Status Updates From Life Expectancy

She is practical, but she is a dreamer, too, a realist and a romantic at the same time.

She was motivated not by what others had done to her, not by envy, not by a conviction of moral superiority, but by life's possibilities.

They find meaning in their quiet faith, in one another, and in the little miracles of their daily lives. They don't need ideologies or philosophies to define themselves. They are defined by living, with all senses engaged, with hope, and with a laugh ever ready.

That would be just too much - held hostage by a librarian killer and shackled to a congenital pessimist.

Yet all that preparation afforded me no comfort. My imagination had hatched a crawling dread that crept down my spine and into every extremity

"He made eclairs and lemon tarts, not predictions"