A Billion Diamonds
We were camping in redwood forest
area of California
not far from a swampy section of a river that was filled with cattails,
reeds,
and various other five to six foot grassy vegetation. There
was a beaten down path through the
middle of the acre of soggy vegetation that lead towards the mouth of
the river
as it
entered the ocean. It was early summer
when the days were warm and the nights were cool. We had
walked this path a dozen times during
mid-day and didn’t notice anything unusual.
One
early morning we decided to
go on a walk before breakfast and entered the long marsh path only to
be both
in awe and a little unnerved.
Considering the height of the vegetation, everywhere, as far as one
could see, there were glowing twinkling spider webs.
Thousands of spiral webs had small dewdrops dangling from them
all glittering like a billion diamonds in the early morning
sunlight. Amazingly, within an hour the sun’s light
changed, the dew dried or fell off, and the webs became completely
invisible
again. Mother Nature was more than
impressive that morning.
--- Pat
Buttons
Last
year we visited Hawaii and booked a room
at one of the large hotels. We had
parked our rental car in the garage on level one just below the main
lobby. Being that we were on vacation
and considered ourselves too laid back in Hawaii to walk up the short
flight of
stairs, we took the elevator. After
pushing the “L” for “lazy”
button, the door closed and the elevator started
up. Less than a minute of rising later,
the elevator just stopped. We looked at
each other, then started pushing the “L” for
“looser” button, hoping the act of
pushing the button repeatedly would make the box move again.
After five minutes and all twenty buttons
were pushed repeatedly, the elevator started up again. We
hadn’t finished our exhaled relief when
the elevator stopped again after moving up maybe a foot.
However, this time the door opened to reveal
the lobby where everything and everyone acted as if nothing had
happened. We glanced at the completely lit up button
panel and scurried off before the door closed again.
---
Mac
Pass
the Pass
It
was an awful long time ago
when we were teenagers just old enough to drive that a group of twelve
girlfriends and I went on a weekend “retreat” in
Desert Hot
Springs, CA. We couldn’t afford anything and pooled
our
money just to rent one hotel room. Each
of us had raided our parent’s pantries and grabbed whatever
easily opened
uncookable food we could carry so we wouldn’t have to buy
anything. It’s bad enough that two of us rented the
hotel
room and then the rest of us meandered into the building paired off and
rendezvoused at the room, but we had to take it one step
further.
Down the street was a resort spa that
required a purchased pass for access to a combined twelve pools and hot
spas
for the weekend. Two of us purchased the
pass and entered, and then we went to the fence area hidden by the
dressing
rooms and passed the pass through the fence to the next set of girls to
get in. After we were all in, we were too afraid to
sit together for fear of being caught, so we ended up sitting around
separated in
pairs enjoying the facility attempting to act as if we didn’t
know each
other. Looking back on it now, you’d
think the management would have easily figured out what was going on,
as it was
obvious that we did know each other after several of my girlfriends
stupidly started
sharing lotions, sunscreens, snacks and drinks with each other walking
from
cabaña to cabaña to cabaña and picking up or dropping
off whatever. Regardless, we had a
fabulous time.
---
JCW