"We'll put in some long, hard work and hopefully get you finished up by the end of the day." The assistant smiled back with a knowing grin and the hou...ewife, sensing she missed a joke of some kind, smiled politely and turned to leave. "Actually, could you help us with something?" the workman asked, and she turned around helpfully. "Yes?" "Where do those pipes go in the basement?" he asked, indicating the underside of the sink. "I don't just want to go poking around." "Right," she said and. The snow that had buried the valley was now interfering with my running plans as my mother forbid me from running to school as she stated there were too many idiots driving on the roads to fast with all the patches of ice still out there. Pleading my case to her got me nothing even when I stated that no one was out when I was running so that it was safe to be out. It was all the same to her and nothing I said could change her mind. So it was that the first day back to school for me had me. The hermetically sealed world of private desire. She recalled reading that fear of the irrevocable was the only true definition of sanity. She also recalled finding that sage. So now, pronouncing herself nerveless, she could draw only one conclusion. And in the drawing felt uncertainty reassert itself. ‘Calm, calm,’ the same inner-voice warned as her eyes closed to conjure up the picture. Her picture. A glade. Backdropped by shimmering sea. Autumnal. Tranquil. Yellow leaves diffusing bright. "We won't go any further than you want to go."The trouble was I wasn't sure how far I wanted to go. I'd wanted to get to know this man better for months now. In fact, truth be known, I'd wanted to know him a whole lot better when I was about eighteen, but he was going out with somebody from his church. But did I want to know him THAT well today?When the second game came on, the decision was almost made for me. Looking back, it seems he was trying to give me at least one win. On a first and.