This is true.

Growing up, there was one section of my house that always filled me with an irrational dread. The back hallway to my house always constricted me. It felt like a skeletal hand slowly worked its way around my stomach and squeezed. In my head, I could see this skeletal hand, its long bony fingers almost sharp at the tips. At first, I wanted to say a cold skeletal hand, but the hand that wrapped itself around me was not cold, it was not warm either, it was too ethereal to be either. All it did was put this pressure on me and fill me with the urge to flee.

The back hall led into the garage. It was always a little bit darker than the rest of the house, even in the middle of the day and despite the light. I don’t know what made me fill with panic whenever I walked down this hall, but every single time I did, I felt the urge to run well up within me. Every time I walked down the hall, it took every ounce of strength not to run to the door.

Sometimes, I can see a skeleton, peeking and peering at me. It’s in the back of my head. It is a perfectly ordinary skeleton. There is nothing ominous about the skeleton itself; no rotting flesh, no glowing eyes. When I go back home that feeling is still there. The urge to run swells up when the skeleton reaches for me. It is still there and I know that is not a childhood fear put into me from a bad dream.

This is also true.

Sometimes in the shadows I see people who aren’t there. They are not detailed people mind you, more like shadows. It’s like seeing through television static and the form is there. Those forms don’t seem to do anything but watch.

Like the hallway in the back of my house, some of these forms fill me with an incomprehensible panic. Like the hallway, this feeling is neither hot nor cold and it doesn’t drain the blood from me. It just fills me with dread; a dark dread that settles over me as if it is a stalker watching me from the shadows.

Sometimes, I swear I hear the shadows say my name. The way I hear it is like I am waking from a dream to the call of someone I know trying to pull me out of sleep. An in between hearing, one that I’m always unsure is really there. The voice echoes in my head like a vivid memory of someone saying my name. Voices from the past that I can’t connect to a face, but voices I know I’ve heard before.

This is another bit of truth.

Sometimes I dream of things; ordinary things, completely and totally mundane things. Then I live them. Once it was the sight of a bread cart in the aisle of the grocery store, other times it is the act of staring out the window in my kitchen as a bug flitters past. Once it was driving to work, yet another the site of my cube and a conversation with someone. The occurrences are countless and trivial … not the point at all. The point is, they are there and they are there often.

When these things happen I am filled with a sense of déjà vu that I know is more than that because I remember the dream. The feeling settles in me and I feel the same way I feel when I walk down that hall in my old house. I feel like I am about to panic and scream and cry out to say something about it, but I never do. It’s like I can’t say anything about it as it is happening.

When these moments (or minutes) happen, it’s like I suddenly jump outside of myself and become swept away on a current. Like I am acting but it is not me doing the things I do. My head floats away from me. I see things through my own eyes, but I feel very far away from myself. I know I must glaze over slightly when people are talking to me, but no one has ever said anything.

These are all little truths that make me feel like I am crazy. These are little truths that no one should ever believe. But, it is truth like this that makes lies and half-truth so much easier to swallow.

“What are you doing?”

“We’re going hunting for fireflies.”

“We live in Arizona. In the desert. There are no fireflies.” My mother stood over us, looking down. I remember the look she had on her face. It was a mixture of bemusement and anger. She always looks a bit angry. Perhaps it’s the shape of her face.

My brother and I stood in her gaze by the back door. It was twilight. We’d heard it was optimal firefly catching time. Our source was very reliable. Very. We had a jar, complete with lid and we’d made a net to catch the elusive bugs with. We were prepared.

Neither of us had ever seen a firefly, but we knew they existed. We’d seen them in books and on television. But here we were, prepared and ready to catch one of these strange, glowing bugs in our jar and we were being blocked. Blocked by this angry and bemused face.

“It’s late and getting dark.”

“Uh huh … we’ll be back before it gets all dark.” My brother fidgeted with the jar, twisting the lid on and off. I held the net in my hands and just stared. Despite the fact that I was older, it was understood that my brother was the spokesman. For some reason, whenever he asked, they always said yes. If I asked, the answer was invariably no. It was parent logic I still haven’t quite grasped.

“Alright, get back soon.” With that, my mother removed herself as our obstacle. We darted outside before she had the chance to change her mind. She did that often. We’d get permission and when we returned, she’d act as if we had done something against her wishes. That angry face would positively glower at us as if we had somehow broken her favorite dish or put a baseball through a window. It was like she couldn’t figure out how to feel, so she just let her angry face take over. Like it was her inborn state of being. Maybe that’s why she always looked half angry. Or, perhaps it really was the shape of her face.

Either way, our obstacle was gone. Being kids, we didn’t worry about the future anger, just the immediate permission. It didn’t really matter to us, we were used to it: the stop-change-turn of the tides. So we set off in search of our fireflies.

We walked into the yard. We had no fence, nothing to separate us from the desert. We wandered through the creosote and cholla. We knew where every thorn was in those days. Even in the half-light of twilight, we knew exactly where not to step. We had often gotten the fallen bits of cholla in our socks where it eventually made its way into skin and then everywhere. The thorns were tricky, but, this was our secret garden. There was no door and no key, but it was ours and we knew all of its mysteries. So, we navigated our way into the back, deeper into the desert.

This was before there were other houses on the lots behind ours, so it was several acres of desert and nothing more. Our house sat alone at the end of the long drive. We always went into the backyard, which I now think of as odd because our front yard was just as wild and untamed and large. But, it was how we did things. The back is always more mysterious than the front.

We walked along the trails that we had formed from use, careful not to step into snake holes and upon cactus. We walked to the largest tree we had in our yard, an ancient paloverde. It was large enough for us to climb and sit in it. This says something about the size of the paloverde, most were too weak and brittle for us to climb in. Our source had told us that the best place to catch fireflies was by a tree. We had built a small fort at the base of the tree out of saguaro ribs and sagebrush. Really, it was more of a wall and a poor excuse for a roof, but to us, it was our fortress. The saguaro ribs were brittle so we took special care not to disturb them.

We were sitting, waiting for the fireflies to come. For some reason we simply knew they would. Desert twilight lasts for about 90 minutes most of the time. The mountains do strange things with the setting light, it twists it and turns it and makes every red and purple. The world settles and everything becomes rosy. When people speak about looking at the world through rose colored glasses, I think this is what they mean. My brother and I sat there, the world turning red and rosy around us, waiting for the fireflies to come.

We wanted to see the flash of light.

“Hey, what’s that?”

“What’s what?”

My brother pointed and I saw something, a shadow of sorts in the creosote. I squinted at it and shrugged. “Dunno … “

The world faded slightly, the reds turning umber and purple. The twilight around us stretching and moving as it so often did. There was only the sound of the soft evening breeze through the spindly, half-dry leaves of creosote. The world moved slightly, but it was not something we were aware of at the time. The spin of the world on its axis. The slow change and drone of time. This passing that no child is ever really aware of.

The red tinted shadow in the brush didn’t move, but it was not the shadow of the brush itself. It was too solid. My brother and I felt no fear at this. It was the desert and we were used to such things. Many people don’t understand the true mystery of the desert. There are shadows that are more alive than the trees there. You can hike for a month in the desert and never see so much as a lizard, then one day the whole world wakes up and is teeming with birds, wolves, javelina, reptiles, rodents and insects. It is not something that is questioned. It is something that simply is. So, this solid shadowy life did not faze us.

The world was very red by this point. I remember thinking that there wasn’t much movement despite the wind. I could feel the wind on my face. It didn’t cool me; it just moved the air around me. But I felt, at the same time, that things were very still. Or maybe I was simply very still.

It was still twilight and we were still waiting for fireflies; I with the net and my brother with the jar. We sat through that twilight almost silently. We did that a lot. Sometimes I wonder if we were more aware of things than we let on. That we just wanted a time to reflect on life and get away from the angry face that haunted us when we did not fade away into the desert.

I think maybe we were the shadows in the desert.

We were waiting as we turned into red tinted shadows a part of the desert and still separate. We sat, surrounded by a brittle wall that kept the desert in just as much as it kept it out. Sometimes we would speak as we waited, speak about nothing and everything. Life as we knew it then was simple. Black, white and idealistic. We trusted in things that no one really should ever trust in.

Most of all we trusted in the desert. We trusted in that solid shadow in the distance and the smell of dust. We knew things would be the same when we got home and eventually our brittle walls would crumble and we would have to rebuild them until we no longer wanted to. We knew these things without knowing them, somewhere, in the back of our heads. Somewhere we wanted to think that time didn’t matter. But it did.

So we sat, waiting for the fireflies that would never come.

That is what death is.

An event, a thing, it happens.

That is what death is.

A cup of tea is a cup of tea. The wind is wind. Dress these things up in fancy names and they are still the same thing. A breeze is still wind. A creamed chai is still tea.

That is what death is.

People think death is a time for fancy words. Long eulogies where you remember before you forget. The day is not about you and it is not about the dead. A day is a day, no matter how you dress it up.

An event, a thing, it happens.

That is what death is.

My uncle, the one everyone loves to hate; he made death a show to turn attention onto him. Like he was special. He spoke such flowery words that came from nothing and went to nothing. His false sincerity poured out of his fake despondence. He treated death like a show. Trying to dress it up into something it was not. He tried so hard to make himself something he was not.

Like he was special.

He dressed himself up in a suit too slick for him to keep on. He wore it to keep from being naked before us. To keep from being himself; the one we loved to hate. But the fabric still slid off and it was easy to see what was beneath. He tried to cover himself up with words from a play where his role was that of someone with a deep soul.

There was no soul there.

Just a man dressed up and playing pretend. An actor in a role. No words came from him that made him special. No words came that made the day anything more than it was. He had them written down and he read as if reciting. It was not a eulogy, it was a satire.

It was just a day where we wore black and remembered the things before we forgot them.

An event, a thing, it happened.

That is what death is.

People think that death is the opposite of life, but it’s not. Death is just death. It has no opposite, no synonym. Death is death and life is life. They are not opposite and they are not equal. No amount of dressing them up will make them so.

I am not like my uncle who turns the show to him. I am not the one to dress up in a suit that is so slick it falls off and leaves me naked. I am not special and I do not say special things. I try not to be a satire of myself, of the good daughter, the prodigal daughter, the first daughter. I am who I am. I am not the opposite of myself dressed up into what I think I should be.

Strip me away and leave me naked.

When the time comes I will join my uncle and I will not speak.

That is what death is.

This weekend I got a new book by my favorite author. He put out a book of short stories just recently. I was surprised because Kafka on the Shore came out only last year. Either way. I picked it up and it was more or less free.

Every time I read a new Murakami book, I find myself struck by lines in it. Struck right down into the very core of me, like the words themselves resonate in me, picking up the harmonics that I didn’t know words could hit. This is the reason he is my favorite author. The words strike me and I harmonize with them unintentionally.

So I started this book at lunch today, thinking I would get through the first short story, but I had only read a few pages in, when I was hit by one of the lines that Murakami so deftly plucks, causing the other strings within me to vibrate. The line took place at the end of a brief conversation in the book that needs a bit of lead in. A kid, 14 is asking his older cousin if he liked High School. The older cousin says not really, but he could always see his friends there. The kid then queries if he still sees them. He says no and the kid asks why. It was the reply that struck me:

”’Cause we live so far away from each other.” That wasn’t the reason, but I couldn’t think of any other way to explain it. ¹

Now perhaps this isn’t the full and complex explanation, but I think this is very true. I think we drift apart from people because we do live far apart. Distance isn’t always physical. I think that distance does not keep people apart; I think it is something more. However, most of the time, we just say that it is the distance.

I have always thought that I live very far away from people. As time goes on, you drift closer and further form some, separated not by distance but by substance. True substance of heart and mind and thought. I talk to very few people I talked to in High School and I consider none of them to still be my friends. Perhaps acquaintances. We have no substance between us. There is nothing to pull us back together from the distance that we have placed between us.

I do live very far apart from most people. I am a distant person. I won’t say untouchable, but perhaps something close to that. I wonder how many people live in this perpetual distance, this state of being far apart from everything. There are times when I feel so disconnected that I imagine myself the most distant of asteroids, unaffected even by the gravitational pull of the other celestial bodies.

I can say that I am very far away from the people I knew in my High School days and I don’t want to make any real effort to get closer. I may live on the other side of the country from where I grew up, but that is not what has pushed me so far out into space. I left without any intention of going back. I chose to go and burn that bridge. It was not the border between states that separated me from them when I left, but my very desire to go away. To turn my back.

This space is mine. I made it.

I am very far away and I have no intention of closing the distance.

Top Five things I associate with Thanksgiving

1. My mother is allergic to cranberries. No one ever seems to remember this except for my mother and I. And sometimes, even she forgets.
2. My father “doesn’t like chicken”. However, my mom has been feeding him chicken for years under the guise of calling it turkey. I always giggle at the fact he hasn’t noticed yet.
3. Tofu-ky. Most of my father’s family is vegetarian and we always had Thanksgiving with them. Tofu-ky is wrong and it cannot be made right. You don’t dress up a dog in a top hat and call it dad without people thinking you’re insane. Don’t dress up tofu and try to call it turkey. Now, I have nothing against tofu, just don't try making it into something it is not.
4. Two days off. Two days where I have nothing to do but eat and cook. Mostly eat.
5. The Honey Baked Store. My husband loves honey baked ham and turkey. I hate it. But, I know how much he loves it so I accept it. I think I will get him a honey baked turkey breast this year to show him my love. After all, he cooks for me most days and provides me with liquor of varying sorts. He made a pear mead just for me because I love pears. I think he deserves it.

Food.

It is the time of year that food seems to come out of the woodwork. It began today with a work Thanksgiving potluck. I cannot describe the massive amounts of food that were present. Needless to say, the thought of having another one of these “feasts” tomorrow makes me want to curl up and die.

I am not a picky eater, but I swear if I see one more fucking green bean casserole I will throw it into the face of the person who made it, little crispy onion bits and all. Whoever thought of this monstrosity ought to be fucking shot. At the pot luck today there were two separate green bean casseroles.

Let me lead up a bit here. I did not know what this concoction was until I entered College. My mother never made casseroles like this. EVER. I realize why now. It is a foul thing. Let’s take mushy canned green beans and stew them in more mushy cream of mushroom soup. Then to trick people into thinking they are eating a pile of gooey slop, we’ll sprinkle fried onions over it. It’s wrong. Vegetables should have texture. Not only does green bean casserole fail to have texture, but due to the copious cooking process, it also fails to have flavor. It tastes like aluminum can.

So, my first time tasting this concoction I about spit it out. But I choked on it and smiled sweetly at the person who was ever so proud of making it. Then, at every single pot luck I’ve been to for work, this horrible excuse for a vegetable dish turns up. And every time I choke on it and smile like it is something worthy of being ingested,

This foul creation should be stricken from cook books round the world. Never should green beans be steamed, then baked in soupy liquid. It should be banned. For the longest time I thought I hated green beans. Then I had fresh wonderful green beans and realized that people are stupid with their vegetables.

These days, my husband and I eat no vegetables out of a can. All our veggies are fresh cooked and never boiled or steamed. We eat our veggies with flavor and texture and they are wonderful. They are also cheaper than canned veggies. Yum.

Simple Green Beans that don’t suck:

fresh green beans with the end chopped off
2 Tbsp Extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic
pinch of salt
pinch of basil

Take a large pan and place it on the stove. Pour olive oil into it and warm it to a medium heat. Place 2 cloves of crushed garlic into the pan. Simmer garlic until caramelized. Add in fresh green beans. Toss green beans in oil and cook on high heat for about 5 minutes. Add a pinch of salt and a pinch of basil. Serve and enjoy.

Lately, people have been arguing over who should be allowed to marry. The debate has started to come to a head with all the amendments trying to limit who can become legally bound together in the eyes of the government.

This has led me to wonder what marriage actually is.

It seems to me, that marriage is a contract binding two people together in the eyes of the law.

But wait, marriage is also a spiritual contract in the eyes of a religious organization.

Many people seem to think that the two contracts are mutually inclusive, but they are not. You can have one without the other. You can be married in the eyes of the law without being married in the eyes of any church or religion. You do not have to have a rabbi, minister or priest sign your state marriage certificate. You can have a judge sign your certificate, thus excluding all religion. On the flip side, most churches have their own contract that a church official signs that has nothing at all to do with the government.

So, what is marriage?

Is marriage a simple contractual obligation between two people that grants them tax breaks and legal possession over each other’s stuff? Or, is it a spiritual bond in the eyes of an institution that is supposed to be 100% separate from our state?

The big problem in this debate, seem to be that no one wants to say what marriage actually is. They want it to encompass both worlds. People are confusing their religious institution with courts of law. If we boil down marriage into what it actually is without any religious connotation to it, you get a contract that grants certain rights to the two people involved. There doesn’t have to be any spiritual bond for two people to get married in the eyes of the law. They can just be two people who want the tax breaks … like a business venture.

Would a government be allowed to pass a law that disallows two people to enter into a business contract with each other simply because of their sex or their race? Of course it wouldn’t. Imagine how difficult mergers would become. “Oh, I’m sorry Bob, we can’t merge our companies. We’re both too Caucasian male for it to be deemed legal in the eyes of contractual law.”

Imagine with me for a moment: “We move to amend the constitution of the State of _____ such that two women may not have dual ownership in any business venture.” “We move to amend the constitution of the State of _____ such that two men owning the same business may not be allowed to file taxes upon said business jointly.” “We move to Amend the constitution of the State of _____ that land may only be jointly owned by two people of differing sexes.”

Or if we want to get really technical: “We move to amend the constitution of the State of ___ such that no house shall be allowed to have pink walls in their master bedroom as it may offend the tastes of those visiting.”

Or, maybe I’ve just missed the point of these would-be laws.

On a side note, I am proud to say that I am from the only State that has refused to pass an amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

Yesterday I burned the crap out of my tongue on a pot pie. In my head I know the inside of a pot pie is hot. I always know this, yet, almost without fail, every time I eat a pot pie, I burn my tongue. (I believe this is because I am obviously an idiot.)

Anyway, here I am with my burned tongue that I had mostly forgotten about until I started eating my morning grapefruit. Yep. I am obviously an idiot.

Also, this morning I could not say “Trevor” for the life of me. I kept saying “Travor”. I can already tell it’s just going to be one of those days. I hate when I have one of those days.

I get my news from NPR. Yep, National Public Radio. I know that they aren’t always the most un-biased news source, but they do try. Lately I have been really enjoying some of the stories they have been producing. They go out of their way to do stories on things that actually matter to people. I don’t mean stories like who is fucking who or what celebrity is pregnant. Those stories don’t actually mean anything to people aside from a diversion from their own boring lives.

This morning there was a truly fascinating story on muscle growth. Tests are being done that inhibits a protein in the muscle that limits muscle growth. This research is currently being done in mice and it has been shown that the mouse that have this mutation turned on (so that protein isn’t there), have up to 4 times more muscle mass than their normal cousins.

So, what does this mean to people?

Think of those horrible muscular degenerative diseases. It has been shown that this protein also limits human muscle growth. People who do not produce it have more muscle growth than those who do. Research is being done to produce a drug that would inhibit this protein from being produced in the muscle to help aid those who have muscle deterioration. Muscular dystrophy, cancer and AIDS patients would all benefit from this research. It is cool.

Now, here is the kicker, they discovered the result of this protein by genetically modifying mice. Yep, they messed about with their genome and genes and all that good stuff to see what this would do. This will probably make some people swoon with rage the way they swoon against the genetically engineered foods. You know what? Fuck that. Genetic engineering is one way people learn and improve upon things. Without genetic engineering, this protein would not have been discovered.

I’m sure PETA must be up in arms over testing like this because we all know laboratory mice live long and rich lives. I’m bothered by people who want to stop genetic engineering because discoveries like this would be lost. Imagine what we could miss out in if something like this was banned. It’s not pretty really. We are in an Age of Discovery and Science. We are beginning to build cures not from the idea of treating symptoms, but rather prevention and treating disease from the base cause. I suppose since this isn’t a cure (thus far) for erectile dysfunction or baldness, people don’t see the need for it.

Okay, I think I've finished

I can't even begin to describe the headache this peice of shit template gave me. I don't know why either. It is a very simple template, but making it work in both IE and Forefox just didn't want to happen. I wanted to make the entries load first so the load time was faster, but noooo, that just didn't want to work. So fuck it. Here it is.

I've had a terrible week and I haven't wanted to post on a broken blog. Yep. I am that fucking vain.

New things:

Moxie Radio - More to come on this. If you're interested in leanring more drop me an email. (look in the Contact section, woo).

Work Sucks - What's new right? Well, ther eare rumblings that the company is going to be bought out by another company. I don't know what to think of this, so I am just going to pretend like i never heard the rumors floating about.

Steak Dinner Tonight - Fucking expensive steak dinnres where I don't have to pay. This is definately going to be the high point of my week. Rock Fucking on.

Soccer - My last game of the season is this Sunday. We'll have just 11 people (hopefully) show up. It's going to be rough without any subs.

Gaming - I have been playing in a D&D game. It is not going well and I'm not really having fun. There seems to be two types of gamers in the roup, those who take the game and themselves waaaaaaay too fucking seriously, and those who show up to have fun and take it easy. I am in the group who shows up to haev fun. The other rgoup has decided that all the character who aren't serious need to change to fit in. basically the whole thing has exploded into an OOC thing where everyone decided to "Compromise" to keep the group together and just move on, but the only people who have to "compromise" are those who've shown up to have fun. That and one person just annoys the fuck out of me. (Some rather offensive remarks have been made not in association with the game.) So, I'm probably just going to walk away from that game before I throw a fucking chair at someone. It's not worth it.

Half of the table is also going to walk away from the game and we have all decided to look for a new game to play in. I may even just run one myself if we can find enough people. I have a world all set up and some ideas for an adventure.

Elections - i ahev been wanting to rant on and on about this, but now it's pretyt much over and done with. I knew that people would vote for people simply because of the letter next to their name on the ballot. MEh. I should say, I am not a democrat nor republican. I vote for who I agree with on a majority of issues. That being said ... my candidates sucked.

Also, when I went to vote, I was the youngest person in my voting station by at least 40 years. Seriously. That is not a joke. I was an infant compared to most people there. Those running the station and those voting. it was amazing. I felt special. I also felt like Imy vote was going to be lost in the socially conservative tide I was up against. however, I bet many of those folks would have been shocked at my fiscal conservitism.

So bleh.

I have just had to deal with a lot of people who have seriously been pissing me off. And without my bi-weekly bitch-efst on Mango, I have been feeling about ready to fucking explode. There is something so theraputic about simply saying Fuck over and over again.

Say it with me now:

FUCK!

On a side note, visit my husband's blog. It's about making liquor. It is nifty. And by nifty I mean fucking awesome (I am working on a template to show off it's coolness):
Experiments in Brewing

I have updated the look of the blog. It is only on the main index. Archives and everything else still default to the old style. I will fix that over the weekend.

I will also make the navigation bar up top work with the link. Right now they are turned off.

I don't know if I like the colors, but I will muck about with it more.

*EDIT*
Well, the template works fine in IE (which I have at work), but is infinately fucked up in Firefox. God damn it.

Now I have to try to fix it again. For some reason, margins never work right in Firefox and I really don't know why.

*EDIT 2*
Mother-fucker. I get it to look right in one browser and it's fucked up in the other. What the fuck. God damn. Now I am full of fucking rage and scraping the whole thing to re-write. I used a base template that should work in both IE and Firefox, yet it's not. This is truly 2lbs-sledge-to-computer- inspiring.

So, the cubicle ninjas have been quiet for the past few days. For a moment, I thought they had relented. But of course, it was just the lull before the storm.

The ninjas have done something to the temperature regulation in our building. This is not to say that it is too hot or too cold, but rather, it fluctuates depending on what part of the building you’re in. So, in my cube, it is actually quite pleasant. In the hall it is colder than a witch’s tit. In the break room I think I see icicles growing along the edges of the tables. In the lab it is like a sauna.

Now, when they decided to have the entire building put on ice watch it was fine, you could adjust to that and just wear your coat. But the fluctuations are enraging. It is impossible to guess what the temperature of the room you will next enter will be. Now, I could map out the whole building, but over the past week, I’ve noticed that not only is the temperature location dependant, but also time dependant. (Or maybe it is just completely and totally random, which is even more infuriating.)

So, if the cubicle ninjas’ goal was to make me feel like a woman in menopause, they have succeeded. Damn you ninjas. Damn you.

But, we fight back. Oh yes we do.

Free lunch in the form of Italian is the perfect weapon to fight you. Despite the ninjas’ efforts, the overall mood in the office has been rather positive. People have been filled with happy-joy-joy feelings and spreading it around. It makes me feel a little dirty, really. Perhaps it is the upcoming holidays that are inspiring these feelings. This of course makes them even more detestable. But, this positive feeling is slowly pushing the ninjas’ away.

But I know they only lie in wait.

My husband rocks. This is the card he got me for Halloween.

He knows me well.