

The door was still open, so I shut it and was returning to my desk when I braked. There was a backpack resting on the other side of my desk chair. It wasn’t mine. It wasn’t Missy’s. I was pretty sure it wasn’t Holly’s or the cousin’s. “Shit,” I muttered under my breath. “Huh?” she barked, her head swinging around to me. A quick glance confirmed what I already knew. She was drunk. “Nothing.” She pulled out one of her shirts, but it wasn’t her normal pajama top. She was really drunk. I picked up Shay’s bag and checked the contents to make sure it was his. It was. I saw his planner with his name scrawled at the top, so I zipped that bag and put it in the back of my closet. No one needed to go through it. I didn’t think Missy would, but I just never knew. Dropping into my chair, I picked up my phone to text Shay as Missy fell to the floor. I looked up to watch. I couldn’t not see this. I was tempted to video it, but I was being nice. For once. As Missy wrestled with her jeans and lifted them over her head to throw into her closet, I texted Shay. Me: You left your bag here. Missy let out a half-gurgled moan and a cry of frustration at the same time. She didn’t stand, instead crawling to the closet. She grabbed another pair of pants. Those weren’t her pajamas, either. As she pulled them on—or tried since her feet kept eluding the pants’ hole—my phone buzzed back. Coleman: Can I pick it up in the morning? I texted back. Me: When? Missy got one leg in. Success. I wanted to thrust my fist in the air for her. My phone buzzed again. Coleman: Early. My playbook is in there. I groaned. Me: When is early? I’m in college, Coleman. Sleeping in is mandatory. Coleman: Nine too early for you? I can come back to get it now. Nine was doable. Me: Let’s do an exchange. You bring me coffee, and I’ll meet you at the parking lot curb with your bag. Coleman: Done. Decaf okay? I glared at my phone. Me: Back to hating you. Coleman: Never stop that. The world’s equilibrium will be fucked up. I have to know what’s right and wrong. Don’t screw with my moral compass, Cute Ass. Oh, no! No way. Me: Third rule of what we don’t talk about. No nicknames unless they reconfirm our mutual dislike for each other. No Cute Ass. His response was immediate. Coleman: Cunt Ass? A second squeak from me. Me: NO! I could almost hear him laughing. Coleman: Relax. I know. Clarke’s Ass. That’s how you are in my phone. The tension left my shoulders. Me: See you in the morning. 9 sharp. Coleman: Night. I put my phone down, but then it buzzed once again. Coleman: Ass. I was struggling to wipe this stupid grin off my face. All was right again. I plugged my phone in, pulled my laptop back toward me, and sent a response to Gage’s email. I’ll sit with you, but only if we’re in the opposing team’s section. He’d be pissed, but that was the only way. I turned the computer off, and by then Missy was climbing up the ladder in a bright pink silk shirt. The buttons were left buttoned, and her pajama bottoms were a pair of corduroy khakis. I was pretty sure she didn’t brush her teeth, but before my head even hit the pillow, she was snoring

Things run along pretty smoothly until your kid reaches thirteen. That’s the time you need to stick ’em in a barrel, hammer the lid down nice and snug, and feed ’em through the knothole. And then, about the time he turns sixteen, plug up the knothole!2

'I think that's why his asking me to pull the plug hurt so much. He kept saying if I really loved him, I should have been able to do it. And I thought, if he really loved me, he would never have asked.'

He wound the cord of the receiver around his thumb. “I can’t be by for you right at five. Not if I clean up first.” “That’s fine. I want to eat a little supper anyway.” “Okay, but don’t fill up.” “I won’t.” “Georgie?” He touched the unit, willing her to hear him before she pulled the plug. “Yes?” He let out his breath. “Don’t change. I like that dress.” “All right.” He dropped his hand. “Bye.” “Bye.” She hesitated before finally disconnecting them.

there’s something liberating about the craftsman mindset: It asks you to leave behind self-centered concerns about whether your job is “just right,” and instead put your head down and plug away at getting really damn good. No one owes you a great career, it argues; you need to earn it—and the process won’t be easy. With

Your needs for love, intimacy, acceptance, peace, joy, and adequacy are real. No one is saying you shouldn’t have them. But rather than trying to fill them by plugging into things that are unstable at best and are subject to change—your health, your money, even the affections and best intentions of your mate—plug into God instead. He’s the only One in your life who never changes. His faithfulness, truth, and promises to His children will always remain.

How you doing?” I shake my head. “I think I’m having my mid-life crisis. I know what I am. I know what I do. But I don't feel like I’ll ever plug that hole in my chest where my dead heart sits. I’m unfinished and incomplete without love.

Should you do what you love, what’s outrageous and unpredictable, and worry about the future later, or plug away at a steady job first and go off and have your fun when you retire? In

We need specific, frequent rituals that plug us back into recalling, for lack of a better phrase, the meaning of life. Such rituals can be anything in which we stop, feel and look clearly at what we love and value most, or even simpler – emptying out everything in the way of those.

I could see a nostril, an ear, plugged up with greenish mud. . . . I don't think I really saw all this. . . . I must have heard someone talking about that and imagined that I saw it.

I reach over and take her hand. It's soft and war, and fits exactly in mine, and to be honest I'm not really expecting anything, but suddenly my entire body is wired, as id I've been plugged directly into the sun.

Get at the Root Causes While we’re working to break the cycle of addiction and adding healthy coping mechanisms, we must go deeper, to figure out what drove us outside ourselves in the first place. In other words, we need to intentionally deal with the root causes of our addiction. For me, the answer was never to just stop drinking, or to just stop sticking my finger down my throat, or to just stop weighing myself, or to just stop buying shoes in order to temporarily plug up some bottomless hole. The answer was to heal all those things that made it so desperately uncomfortable to be in my skin, so that I wouldn’t want to do those things to myself. The answer was to learn to love and respect myself so much, I didn’t want or need to do the harmful things anymore.

Like NeXT, like Polavision, like the Boeing 747, the PIC was a beautiful, turbo-powered, wildly expensive machine—with no customers. Once again, love of loonshots had triumphed over strength of strategy, just as it had with Juan Trippe and Edwin Land. Only Jobs, unlike the other two, had doubled down on the Moses Trap. After two more years and over $50 million invested, Jobs finally pulled the plug on the PIC. In April 1990, Pixar sold its hardware business to a California-based technology company, Vicom Systems.

I am Jane, a savage wild child writer, Brit, Mensa member. I don't write fluff or you know the princess saves the damsel. I write hard core lesbian crime/Film/Noir/Erotica books, satiated with sex, rock n roll, guns, love, compassion, violence and above all acute honesty about my generation of plugged in gay girl kids. Seat Belt Required

You can't make me hate you," Charlie said, so quietly that only Spark Plug could hear. "You can't make me angry. And you can't stop me from feeling only love toward you.

I'm starting to understand why Spark Plug felt powerless," Charlie muttered. "These people don't care about the masses of people in poverty. They don't even know they exist.

Charlie thought of the flea-ridden couch, the bare bulb of the bike shop, and the gaunt lines in Spark Plug's face. He thought of his own dark nights when he felt the creeping hand of the government tracking him. Better men than he had cast morality aside to live in the mouth-watering world of wealth. Smarter men had seduced themselves into positions of power with half-truths and shoddy rationales. He had never been offered a chance to live in this Garden of Eden, but if he was, he suspected that the shiny red fruit of knowledge would send him tumbling away from the paradise of the wealthy. Charlie knew worried fathers who could not feed their families. He knew mothers who worked two jobs only to send their children to bed hungry. He had peeled apart the intricate layers of a socio-economic system that was riddled with rotten deals that screwed people over. He had tasted the bittersweet fruit of truth and his understanding of right and wrong barred the gate to a blissful existence in this garden.

There's an amazing release that comes when you drive coast to coast, when you plug one ocean into another in your mind. And the wake of your travel fills with a kind of awe and love for everyone and everything and every animal and every roadside diner you've seen between the two.

- The key to holding your downward dogs without wanting to kill yourself and your yoga instructor? CLAW THE MAY. Plug into your fingertips and knuckles when you step into the pose - this will create a kind of suction cup in the palm of your hand that will protect your wrist and be much more comfortable overall. This grip will allow you to balance the weight of your body between both your top and bottom halves, as opposed to bearing the full weight of your body into one joint.

Imagine a situation in which you informed a smart machine that you were going to pull its plug, and then changed your mind and gave it a reprieve. The machine would not change its outlook on life or vow to spend more time with its fellow machines. It would not grow emotionally or discover the value in loving and serving others.

First, redesign your relational field. Psychically add green to it if you are dealing with a physical illness or trauma; add pink if your core issues are relational in nature, such as social phobias or abuse issues. Add gold if the most striking symptoms are chronic, repetitive, or addictive in nature; if your issues are spiritual (linked with entities or attachments); or if you are lacking in boundaries altogether. You can also combine these colors. Now ask the Divine to link your inner child with a healing stream of grace and to then plug the same stream of grace into your relational field. Request that the Divine fill this field (and surround the child) with the appropriate hue, intensity, and amount of the heart colors just described. Know that this incoming energy will push out all undesirable energies. Allow this healing stream and the incoming energy to continue flowing as long as necessary.

He needed a chick that he could build with and make him want to be a better man. “Hey

As each story for Cyber World popped up in my inbox, my confusion about how I defined cyberpunk grew. And I loved that feeling. Left to define the term “Cyber World” as they saw fit (or gloriously unfit), the authors formed a vast unconscious collective that redefined cyber-something-or-other for the current millennium. A network, you might even say. I don’t say that flippantly. Cyberpunk—or should we just start saying “cyberfiction”?—must must continually plug back into itself, challenge itself, consume itself, and reinvent itself if it hopes to survive and remain relevant.

Where have you been?” My brow furrowed as I walked around him, ignoring the way his intoxicating smell filled the room, and the way I was craving to turn around and move into his arms. I focused on plugging my phone in so it could charge, and continued to avoid his stare as I sat down. “What do you mean?” “I was getting ready to go for a run when you left this morning; that was hours ago.” I finally glanced up at him when I heard the underlying panic in his tone. “I’ve been here.” Jentry’s face fell into a mask of frustration. “No. I went running, showered, and have still been here for over an hour. When you left, I figured this was where you were coming. When I got here and you weren’t here, I tried calling you. It went straight to voice mail.” “My phone’s dead; it died on the way over here.” I wanted to ask why Jentry had taken it upon himself to know where I was at all hours of the day, but his tone and expression kept the comments from escaping. He wasn’t acting overprotective or bossy; he seemed genuinely worried and frustrated even though I was sitting right in front of him. “I didn’t know you would try to get a hold of me.” He took a steadying breath in and clenched one of his hands into a fist before letting it relax. “Jentry, what is wrong? I’m right here. I’ve been at the hospital this whole time. I do this almost every morning. I was in the parking lot reading on my car. I read and watch the sun rise.” “What’s wrong is that my brother is lying on that fucking bed in a coma. The last time I called someone I love and it went straight to voice mail, he’d gone for a drive and ended up here.” He blew out an exaggerated breath and scrubbed his hands over his face. When he spoke again, he sounded exhausted. “I just thought you would have been here. I couldn’t think of anywhere else you would have gone that early in the morning. When you weren’t here—when your phone . . .” “I’m sorry,” I whispered, and stood to walk over to him. I hadn’t even thought of doing it. I hadn’t thought of moving toward him, into his arms. I was just there suddenly with my head pressed against chest and his arms wrapped around me, in a place I fit perfectly. “I’m right here.” His chest moved with a silent laugh, and a weighted sigh left his lips. “I see that.

Women are queens and as long as a man take care of his queen, his castle gone be straight, right?

Nah, it ain’t about what I can do for you, it’s all about the way I make you feel.

there’s something liberating about the craftsman mindset: It asks you to leave behind self-centered concerns about whether your job is “just right,” and instead put your head down and plug away at getting really damn good. No one owes you a great career, it argues; you need to earn it—and the process won’t be easy.

We were both at my house, but she was still acting like she was fucking crazy. She wasn’t sleeping in the bed with me. When she walked around the house, she had on a fucking grandma house dress looking old as fuck. I think she was trying to do shit just so I could stay away from her. The funny thing was that it didn’t matter to me if she walked around in a football uniform, she would still make my dick hard.

She was cooking for herself and shit, trying to make a point. I laughed at her trying to be petty. That petty shit didn’t faze me. She wanted to play, so we were going to play. While she was downstairs cooking, I was upstairs locking her clothes up in the safe. I went back to my room before she came upstairs.