Slavery

The essence of all slavery consists in taking the product of another's labor by force. It is immaterial whether this force be founded upon ownership of the slave or ownership of the money that he must get to live.

~ Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1828-1910)

Hold on...

Tighten your belt, endure the pain,
become lost in the dark,
but hold on with two hands,
because one day there will be light in your life.

Magnoumako
Oumou Sangare

How to milk it

As I've said more than once, I love being pregnant. First, there's the whole miracle of life thing. And then—coming a very close second—is the fact that pregnancy kind of gives you a competitive advantage in the cute stakes.

(I'm shallow enough to need constant approval from my fellow man, and my pregnant self, version 2.0 if you will, is much more likely to get it.) You don't have to hold your stomach in eight hours a day, and being rotund is positively encouraged.

Impregnate me and, almost instantaneously, I become stylish. I'm perky, I'm sassy. I'm ebullient, I'm proactive. Oh crikey, I'm working twelve hour days and nobody cares that I'm having a baby.

So, dear reader, I encourage you to plan your maternity wardrobe with care and caution. Being effortlessly stylish while pregnant is one thing. But making pregnancy look effortless is simply not a good idea. Not if you really want to milk it, that is.

Excerpt from “Milk It: How to Get More Than a Baby out of the Next Nine Months” by Kate Hodson

What colour will your eyes be?

What colour will your eyes be?
What about your hair -
Chestnut, like your mother's
Or like your father's, fair?

Will you be an athlete,
A writer, movie star?
Maybe you're to travel
To countries near and far.

Of one thing I am certain,
Even now I know it's true.
You're dearly loved and wanted
By your family waiting for you.

Rita Preece

The Gray

Of the white and of the black,
This is when we can only see

What truly lies within us.
It is hidden in the eerie gray

That dwindles and totters...
And soon washes away.

~ By Taylor Hirschey

Can it be a mistake that 'stressed' is 'desserts' spelled backwards?

Happiness

There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word "happy" would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

Carl Jung

You're still the one

When I first saw you, I saw love.
and the first time you touched me, I felt love.
and after all this time, you're still the one I love.

Shania Twain

The man of my dreams...

The man of my dreams has almost faded now.
The one I have created in my mind.
The sort of man each woman dreams of,
in the deepest and most secret reaches of her heart.
I can almost see him now before me.
What would I say to him if he were really here?
"Forgive me. I have never known this feeling.
I have lived without it all my life.
Is it any wonder, then, I failed to recognise you?
You, who brought it to me for the first time.
Is there any way that I can tell you how my life has changed?
Any way at all to let you know what sweetness you have given me?
There is so much to say. I cannot find the words.
Except for these: I love you".
Such would I say to him if he were really here.

Elise McKenna
Somewhere in Time