Rugged Birthday Quotes

Wishing, like sipping a glass of punch, or pulling aside a bearskin rug in order to access a hidden trapdoor in the floor, is merely a quiet way to spend one's time before the candles are extinguished on one's birthday cake.

To think that this is my twentieth birthday, and that I've left my teens behind me forever," said Anne, who was curled up on the hearth-rug with Rusty in her lap, to Aunt Jamesina who was reading in her pet chair. They were alone in the living room. Stella and Priscilla had gone to a committee meeting and Phil was upstairs adorning herself for a party. "I suppose you feel kind of sorry," said Aunt Jamesina. "The teens are such a nice part of life. I'm glad I've never gone out of them myself." Anne laughed. "You never will, Aunty. You'll be eighteen when you should be a hundred. Yes, I'm sorry, and a little dissatisfied as well. Miss Stacy told me long ago that by the time I was twenty my character would be formed, for good or evil. I don't feel that it's what it should be. It's full of flaws." "So's everybody's," said Aunt Jamesina cheerfully. "Mine's cracked in a hundred places. Your Miss Stacy likely meant that when you are twenty your character would have got its permanent bent in one direction or 'tother, and would go on developing in that line. Don't worry over it, Anne. Do your duty by God and your neighbor and yourself, and have a good time. That's my philosophy and it's always worked pretty well.

But she missed simple things, parents' birthdays, a rug underfoot, nights when she didn't have to sleep in a zipped bag. She began to think she was inadequate to the strict plain shapes of churchly faith. Head pains hit her at the end of the day. They came with a shining, an electrochemical sheen, light from out of nowhere, brain-made, the eerie gleam of who you are.

The rag rug That had heaped out onto your lap Slid to the floor. There it lay, coiled Between us. However it came, And wherever it found its tongue, its fang, its meaning, It survived our Eden.

men worked fifty, sixty, even seventy or more hours a week; the women worked all the time, with little assistance from labor-saving devices, washing laundry, ironing shirts, mending socks, turning collars, sewing on buttons, mothproofing woolens, polishing furniture, sweeping and washing floors, washing windows, cleaning sinks, tubs, toilets, and stoves, vacuuming rugs, nursing the sick, shopping for food, cooking meals, feeding relatives, tidying closets and drawers, overseeing paint jobs and household repairs, arranging for religious observances, paying bills and keeping the family’s books while simultaneously attending to their children’s health, clothing, cleanliness, schooling, nutrition, conduct, birthdays, discipline, and morale.

The United States is also losing the rugged pioneering spirit that once defined it. In 1850, Herman Melville boasted that “we are the pioneers of the world, the advance-guard, sent on through the wilderness of untried things, to break a new path in the New World.”7 Today many of the descendants of these pioneers are too terrified of tripping up to set foot on any new path. The problem starts with school. In 2013, a school district in Maryland banned, among other things, pushing children on swings, bringing homemade food into school, and distributing birthday invitations on school grounds.8 It continues in college, where professors have provided their charges with “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings.” It extends to every aspect of daily life. McDonald’s prints warning signs on its cups of coffee pointing out that “this liquid may be hot.” Winston Churchill once said to his fellow countrymen, “We have not journeyed across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy.”9 Today, thanks to a malign combination of litigation, regulation, and pedagogical fashion, sugar-candy people are everywhere.

I close my eyes and hear wind rushing through palm trees again. And then laughter. The scene is foggy at first, and then it comes into sharp focus. I am standing in a kitchen. It's one of those big, well-appointed spaces you see in magazines, but this one is well loved, not just staged. A cake bakes in the oven. Carrot. There are matches and a box of birthday candles at the ready by the stove. Stan Getz's smoky-sweet saxophone filters from a speaker somewhere nearby. I'm stirring a pot of marinara sauce; a bit has splattered onto the marble countertop, but I don't care. I take a sip of wine and sway to the music. A little girl giggles on the sofa. I don't see her face, just her blond ponytail. And then warm, strong arms around my waist as he presses his body against me. I breathe in the scent of rugged spice, fresh cotton, and love.

In the future that globalists and feminists have imagined, for most of us there will only be more clerkdom and masturbation. There will only be more apologizing, more submission, more asking for permission to be men. There will only be more examinations, more certifications, mandatory prerequisites, screening processes, background checks, personality tests, and politicized diagnoses. There will only be more medication. There will be more presenting the secretary with a cup of your own warm urine. There will be mandatory morning stretches and video safety presentations and sign-off sheets for your file. There will be more helmets and goggles and harnesses and bright orange vests with reflective tape. There can only be more counseling and sensitivity training. There will be more administrative hoops to jump through to start your own business and keep it running. There will be more mandatory insurance policies. There will definitely be more taxes. There will probably be more Byzantine sexual harassment laws and corporate policies and more ways for women and protected identity groups to accuse you of misconduct. There will be more micro-managed living, pettier regulations, heavier fines, and harsher penalties. There will be more ways to run afoul of the law and more ways for society to maintain its pleasant illusions by sweeping you under the rug. In 2009 there were almost five times more men either on parole or serving prison terms in the United States than were actively serving in all of the armed forces.[64] If you’re a good boy and you follow the rules, if you learn how to speak passively and inoffensively, if you can convince some other poor sleepwalking sap that you are possessed with an almost unhealthy desire to provide outstanding customer service or increase operational efficiency through the improvement of internal processes and effective organizational communication, if you can say stupid shit like that without laughing, if your record checks out and your pee smells right—you can get yourself a J-O-B. Maybe you can be the guy who administers the test or authorizes the insurance policy. Maybe you can be the guy who helps make some soulless global corporation a little more money. Maybe you can get a pat on the head for coming up with the bright idea to put a bunch of other guys out of work and outsource their boring jobs to guys in some other place who are willing to work longer hours for less money. Whatever you do, no matter what people say, no matter how many team-building activities you attend or how many birthday cards you get from someone’s secretary, you will know that you are a completely replaceable unit of labor in the big scheme of things.

The sun had slipped past noon, and a slice of heat fell through the tree-house window, firing Laurel's inner eyelids cherry cola. She sat up but made no further move to leave her hiding spot. It was a decent threat- Laurel's weakness for her mother's Victoria sponge was legendary- but an idle one. Laurel knew very well that the cake knife lay forgotten on the kitchen table, missed amid the earlier chaos as the family gathered picnic baskets, rugs, fizzy lemonade, swimming towels, and the new transistor, and burst, stream-bound, from the house. She knew well because when she'd doubled back under the guise of hide-and-seek and sneaked inside the cool, dim house to fetch the package, she'd seen the knife sitting by the fruit bowl, red bow tied around its handle. The knife was a tradition- it had cut every birthday cake, every Christmas cake, every Somebody-Needs-Cheering-Up cake in the Nicolson family's history- and their mother was a stickler for tradition.

You were really upset the other night. I know you were trying to put on a brave face, but it was obvious Darcy hurt you. Worse than you let on. Now “You were really upset the other night. I know you were trying to put on a brave face, but it was obvious Darcy hurt you. Worse than you let on. Now you’re agreeing to fake a relationship with her? Because of your family? Elle, if they can’t see how amazing you are . . . this isn’t worth it.” Elle ground the toe of her boot into the rug, tracing the singe mark in the paisley pattern from the Birthday Sparkler Incident of 2017. “I don’t really know what I’m doing,” she admitted. The lump inside her throat grew, forcing her to swallow to keep her voice from cracking. “I’m just tired of falling short, Mar.” Margot’s face crumpled. “Elle—” She jerked her chin and sniffed hard, blinking away the film of tears blurring her vision. She smiled and shrugged. “If I can get my family to take me seriously about one thing, see that I have my life together in a way that makes sense to them, maybe they’ll come around to the rest.” Margot shook her head. “So you’re throwing in the towel? You’re going to be like Lydia now? Dating the sorts of people your parents want and shrinking yourself down to be palatable to people who don’t get you? Who don’t even try?” No. God no. Elle wasn’t going to actually compromise who she was or how she lived her life. No, this was a blip on Elle’s radar, a pit stop, a means to an end. Elle wasn’t settling. She just wanted her parents to be proud of her for who she was. If she had to speak their language for a brief bit of time, what was the harm? “No way. This is fake. I just want them to understand I’m not the letdown they think I am. Maybe hearing how awesome I am from someone else, someone like Darcy who’s the sort of person who satisfies their whole nine-to-five I’m a serious adult vibe, will help.” Margot stuck out her tongue, eyes rolling. “Boring, you mean?” Elle shrugged. “Besides, it’s cuffing season and Lydia’s got a boyfriend. Jane’s got Gabe and Daniel has Mike and I’m just—Elle. I’m not exactly jazzed about spending another holiday alone as the black sheep of the family.” “Just Elle is pretty great.” Margot smiled. “But I get it. I mean, I might not be in your shoes, but I understand where you’re coming from. I just want you to remember that you deserve someone you don’t have to fake it with.” Both her brows rose. “And I mean that in all ways.” Elle cracked a smile. “Thanks.

A woman’s voice came wailing on the wind. Norman looked up and spotted Sandra high up on an even steeper funnel of snow and ice. She was crying: ‘Your father is dead. What are we going to do?’ One of her shoulders was hanging weirdly. There was a bloody wound on her forehead, matted with hair. Then he saw his dad, still in his seat but slumped awkwardly forward. Norman turned around on the steep slope and inched over towards him, sneakers pathetically trying to hold an edge. He slipped and almost plummeted like a bobsleigh down the mountain. He caught a hold. Then he started crawling back up. It took him thirty minutes to climb 6 m (20 ft). His dad was doubled over. ‘DAD!’ No response. Snow was falling on his father’s curly hair. Above him, Sandra sounded delirious. By the time he was four, Norman had skied every black run at Mammoth. On his first birthday, his dad had him strapped to his back in a canvas papoose and took him surfing. Reckless, perhaps, but it had given the boy an indomitable spirit. Eleven-year-old Norman hugged his dad for the last time then tracked back across the slope to see what he could salvage from the wreckage. There were no ice axes or tools, but he did find a rug. He took it and scrabbled back to Sandra. She couldn’t move. Somehow he got her under the ragged remains of the plane’s wing and they wrapped themselves in the rug and fell into an exhausted sleep. Norman was woken around noon by a helicopter. He leapt up, trying to catch the crew’s attention. They came very, very close but somehow didn’t see him. They were going to have to get off this mountain themselves. A brief lull in the storm gave them a sudden view. The slope continued beneath their feet, sickeningly sheer, for hundreds of feet. Then lower down there were woods and the gully levelled a little before a massive ridgeline rose again. Beyond that lay a flatter meadow of snow and, at the edge of the world, a cabin. Sandra wanted to stay put. She was ranting about waiting for the rescuers. For a moment Norman nearly lay down beside her and drifted off to sleep. The