Crazy Time

Thoroughly revised and updated for a new generation, the essential guide for men and women to help them weather the turmoil of divorce and build rich, rewarding lives There is nothing easy about the breakup of a marriage, from coping with loss and failure to dealing with the uncertainty of the future. In this intelligent and insightful book, Abigail Trafford charts this emotional journey, identifying the common phases in the evolution from marriage to separation to divorce and eventually to a new life. Based upon her personal experience, extensive research, and interviews with hundreds of divorced men and women, Trafford offers individuals a better understanding of their own experiences and the message that they are not alone in their pain and confusion. Crazy Time is also an investment in the future—Trafford reveals the telltale signs of a marriage in crisis and discusses what determines whether a relationship will survive over time. This revised edition includes the most up-to-date research on the effects of divorce in adults' and children's lives, addresses the special challenges of becoming single again in the age of the Internet, and broadens the experience of divorce to include the breakup of all committed relationships. For anyone who has divorced, or is considering taking that step, Crazy Time offers a sense of hope and confidence that this transition is not only an ending but can also be a valuable beginning.

From one of the world's most controversial campaigners, This Crazy Time is the No Logo of the NEW environmental movement, an essential must-read that combines Bill Bryson's personable style and humour with Naomi Klein's hard-hitting activism and research. Passionate, profound, inspiring and funny, Berman is inspiring people from all walks of life to get off the sidelines and fight the good fight--and win. This unique book--part manifesto from a leader, part humorous activist memoir from a soccer mom--offers a wryly honest, behind the scenes, ultimately uplifting look at the state of the planet. For almost 20 years, Tzeporah Berman has been one of our most influential environmentalists. A founder of ForestEthics and PowerUp Canada, she was instrumental in shaping the tactics and concerns of the modern environmental movement. In her early 20s she faced nearly one thousand criminal charges and 6 years in prison for her role organizing blockades in Canada's rainforest. With ForestEthics she took on Victoria's Secret with a photo of a chainsaw-wielding lingerie model, convincing the catalogue manufacturer to stop using paper made from old-growth forests. She then transformed her tactics and sat down with CEOs and political leaders to reshape their policies and practices. She participated in saving over 12 million acres of endangered forests, including Canada's Great Bear Rainforest, and has campaigned against the development of Canada's oil sands. In her new role at Greenpeace International she is fighting the problem of our time: climate change, including researching the impacts of the Gulf Oil Spill and protesting oil drilling in the Arctic. As a concerned mother, her book is an impassioned plea for a better world.

Crazy Time: A Bizarre Battle with Darkness and the Divine is a literary horror novel, a dark, surreal, contemporary supernatural fantasy that offers scares and suspense but seeks to terrify more on the level of concept, filling your head with thoughts and images that don’t fit right and perhaps shouldn’t even be. Bright, independent Lily Henshaw rides home with her friends Kris, Eric, and Mia after an evening of celebration and ends up in a nightmare. Two men in a pickup truck stalk them on the road, reminding them of urban legends in ways that only amplify the growing tension. The truck sideswipes them, and they pull over—where the two men subdue them with a gun and a tire iron. One of the men announces that it's "crazy time," and a game of violence and murder begins. Lily barely escapes with her life. Months later, she is still traumatized, and her religious coworker Vince's attempt to comfort her with claims that everything happens for a reason only leads to a panic attack. Her boss and the owner of the printing company where they work, Burt—who has always had feelings for her but has never acted on them—offers more solace, but he also shows her posters ordered by MFS, a corporation with offices at the nearby 1500 Spring Street skyscraper, posters that feature disturbing, apocalyptic Biblical images coupled with bizarre motivational taglines. Lily is agnostic, Burt is an atheist, and they're both amused... and a little creeped out. The small levity Lily finds vanishes when her family calls to tell her that her brother David has killed himself, apparently part of a "cluster suicide" phenomenon that she and David had heard about on the news at a recent family gathering. While she mourns, Lily can't get the apocalyptic posters out of her head. Soon she gets a new, much larger dose of religious creepiness when a swarm of locusts invades her apartment. Unsure about whether the affliction is real, she calls Burt for help and waits for him outside. During the wait, a man attacks her. She fights him off but is on the ground bleeding when Burt and other witnesses arrive. The other witnesses, seeing Burt, a black man, and Lily, an injured white woman, assume Burt is to blame and have him arrested. Lily testifies to Burt's innocence, but he nevertheless spends a night in jail, where a cellmate kills himself, part of another suicide cluster. Meanwhile, Lily has a vision of Kris, Eric, and Mia sounding less like themselves than like Biblical prophets, warning her about opposing God. The experience sparks an idea: Lily begins to believe that she might be cursed, and in high Biblical fashion, the curse is affecting people around her, too, especially Burt, whose business is destroyed by a break-in, leaving Lily and Burt jobless. Lily adopts "curse logic" and looks for answers. Burt, though skeptical, joins her. They visit an "extreme" psychic. Lily has an interview with a Satanist. While searching for answers, tragedies and traumas keep piling up: Lily's family suffers more losses, Lily and Burt witness a murder in Lily's bedroom as well as a suicide on the street, and Lily experiences further financial catastrophe. Lily concludes that her curse is reminiscent of the Book of Job. God, if He exists, is out to get her, and unlike the pious Job, she decides that she's out to get God, too. Her Satanist advisor points her toward a freelancer in the world of dark deeds, Tobias Centurion, who performs a ritual that indicates Lily and Burt will find answers at 1500 Spring Street, in the MFS corporation. Armed with nothing but portents and vague advice, Lily and Burt approach the skyscraper intending to face off with God's corporate cronies and possibly God Himself.

Why is Lauren Steele being followed around by a mysterious red-haired ghost? Why is the Pentagon after her? And why doesn't anyone believe her? As a psychologist at the Waycross Clinic in Seattle, she has enough problems. Her clients never seem to listen to anything she says, and her co-workers could use extensive counseling themselves. The last thing she needs is an obnoxious figment of her own imagination showing up at the least opportune moments. But Daniel ("Corky") Corcoran is actually the victim of a fault experimental laser, having been accidentally "dispersed" when the device misfired during a demonstration. He has literally gathered his wits about him by focusing on the last person he saw - Lauren. The trouble is, Corky's attempts at communication only convince Lauren that she is going crazy. Add to this one paranoid colonel from the Pentagon who is convinced that both Corky and Lauren are Soviet spies, and you have a mix of zany and colourful characters caught up in a plot that is quintessential Wilhelm.

Miles Gladstone has it all: a trophy wife, a successful business and a happy daughter-until his gorgeous spouse takes off, his conniving partner cheats him out of his company and his daughter's marriage starts to crumble. Worse yet, now that he wants his ex-wife back, she has had a complete make-over and is involved with someone half her age. Is there a happy ever after? Not for this guy! This totally entertaining comedy is by the veteran playwright of Norman Is that You?, Murder at the Howard Johnson's and Remember Me.

Everybody needs someone who gets their crazy Hank Kirby can't catch a break. He doesn't mean to screw up. It just happens. Case in point: his attempt to ask out the girl he likes literally goes up in flames when he spelled "prom" in sparklers on Amanda Carlisle's lawn...and nearly burns down her house, without ever asking her the big question. Hank just wants to pretend the incident never happened. And he might've gotten away with it-except there is a witness. Peyton Breedlove, brooding loner and budding pyromaniac, saw the whole thing, and she blackmails Hank into an unusual friendship. Sure, Hank may be headed for his biggest disaster yet, but it's only when life falls apart that you can start piecing it back together. "Funny, authentic, and, at turns, heartbreaking."-Jessi Kirby, author of Things We Know by Heart and Moonglass "I had so much fun reading this book."-Adi Alsaid, author of Never Always Sometimes and Let's Get Lost

A practical guide to surviving and thriving in a world gone mad Do you ever feel torn between finding refuge and staying informed and engaged? Have you ever felt too stressed out to meditate? Too anxious to roll out your yoga mat or pray? The truth is, when the world gets chaotic and confounding, we need spiritual practice more than ever. That's when our souls need sustenance. That's when we need to recharge and ground ourselves to take on the challenge. This concise, compassionate guide is filled with tools and techniques for accessing the sanctuary within you. They'll give you spiritual support at a moment's notice, in whatever time you have, with whatever attention you can spare. Expert teacher Philip Goldberg draws on authoritative texts and teachers from every spiritual path, especially the empirical methods of the Yoga tradition-as well as contemporary psychology and scientific research. The result is a wide range of techniques to relieve the mind and body, refresh the spirit, and gird us for constructive action. You'll get insightful instruction in practices ranging from deep meditation to cognitive reframing to "spiritual space management," from silently communing with nature to actively engaging with others. And you'll find detailed guidelines for creating a spiritual routine-along with an inventory of supplementary practices-that suits your needs and lifestyle. This breezy, thorough, pragmatic book will help you find refuge and healing from the crazy times we're living in-and it will prepare you for taking robust steps to help restore sanity in the world around you.

From the cofounder of Square, an inspiring and entertaining account of what it means to be a true entrepreneur and what it takes to build a resilient, world-changing company In 2009, a St. Louis glassblowing artist and recovering computer scientist named Jim McKelvey lost a sale because he couldn't accept American Express cards. Frustrated by the high costs and difficulty of accepting credit card payments, McKelvey joined his friend Jack Dorsey (the cofounder of Twitter) to launch Square, a startup that would enable small merchants to accept credit card payments on their mobile phones. With no expertise or experience in the world of payments, they approached the problem of credit cards with a new perspective, questioning the industry's assumptions, experimenting and innovating their way through early challenges, and achieving widespread adoption from merchants small and large. But just as Square was taking off, Amazon launched a similar product, marketed it aggressively, and undercut Square on price. For most ordinary startups, this would have spelled the end. Instead, less than a year later, Amazon was in retreat and soon discontinued its service. How did Square beat the most dangerous company on the planet? Was it just luck? These questions motivated McKelvey to study what Square had done differently from all the other companies Amazon had killed. He eventually found the key: a strategy he calls the Innovation Stack. McKelvey's fascinating and humorous stories of Square's early days are blended with historical examples of other world-changing companies built on the Innovation Stack to reveal a pattern of ground-breaking, competition-proof entrepreneurship that is rare but repeatable. The Innovation Stack is a thrilling business narrative that's much bigger than the story of Square. It is an irreverent first-person look inside the world of entrepreneurship, and a call to action for all of us to find the entrepreneur within ourselves and identify and fix unsolved problems--one crazy idea at a time.