There was something in the tree. It was difficult to tell from the ground, but Rachael could see movement. She squinted her eyes and peered in the direction of the movement, trying to decipher exactly what she had spied. The more she peered, however, the more she thought it might be a figment of her imagination. Nothing seemed to move until the moment she began to take her eyes off the tree. Then in the corner of her eye, she would see the movement again and begin the process of staring again. They decided to find the end of the rainbow. While they hoped they would find a pot of gold, neither of them truly believed that the mythical pot would actually be there. Nor did they believe they could actually find the end of the rainbow. Still, it seemed like a fun activity for the day, and pictures of them chasing rainbows would look great on their Instagram accounts. They would have never believed they would actually find the end of a rainbow, and when they did, what they actually found there. Sarah watched the whirlpool mesmerized. She couldn't take her eyes off the water swirling around and around. She stuck in small twigs and leaves to watch the whirlpool catch them and then suck them down. It bothered her more than a little bit that this could also be used as a metaphor for her life. The day had begun on a bright note. The sun finally peeked through the rain for the first time in a week, and the birds were singing in its warmth. There was no way to anticipate what was about to happen. It was a worst-case scenario and there was no way out of it. There were a variety of ways to win the game. James had played it long enough to know most of them and he could see what his opponent was trying to do. There was a simple counterattack that James could use and the game should be his. He began deploying it with the confidence of a veteran player who had been in this situation a thousand times in the past. So, it was with great surprise when his opponent used a move he had never before seen or anticipated to easily defeat him in the game. Brenda never wanted to be famous. While most of her friends dreamed about being famous, she could see the negative aspects that those who wanted to be famous seemed to ignore. The fact that you could never do anything in public without being mobbed and the complete lack of privacy was something that she never wanted to experience. She also had no desire to have strangers speculating about every aspect of her life and what each thing she did was supposed to mean. Brenda was perfectly happy with her anonymous life where she could do exactly as she wanted without anyone else giving a damn. Thus, her overnight Internet celebrity was not something she was thrilled about as her friends told her how lucky she was. Many people say that life isn't like a bed of roses. I beg to differ. I think that life is quite like a bed of roses. Just like life, a bed of roses looks pretty on the outside, but when you're in it, you find that it is nothing but thorns and pain. I myself have been pricked quite badly. Dragons don't exist they said. They are the stuff of legend and people's imagination. Greg would have agreed with this assessment without a second thought 24 hours ago. But now that there was a dragon staring directly into his eyes, he questioned everything that he had been told. Her mom had warned her. She had been warned time and again, but she had refused to believe her. She had done everything right and she knew she would be rewarded for doing so with the promotion. So when the promotion was given to her main rival, it not only stung, it threw her belief system into disarray. It was her first big lesson in life, but not the last. It was a concerning development that he couldn't get out of his mind. He'd had many friends throughout his early years and had fond memories of playing with them, but he couldn't understand how it had all stopped. There was some point as he grew up that he played with each of his friends for the very last time, and he had no idea that it would be the last. She looked at her student wondering if she could ever get through. "You need to learn to think for yourself," she wanted to tell him. "Your friends are holding you back and bringing you down." But she didn't because she knew his friends were all that he had and even if that meant a life of misery, he would never give them up. Bryan had made peace with himself and felt comfortable with the choices he made. This had made all the difference in the world. Being alone no longer bothered him and this was essential since there was a good chance he might spend the rest of his life alone in a cell. Peter always saw the world in black and white. There were two choices for every situation and you had to choose one of them. It was therefore terribly uncomfortable for him to spend time with Ashley. She saw the world in shades of gray with hundreds of choices to choose from in every situation. MaryLou wore the tiara with pride. There was something that made doing anything she didn't really want to do a bit easier when she wore it. She really didn't care what those staring through the window were thinking as she vacuumed her apartment. "I'll talk to you tomorrow in more detail at our meeting, but I think I've found a solution to our problem. It's not exactly legal, but it won't land us in jail for the rest of our lives either. Are you willing to take the chance?" Monroe asked his partner over the phone. Finding the truth wouldn't be easy, that's for sure. Then there was the question of whether or not Jane really wanted to know the truth. That's the thing that bothered her most. It wasn't the difficulty of actually finding out what happened that was the obstacle, but having to live with that information once it was found. His mother had always taught him not to ever think of himself as better than others. He'd tried to live by this motto. He never looked down on those who were less fortunate or who had less money than him. But the stupidity of the group of people he was talking to made him change his mind. A long black shadow slid across the pavement near their feet and the five Venusians, very much startled, looked overhead. They were barely in time to see the huge gray form of the carnivore before it vanished behind a sign atop a nearby building which bore the mystifying information "Pepsi-Cola." They had always called it the green river. It made sense. The river was green. The river likely had a different official name, but to everyone in town, it was and had always been the green river. So it was with great surprise that on this day the green river was a fluorescent pink. The piano sat silently in the corner of the room. Nobody could remember the last time it had been played. The little girl walked up to it and hit a few of the keys. The sound of the piano rang throughout the house for the first time in years. In the upstairs room, confined to her bed, the owner of the house had tears in her eyes. How had she been so wrong? All her instincts and intuition completely failed her for the first time in her life. She had so heavily relied on both when making decisions up until this moment and she felt a seismic shift take place in her self-confidence. If she could be so completely wrong about something so simple as this, how could she make decisions about really important things taking place in her life? She wasn't sure what she should do next. The irony of the situation hadn't escaped her. She had taken years to sculpt the perfect persona with the perfect look that she shared on Instagram. She knew her hundreds of thousands of followers envied that life she showed and stayed engaged with her because they wanted that life too. The truth was that she wanted the perfect life she portrayed more than any of her fans. The fact was that despite all the perfection she shared on social media, her life was actually more of a mess than most. It was easy to spot her. All you needed to do was look at her socks. They were never a matching pair. One would be green while the other would be blue. One would reach her knee while the other barely touched her ankle. Every other part of her was perfect, but never the socks. They were her micro act of rebellion. She looked at her little girl who was about to become a teen. She tried to think back to when the girl had been younger but failed to pinpoint the exact moment when she had become a little too big to pick up and carry. It hit her all at once. She was no longer a little girl and she stood there speechless with fear, sadness, and pride all running through her at the same time. He knew what he was supposed to do. That had been apparent from the beginning. That was what made the choice so difficult. What he was supposed to do and what he would do were not the same. This would have been fine if he were willing to face the inevitable consequences, but he wasn't. I've rented a car in Las Vegas and have reserved a hotel in Twentynine Palms which is just north of Joshua Tree. We'll drive from Las Vegas through Mojave National Preserve and possibly do a short hike on our way down. Then spend all day on Monday at Joshua Tree. We can decide the next morning if we want to do more in Joshua Tree or Mojave before we head back. Twenty-five years Dana had been waiting. She tried to be patient during that time but she hadn't always managed to be as patient as she'd like. But today the opportunity had finally come. The thing she always imagined would make her the happiest person in the world was about to happen. She didn't know why at this specific time she all of a sudden felt sick inside. There was nothing else to do. The deed had already been done and there was no going back. It now had been become a question of how they were going to be able to get out of this situation and escape. I love the feel of wood curls flying off the lathe as I begin to shape the log in front of me. The sound of scraping changes based on the wetness of the wood, the speed at which the lathe is turning, and the type of cut I am making. The smell and feel of wet wood being turned are unique. The water is sprayed out as I cut through the different layers of wood. A log can turn into anything one's imagination can think of with the right set of hands-on tools. I have those hands and imagination. I use all of my senses and intuition to create a beautiful object. That is why I enjoy turning wood. The rain and wind abruptly stopped, but the sky still had the gray swirls of storms in the distance. Dave knew this feeling all too well. The calm before the storm. He only had a limited amount of time before all Hell broke loose, but he stopped to admire the calmness. Maybe it would be different this time, he thought, with the knowledge deep within that it wouldn't. I'm heading back to Colorado tomorrow after being down in Santa Barbara over the weekend for the festival there. I will be making October plans once there and will try to arrange so I'm back here for the birthday if possible. I'll let you know as soon as I know the doctor's appointment schedule and my flight plans. The trail to the left had a "Danger! Do Not Pass" sign telling people to take the trail to the right. This wasn't the way Zeke approached his hiking. Rather than a warning, Zeke read the sign as an invitation to explore an area that would be adventurous and exciting. As the others in the group all shited to the right, Zeke slipped past the danger sign to begin an adventure he would later regret. Frank knew there was a correct time and place to reveal his secret and this wasn't it. The issue was that the secret might be revealed despite his best attempt to keep it from coming out. At this point, it was out of his control and completely dependant on those around him who also knew the secret. They wouldn't purposely reveal it, or at least he believed that, but they could easily inadvertently expose it. It was going to be a long hour as he nervously eyed everyone around the table hoping they would keep their mouths shut. It's an unfortunate reality that we don't teach people how to make money (beyond getting a 9 to 5 job) as part of our education system. The truth is there are a lot of different, legitimate ways to make money. That doesn't mean they are easy and that you won't have to work hard to succeed, but it does mean that if you're willing to open your mind a bit you don't have to be stuck in an office from 9 to 5 for the next fifty years o your life. He lifted the bottle to his lips and took a sip of the drink. He had tasted this before, but he couldn't quite remember the time and place it had happened. He desperately searched his mind trying to locate and remember where he had tasted this when the bicycle ran over his foot. There are different types of secrets. She had held onto plenty of them during her life, but this one was different. She found herself holding onto the worst type. It was the type of secret that could gnaw away at your insides if you didn't tell someone about it, but it could end up getting you killed if you did. Why do Americans have so many different types of towels? We have beach towels, hand towels, bath towels, dish towels, camping towels, quick-dry towels, and let’s not forget paper towels. Would 1 type of towel work for each of these things? Let’s take a beach towel. It can be used to dry your hands and body with no difficulty. A beach towel could be used to dry dishes. Just think how many dishes you could dry with one beach towel. I’ve used a beach towel with no adverse effects while camping. If you buy a thin beach towel it can dry quickly too. I’d probably cut up a beach towel to wipe down counters or for cleaning other items, but a full beach towel could be used too. Is having so many types of towels an extravagant luxury that Americans enjoy or is it necessary? I’d say it's overkill and we could cut down on the many types of towels that manufacturers deem necessary. She had been an angel for coming up on 10 years and in all that time nobody had told her this was possible. The fact that it could ever happen never even entered her mind. Yet there she stood, with the undeniable evidence sitting on the ground before her. Angels could lose their wings. The desert wind blew the tumbleweed in front of the car. Alex swerved to avoid the tumbleweed, but he turned the wheel a bit too strong and the car left the road and skidded onto the dirt median. He instantly slammed on the brakes and the car stopped in a cloud of dirt. When the dust cloud had settled and he could see around him again, he realized that he'd somehow crossed over into an entirely new dimension. Barbara had been waiting at the table for twenty minutes. it had been twenty long and excruciating minutes. David had promised that he would be on time today. He never was, but he had promised this one time. She had made him repeat the promise multiple times over the last week until she'd believed his promise. Now she was paying the price. Sometimes that's just the way it has to be. Sure, there were probably other options, but he didn't let them enter his mind. It was done and that was that. It was just the way it had to be. I checked in for the night at Out O The Way motel. What a bad choice that was. First I took a shower and a spider crawled out of the drain. Next, the towel rack fell down when I reached for the one small bath towel. This allowed the towel to fall halfway into the toilet. I tried to watch a movie, but the remote control was sticky and wouldn’t stop scrolling through the channels. I gave up for the night and crawled into bed. I stretched out my leg and felt something furry by my foot. Filled with fear, I reached down and to my surprise, I pulled out a raccoon skin pair of underwear. After my initial relief that it wasn’t alive, the image of a fat, ugly businessman wearing raccoon skin briefs filled my brain. I jumped out of the bed, threw my toothbrush into my bag, and sprinted towards my car. The coin hovered in the air, spinning over and over again. It reached its peak and began to descend. Both boys were pleading with it to land a certain way but the coin had already made up its mind on what it was going to do. Ten more steps. If he could take ten more steps it would be over, but his legs wouldn't move. He tried to will them to work, but they wouldn't listen to his brain. Ten more steps and it would be over but it didn't appear he would be able to do it. It was a simple tip of the hat. Grace didn't think that anyone else besides her had even noticed it. It wasn't anything that the average person would notice, let alone remember at the end of the day. That's why it seemed so unbelievable that this little gesture would ultimately change the course of the world. She sat down with her notebook in her hand, her mind wandering to faraway places. She paused and considered all that had happened. It hadn't gone as expected. When the day began she thought it was going to be a bad one, but as she sat recalling the day's events to write them down, she had to admit, it had been a rather marvelous day. He dropped the ball. While most people would think that this was a metaphor of some type, in Joe's case it was absolutely literal. He had hopes of reaching the Major League and that dream was now it great jeopardy. All because he had dropped the ball. Debbie knew she was being selfish and unreasonable. She understood why the others in the room were angry and frustrated with her and the way she was acting. In her eyes, it didn't really matter how they felt because she simply didn't care. The alarm went off and Jake rose awake. Rising early had become a daily ritual, one that he could not fully explain. From the outside, it was a wonder that he was able to get up so early each morning for someone who had absolutely no plans to be productive during the entire day