1. It had been a late night. To be more correct, it had been an early morning. It was now 3:00 AM and George was just getting home. He wasn't sure if it had been worth it. He was supposed to have been
finished by 10:00 PM, but his boss had implored him to stay and help when it was clear they weren't
going to meet the 10:00 PM target time. So, he had stayed an extra 5 hours and lost a good night's sleep for something he didn't really believe in, but he did anyway because he was afraid if he refused
he might lose his job.
2. Housework could be everyone’s work, not just
“women’s work”. Why do women enable men to act oblivious to cleaning, grocery shopping, pet feeding, etc? Somehow when men live alone they figure out how to do all of those things all on their own. My friend’s husband claimed he didn’t know that sheets should be washed more than once a season. He said he didn’t know one had to clean toilets. He assumed that since you flush toilets they
clean themselves. She tried to get him to help but he did an awful job so she let him off the hook.
Wouldn’t it be better if she spent the time and energy to get him to do it right instead of letting him claim he is “just bad at it”. My sons were raised
to clean toilets and change their own sheets.
Hopefully, in their future homes, the housework will be equally divided.
3. Matt told her to reach for the stars, but Veronica thought it was the most ridiculous advice she'd ever received. Sure, it had been well-meaning when
he said it, but she didn't understand why anyone would want to suggest something that would literally kill you if you actually managed to achieve
it.
4. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all.
And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and
the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day
would be Christmas...
5. There had to be a better way. That's all Nancy could think as she sat at her desk staring at her computer screen. She'd already spent five years of her life in
this little cubicle staring at her computer doing
"work" that didn't seem to matter to anyone including her own boss. There had to be more to her life than this and there had to be a better way
to make a living. That's what she was thinking when the earthquake struck.
6. Sometimes it just doesn't make sense. The man walking down the street in a banana suit. The llama
standing in the middle of the road. The fairies dancing in front of the car window. The fact that all of this was actually happening and wasn't a dream.
7. It had become a far too common an event in her life. She has specifically placed the key to the box in
a special place so that she wouldn't lose it and know exactly where it was when the key was needed. Now that she needed to open the box, she
had absolutely no idea where that special spot she placed the key might be.
8. The water rush down the wash and into the slot canyon below. Two hikers had started the day to sunny weather without a cloud in the sky, but they
hadn't thought to check the weather north of the canyon. Huge thunderstorms had brought a deluge o rain and produced flash floods heading
their way. The two hikers had no idea what was coming.
9. It was supposed to be a dream vacation. They had planned it over a year in advance so that it would be perfect in every way. It had been what they had
been looking forward to through all the turmoil and negativity around them. It had been the light
at the end of both their tunnels. Now that the dream vacation was only a week away, the virus
had stopped all air travel.
10. Betty decided to write a short story and she was sure it was going to be amazing. She had already written it in her head and each time she thought about it she grinned from ear to ear knowing how
wonderful it would be. She could imagine the accolades coming in and the praise she would
receive for creating such a wonderful piece. She was therefore extremely frustrated when she actually sat down to write the short story and the story that was so beautiful inside her head refused
to come out that way on paper.
