WorldWideWaterCooler

So here’s the thing. I’m sick.

I’m one of the lucky people with whom pregnancy does NOT agree, and as a result, I am miserable. I am only half-joking when I say if I’d known it was going to be this bad, I’d have gone for a ready-made instead of bake-your-own.

Everyone I’ve encountered in the medical establishment seems to think this is charming. I want to punch them all in the face. Except the ones who prescribe the anti-nausea drugs. They can stay. I love them long time.

I know nobody wants to hear about the mood swings, or the exhaustion, or the nausea, or the hurling, or the pooping (or more specifically, the lack thereof).

But in the 12 hours a day I manage to stay awake (I suppose it could be longer, but honestly, I am so sick of being sick that I sleep a lot to escape the symptoms) that is pretty much all that’s going on.

So unless I win the lottery or spaceships land on my roof or my dog suddenly learns to talk, consider this blog on hold.

Go, look at the kittens, I will hopefully be back and feeling much better in a few weeks.

In the comments from yesterday’s entry (and thank you again for all the lovely wishes!) Derek asked “what would the Jen of 2004 blog about this new knocked-up, married, condo-owning Jen of today?”

Well, I don’t know what she’d blog, but I think she’d be pleased.

I never really spoke about this (because frankly, it sounds a bit nutty) but I always had a “feeling” through my early 20′s that life would really start when I was 26. I don’t know why I latched on to that number. It really seemed like 26 is still young enough to be young, but finally old enough to be taken seriously.

So my 24 year old self (which is how old I was in 2004) was mostly focused on having fun. I ended the going-nowhere relationship with my boyfriend of the past 4 years. I started down a nearly-2-year-long road of some laughably bad dates. I began and grew some amazing friendships. I ran up my credit cards and lived for not much more than the day or moment at hand and did all sorts of things that are better left offline, rattling around in the brain cells that emerged from that period unscathed.

Because I always knew that after I got my reckless youth out of my system, ultimately I did want to settle down one day. With a man, and a dog, and 2.4 kids, and maybe even a white picket fence. I never talked about it much, because while I’m certainly pleased about life so far, and my own impending offspring, I don’t really find other people’s marriages or mortgages or kids very interesting.

Back to the timeline, I turned 26 in 2006. Met Neil the following February. Got a job that really solidified my current career path the following June, just before turning 27. The rest is history.

Speaking of the job – even a year ago, I was terrified of what having kids would do to my career. I enjoy what I do and have never imagined being a Stay at Home Mom. Finally, in the past few months, I’ve started feeling much more comfortable in my role and confident that I could return after taking an extended absence. I’m under no illusion that It’s going to be easy, but it at least seems possible, which is enough for me right now.

The Jen of 2004 knew exactly where she wanted to be by now, though had no idea how she was going to get there. But we’re both pretty pleased she’s arrived.

Also excited, and terrified, and overall overwhelmed by soul-destroying nausea!

Now that we’re not going anywhere, we’ve picked right back up on our micro-farming project.

You may remember posts from last summer and this past spring on our construction efforts on building the pig shelter and fencing in the yard. Well, they’re finally being put to use!

Except, we’ve gone from pigs to sheep!

Between Neil and I thinking we were moving, then my in-laws’ phone going down for a week or so (hazards of living at the edge of the grid), the pig thing fell through. Our original source sold all their piglets, and you’d be surprised at how hard it is to find piglets for sale!

Neil and I eventually went to the Fraser Valley Auctions to see if we could find any pigs that suppliers were unloading, but goats seemed to be the order of the day, along with a good assortment of sheep!

We left with a lovely lamb who lamented her way down the highway in the back of our car. And lamented in the ferry line. And lamented during the ferry ride. And lamented up the island highway (while she wasn’t busy nibbling on the poor dog’s tail). And lamented all the way into her pen, and all night, and most of the next morning until we put her with the neighbour’s sheep while my inlaws found her some friends.

The lamenting inspired her name: Agnes – short for Agnus Dei, the lamb of god. Also a movement in Mozart’s Requiem.

A few days later, Agnes was joined by two other lambs, Gloria and Miserere (have mercy), who were also known by their voices, raised to the heavens.

Thankfully (for my inlaws anyhow, I obviously can’t hear them from here), they have apparently quieted down and are now lovely little lawnmowers.

And come September (because we need to get them slaughtered before hunting season gets underway and any potential fall floods happen), we’ll have our own Requiem for a Lamb, and end up with a bunch of fleece and a freezer full of tasty sheep meat.

Besides, if you’re doing bio-dynamic farming anyhow, you really want to start off with ruminants, then follow with chickens, and finally end up with pigs. I think it might be a harder sell to convince my in-laws to go for the chickens, but we’ve got a year or so to work on them….

Those playing along at home are likely going “Huh? I had no idea you WERE moving.” I know. And now we’re not. Not exactly news, but it’s been a big albatross around my neck for a little while. Now that there’s an ending to the story, I feel compelled to write it down – both to capture the (non)experience for when I go back and check what I was doing in July 2010, and to close that particular chapter in my brain.

We very nearly moved to England. We’d have been leaving in a month. Neil had an offer from his existing company to go over and work on a project that was based over there. But for various reasons to do with the job and the project it went rapidly from being a very good idea to a really not so good one. So we’re not going.

I am simultaneously delighted and disappointed that we’re staying.

To be fair, I was also delighted and disappointed at the idea of moving. So many things I felt would be left undone here. Moving an ocean away from family. Leaving my job here. The excitement of a new adventure.

Now I just get to flip all those. Moving forward on projects here. More time with family. Staying on at my job. No big adventure.

It feels a bit like a zero sum game – but I can’t quite process that zero sum doesn’t equal zero emotion.

It’s amazing how much non-action can be an emotional roller coaster.

Of course we thought it wise to keep our moving news mostly to ourselves while all the details sorted themselves out. Neil still needed to get through some challenging times with his team at work. I didn’t want to rock the boat unnecessarily at work, or give up my job on the off (and now actual)-chance we didn’t go after all.

But at the same time, we were running around like crazy people in semi-secret, trying to sort out the details of international relocation.

Passport and visa research. Calls with our accountant about tax implications. Vet appointments to jump through the hoops to relocate our dog with us. Sorting out details of renting our condo. Working through the financial implications of an undetermined amount of time living off one salary rather than two. Putting off and pushing aside projects we had planned for here that were no longer practical in the face of relocation.

It’s been stressful. And while I thought pushing the reset button would alleviate some of that, it’s really just changed it.

Tying up loose ends and changing direction on some of our financial plans to reflect staying rather than going. Re-starting the fires under the projects we had snuffed. Figuring out what the rest of our year looks like, now that it’s in Vancouver rather than Oxford.

It’s ultimately good. Not only in a “good, we’ve sorted out this important life-event” way, but in a “this has forced us to re-evaluate what we’re doing here and what’s important” way, but in the meantime feels very strange.

I have no good ending for this.

Apropos of absolutely nothing, a Freddie Mercury Merman Christmas Tree Ornament.

Enjoy!

Neil and I have been in New Orleans for the past few days, and it’s entirely amazing here. But our trip started off with something that I was even more surprised about: incredible service from United Airlines.

Anyone I know who flies with any regularity gripes about most domestic carriers. Myself included. And we all know that United Breaks Guitars. But a couple people working for United at YVR last Wednesday changed that for me.

We had an early flight, and were running a bit late in the morning. We have NEXUS passes, so never really sweat the lineups. The one big difference this time – we had a bag to check. The other issue? Online check-in wasn’t working when we tried it before leaving in the morning.

Check-in at the airport had been cut off 10 minutes before we arrived. That means we still had 50 minute before boarding (80 before takeoff) to clear security and get to the gate. We scampered over to the United desk, hopeful that we could grab our boarding passes and maybe have time to grab coffee at Starbucks after security before boarding. We weren’t worried.

Until we were subjected to the worst customer service person in the world. To be clear, she is not who I’m praising here. We got where we were going in spite of her. I would not wish for her to die in a fire, but I would wish for her to be decommissioned enough to never inflict her special brand of uselessness on anyone else ever again.

We stood as the 2nd people in her line for another 20 minutes, while she made molasses in January look like a contender for the Belmont stakes. When we finally made it to her desk, she just said “oh, there’s nothing I can do, you’re REALLY late (as if she hadn’t been ignoring us waiting for her for 20 minutes), made a big show of how terrible it was for us that we were checking a piece of luggage, and moved us to a flight three hours later, with a four hour layover, finally getting us to our destination 8 hours later than we’d intended.

I was not a happy camper.

We checked the bag that was apparently holding us back from our rightful seats, went through security and wandered down to the gate our plane was supposed to be leaving from. It was still 3 minutes from the scheduled takeoff.

And that’s when the heavens opened, the sun shone, an angel chorus rang out and the universe delivered unto us a saint named Laura.

Neil made small talk with her about how we were supposed to be on that plane right there outside the window, and she looked at us in total disbelief that her daft colleague hadn’t put us on it. You see, our plane was delayed about 10 minutes because it was late coming in and was still fueling. I find it hard to believe the pedantic twat at the check-in desk didn’t know that, but I’m no expert in airline operations.

We mentioned it was because we had a bag to check and that the desk staff were adamant that there was no way it would make it onto our plane (and with the post 9/11 security rules, you aren’t allowed to intentionally fly on a different aircraft than your luggage).

She made a radio call and in seconds had a response that our bag was indeed there, waiting for our later flight, and they redirected it onto our original plane for us. She printed the boarding passes and ushered us onto the plane. All this took her less than five minutes. Once seated, we sat on the runway for another 20 minutes waiting for fueling & maintenance checks to be finished.

In all the flights I’ve taken I have never, ever missed one. I was not eager to add that particular stripe to my record, and thanks to Laura at YVR gate 76 on Wednesday morning, I haven’t yet.

So you all can go ahead and dis United (and other domestic carriers) all you like. But as long as there are people like Laura working for them, I’m going to keep my mouth shut (and set my alarm 20-minutes earlier next time!).

At this year’s Northern Voice conference, one of the more visible sponsors was TravelMasters, who were obviously using the conference as a launching pad into the world of DIY marketing. Marching in with gusto, and with cookies.

photo from @julieszabo

Now, I will be the first to admit that (being in marketing) my tolerance for campaigns that miss the mark is exceedingly low.

But, of the people I talked to about the cookies, I’m not the only one who was a bit confused and left wanting (for substance, not cookies. The cookies were delicious.).

I want to like TravelMasters’ efforts – they’re branching out into a market that might make sense and they were certainly going in the right direction. But they could have done so. much. better.

If you can’t quite read the picture, the text is:

Kathleen’s Gingersnaps

1. Scoop premium vanilla ice cream in between two Gingersnaps. Roll cookies in toffee chips, wrap in plastic wrap, place in freezer
2. Spread chocolate spread over one cookie, top with slices of banana (sounds funny, but it’s delicious)
3. Mix a vanilla pudding package and 500ml whipping cream together to make “vanilla fluff”. Spread vanilla fluff over one cookie, top with sliced fruit
4. Spice up a roast pork gravy by substituting flour with crumbled gingersnaps
5. Grab a cookie and stuff it in your mouth….they are delicious on their own! Yum Yum!

If we can think to do that with a cookie, imagine what we can do with your next vacation
twitter tag #TMcookies

First, what TravelMasters did right:

• Targeted a conference where it can be reasonably assumed that many of the attendees are worldly, enjoy new experiences and have enough disposable income to take vacations. An excellent departure from the standard places travel agencies advertise (wedding fairs & home shows) and a good way to stand out!
• Provided a snack during the conference afternoons, when people are hungry and looking for a sugar fix
• Added some interest to the packaging to showcase their creativity
• Included a twitter tag to track conversations about the cookies, tying them into the social media part of the conference

Now, here’s how it could have been orders of magnitude better:

Who is Kathleen?! Sure, she makes a tasty gingersnap, but why do I care? Unless she is important to the company and its message (in which case, tell me who she is!), she is a distraction. Just call them “Gingersnaps from TravelMasters.”

Using the bag to tout their creativity is a big win, but the TravelMasters’ team did it in a way that creates a lot of cognitive dissonance (one of the few $3 words I still remember from university). I’m already at a social media conference, eating cookies. Now I’m reading about ways to be creative with the cookies. And out of nowhere: THINK ABOUT VACATIONS, QUICK!

I am not thinking about vacations now. I am wondering where the hell that came from, and wondering what it has to do with cookies or the conference.

How about instead, you put something on the packaging that shows how creative you are about snacks (which I’m already on) and travel, which is what you WANT me to think about?

Five things to do when you travel with our Gingersnaps (and I pulled these out of my arse in about 5 minutes):
1. Stash them in your carry-on when you fly to Paris (not liquid, so they pass the airplane food rule) for a better nosh when those intolerable nut-snacks come around
2. Share the cookies with someone on your bus tour in Auckland, make a new friend
3. Take some downtime, feed broken pieces to pigeons in Central Park
4. Stick your nose in the bag and breathe in the heady, sweet aroma when you’re walking past another open sewer grate in Thailand
5. Combat the munchies in Amsterdam. ‘Nuff said.

Adding the suggested twitter hashtag was also a great tie-in to the conference, but it’s a bit empty without a reason for me to tweet about the cookies. “If you build it, they will come” only works in Kevin Costner movies. You can’t just say “here, take your social media and get to it” – give me a reason to engage.

Along with the tag, ask me what other ideas I have for the cookies, or where I’d take them. Better, tell me to share my idea and enter everyone who shares into a contest for a travel perk or accessory.

Finally, maybe give me a reason to engage with your website. Put up a page where I can download the recipe (and while I’m there, remind me why I need you to book my next vacation).

And speaking of wanting me to think I need you to book my vacation, have a reason (beyond the cookies) for me to think that way!

I wandered up to the TravelMasters table at the conference and asked what made different from any other agency, and they gave me the line every other travel agency has ever given: “our agents have all traveled extensively, we have access to exclusive deals, we… (I tuned out).”

They had a captive audience in a pretty specific niche. Tell me something that matters to me and will pique my interest. I’m a tech-savvy person at a blogging conference. Set me up with a free travel blog, with a template customized to my destination. Give me a list of wireless hotspots in the city I’m visiting. Promise me one of the Lonely Planet iPhone apps for my destination. Something that shows you care about me as a customer, and understand me better than any of those other agencies who weren’t smart enough to show up at Northern Voice.

And on the chance that TravelMasters is monitoring for social media mentions and finds this – I’m going to New Orleans next week (first time) and Las Vegas two weeks after that (seventh time) – what would you suggest I do there with the cookies?

Meet Battina

She’s my Mighty Ugly doll, just hangin’ out. She’s a bit of a misfit, and has just returned from a bender in Vegas, where she was found passed out under the craps table.

I’m quite fond of her.

Mighty Ugly was an excellent time. It took me right back to those days at the Children’s Festival where we’d be parked in front of a table of egg cartons, popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners and other assorted crafting detrius and told to make a monster of some sort. I used to love that. Turns out I still do.

There are definitely things about Battina I find ugly and challenging. The pinwheel/dice thingie I stuck on her front. The star on her back. Added only for garishness. Which was kindof the point.

I do like her wacky hook-feet though!

Getting my hands dirty, so to speak, in crafting again has made me less afraid of working with the materials. I reacquainted myself with fabrics and fasteners and notions. I glued and cut and stuffed and sewed and tried some things and gave up on others.

One result was Battina.

The other? I’m a lot less afraid of crafting and creating than I was before Mighty Ugly.

I still might not ever make something beautiful and pretty. But you know, ugly’s really not so bad!

I am scared of crafting.

This is odd. Not least because of all the things one could be frightened of, I pick crafting? Really? But it’s more than that. I used to sew. I was in a 4H sewing club. I made something cute. I won AWARDS for sewing.

But that was over 20 years ago.

Today? Terrified.

When I think of crafting, I think of spinsters wearing sweatshirts with cats on them, and making toilet-paper holder dolls, not at all ironically.

I am also a perfectionist. I am excellent at following directions. You need someone to put together your IKEA furniture? I’m your gal. But put a pile of materials in front of me and say “go! create! craft!” and I freeze up, start stuttering and quickly find an excuse to go be somewhere, anywhere else.

Except, I got the teeniest bit of hubris from putting together an official “craft” yesterday. Kimli was passing out pinwheel kits in the swag bags at her talk, which came with directions and all the materials I’d need, down to a needle and thread. I dusted off my old sewing skills, and gosh darn it, I made a thing!

Perhaps I can do this after all….

So it is with great trepidation (and a tiny bit of hope) that I am taking a leap and have signed up for the Mighty Ugly workshop tonight.

I am to make a thing. An ugly thing. An ugly on purpose thing. Without directions.

This is so far outside my comfort zone, my head may explode.

Perhaps that will count as the ugly.

Wish me luck!

Ever since Neil and I paid-off our consumer debt, and have since funded an emergency account in case anything happens to either of us or our jobs, we’ve been working on how to make our money do the most for us. I work hard, it should too!

An interesting perspective we got from our investment manager had to do with the amount we’re paying on our mortgage. The first thing a lot of people think of when it comes to money management is being mortgage-free. Us included.

Our current mortgage has a number of accelerated repayment options, including the option to up to double each payment. With the record-low interest rates, we’d easily been doing this, and because anything above the required payment goes directly against the principle, we were down to about 9 years (at current rates anyhow) to be mortgage free.

But is that getting us the best return right now?

Housing is, admittedly, a shit investment in terms of growth. Most of the time it keeps up with inflation, and there are all sorts of other soft benefits to owning a home, but in terms of cash in the bank at the end of the day, it’s not often your best choice.

In the meantime, we’ve got a big backlog of RRSP contribution room from our years of being young and much less responsible than we are now, and try as we might, we can’t find a better place to put our money than in the government sponsored tax deferral accounts. And then into TFSAs. Even at a modest rate of return, it’ll far outpace any “investment gain” we’d achieve on our house, and we get to take advantage of the additional tax savings now.

So, back up to 20 years left on the mortgage, but at least it’s happy, party, fun times with our big! new! refund cheques! right? Not so fast.

One of the things we always wondered a bit about while watching yet another episode of Till Debt Do Us Part was how these average people in financial ruin were going to have oodles of money by the time they retired if they followed the plan Gail set out for them.

We currently put more money into retirement savings each month than many of these families were told to in the show, and according to our calculations, were being quickly outpaced by people putting half as much into their savings. What were we missing?

Thanks to the magic of TV editing, we finally caught an episode where Gail said “and if, once you’ve paid off your debt, you take that monthly amount and put it into retirement savings, and reinvest your tax returns every year, you’ll have ‘thismany’ dollars when you retire.”

Ah Hah! Reinvest the tax return!

When we met, Neil hadn’t even filed his taxes for the previous three years. I had always gotten modest returns, and used them to either pay my Visa bill, or as some sort of bonus “play money” windfall to be squandered. Even last year we used our returns partly for fun stuff and partly for debt repayment.

This year though, it goes straight back into the RRSPs. Which, combined with our new, higher contributions, will net us a return that’s (stunningly) more than the salary I made my first year out of University. Which goes back into the RRSPs again, and so the circle continues until we’ve maxed out our backlog (about 3 years from now).

Before making those two changes we were pushing hard and really hoping for a market turnaround that would give us a favourable average rate of return by the time we turn 50 (which is when we’d like to retire) to have enough to retire on. We were aiming for a million 2030 dollars, which would see us through to 99 (we both come from long-lived families) if you included selling our home if it also appreciated enough to keep up with inflation.

Now, we’re on track to have a little over 2 million at retirement, not counting our house, even taking into account a much lower average rate of return over the life of our investments. It seems immensely cool, and I still can’t quite believe it, but so far I haven’t been able to break it.

It’s kindof amazing that in just a couple years I’ve gone from being so detached from money that I didn’t even open some bills, to being this active in what we do with it and trying to make the most of it. And it’s super rewarding to see that paying off!

(another year over, and a new one just begun. A VERY MERRY EARTH DAAAAAAAAY…. ) ahem. anyhow.

Let’s see. This Earth Day I’ve:

-Driven to work
-Stopped at a coffee shop and purchased coffee in a paper cup & food in a paper wrapper (both of which went in the garbage)
-Drove 10 blocks to get lunch
-Got takeout lunch in non-recyclable, non-reusable plastic containers
-Set fire to a pile of tires
-Poured solvent down the drain
-Kicked a puppy

Okay, so maybe those last few are fibs, but the rest is accurate so far.

What can I say, the week went a little sideways on me, and Earth Day caught me a bit by surprise.

I tend to treat Earth Day mostly like Valentine’s day anyhow – we rarely actually celebrate on the 14th of February. We do enough things that show we love each other throughout the year that it’s not so important that we clean up our act for one random day out of the year.

The rest of the year I:

-Bike to work sometimes
-compost
-recycle
-shop locally
-grow vegetables
-eat sustainably produced foods
-keep the heat turned down
-have dual-flush toilets at home
-turn off the tap while I brush my teeth

Just… not today. Except those last three – I TOTALLY conserved energy and water today! SCORE!

I’m sure you’re all far more together than I, and have done some lovely and extraordinary things for the planet today. Why don’t you share them in the comments?

And, on the off chance you’re a little behind on your planning and good intentions, as I am today, commiserate on the ways you’ve joined me in accidentally destroying the planet for future generations.

Perhaps if enough people comment, we’ll cancel each other out! Environmental offsets FTW!

My job for the past number of years has been marketing technology products.

For the most part I love it – the amazing ways people are finding to manipulate machines to improve lives (even if it doesn’t always work out that way) is fascinating. The communities are exciting; the innovation is inspiring. I love the feeling I get when someone discovers our products, engages with us as a company, and is profoundly thankful that what we do has made them better at what they do.

And then I try to explain to my grandmother what I do.

“Well, many businesses buy a really big software system to run everything at their companies, like hiring and bookkeeping and inventory, and the software we build helps one of those pieces work better…”

“I tell people about the software we make and show them how it can help them make the most of this other software they have….”

“How? I build calculators to show that spending $40,000 can save them $80,000 and go to user groups to share ideas and write papers and presentations to explain the technology and….”

“Yes, I’m sortof a writer. No, it’s not like writing a book or for newspapers and magazines. Mostly it goes through email.”

My job, in my grandmother’s eyes, is reduced to writing (sortof) and sending email. And she still doesn’t understand why I didn’t go work in a bookstore.

So I think it’s understandable that when I can get out of the magical world of ones and zeros and make something that I can point to, touch, have aches and blisters from building, and whose form and function are plainly obvious to anyone, anywhere in the world, I get pretty excited.

Over the past long weekend, we fenced in our pig pen! Pigs arrive first week of June.

As I get further and further away from work that anyone understands, I get more and more satisfaction from things that everyone can relate to.

I never know how to pick this thing back up.

When I’ve meant to write a post for a while, promised at the next thing to come, then completely drop the ball on delivering, I have no idea what to write next.

Do I continue on as if I didn’t just drop off the face of the blog for most of a month? Clearly I have voted “no” on that one, at least this time.

Do I jump back in with the thing I said I’d write about, or change tacks completely? Obviously I’m still undecided on that one.

Inquisitive kitten wants to know: How would you resume posting on your neglected blog?

(photo courtesy of eleda 1)

Look at that, another wedding anniversary! We’ve been so busy lately, it really crept up on us. Plans include a quiet dinner at home with a bottle of the good wine.

One of the bigger challenges in the past months has been dealing with the wacky health (physical and mental) issues our damn dog’s been having. So it seems appropriate that I post a little reminder (also printed on the back of our wedding programs in 2008) that love, and dogs, are worth it.

Falling in love is like owning a dog
an epithalamion by Taylor Mali
www.taylormali.com

First of all, it’s a big responsibility,
especially in a city like New York.
So think long and hard before deciding on love.
On the other hand, love gives you a sense of security:
when you’re walking down the street late at night
and you have a leash on love
ain’t no one going to mess with you.
Because crooks and muggers think love is unpredictable.
Who knows what love could do in its own defense?

On cold winter nights, love is warm.
It lies between you and lives and breathes
and makes funny noises.
Love wakes you up all hours of the night with its needs.
It needs to be fed so it will grow and stay healthy.

Love doesn’t like being left alone for long.
But come home and love is always happy to see you.
It may break a few things accidentally in its passion for life,
but you can never be mad at love for long.

Is love good all the time? No! No!
Love can be bad. Bad, love, bad! Very bad love.

Love makes messes.
Love leaves you little surprises here and there.
Love needs lots of cleaning up after.
Sometimes you just want to get love fixed.
Sometimes you want to roll up a piece of newspaper
and swat love on the nose,
not so much to cause pain,
just to let love know Don’t you ever do that again!

Sometimes love just wants to go for a nice long walk.
Because love loves exercise.
It runs you around the block and leaves you panting.
It pulls you in several different directions at once,
or winds around and around you
until you’re all wound up and can’t move.

But love makes you meet people wherever you go.
People who have nothing in common but love
stop and talk to each other on the street.

Throw things away and love will bring them back,
again, and again, and again.
But most of all, love needs love, lots of it.
And in return, love loves you and never stops.