Today I am at the community pool with my best friend Brittany and Brittany's new friend Drew. I'm wearing my favorite tangerine orange bikini. I also just had my favorite snack, which is an ice-cream taco. This should be a really fun time. Only, it's not. At least not for me. "WATCH ME DO A CARTWHEEL!" shouts Drew. We're over on the grassy part, by the fence. I watch Drew do a perfect cartwheel in her pink and purple stri...

4:30 in the morning. Up BEFORE the crack of dawn. It's pitch black out. There isn't a sound. Up before the birds. I am half asleep. No, scratch that. I am more than half asleep. More like 3/4 asleep! Sweat-shirt, jeans...I stumble around the room, getting dressed. I feel like a sleep-walker. My sister groans and turns over in bed. Lucky! I think. I try to be considerate, though. I don't want to wake her up. So why am I do...

Margo sat huddled in the dark basement. Upstairs, she heard the "click" of the back-door opening - opening in a sneaky sinister sort of a way. That door was supposed to be locked! Margo thought, her heart racing. How did he get in so easily? Wow, this is creepy! I feel like I'm in some kind of horror movie. How did I get to be in this situation, anyway? But Margo already knew the answer to that question. The reason she wa...

COUPLES Two people meet.They smile.they giggle.They flirt.They joke.They laugh.They're giddy.They are intrigued.They are infatuated.They are smitten.They dance.They touch.They hope.They dream.They fall in love. They become a couple.It's magical.It's joyful.It's beautiful, in a riding off into the sunset sort of way.The years go by.The couple gets tired.They gripe.They complain.They criticize.They argue.They hit below the...

Maura and Wendi were best friends. One could say they were best friends because no one else wanted to be friends with them. They were both rather depressing and morose girls in their early twenties - an age when girls should be anything but depressing and morose. Why? Well, for one thing, they weren't exactly what society would deem "beautiful," or even "half-way pretty." Maura was quite overweight - at least fifty pounds...

Bored, Suburban Style Lucy was so bored. Every morning, she got up at 6:30 sharp when the alarm went off. Then she padded out to the kitchen on the freezing cold parkay floor to make her husband Jerry a cup of strong coffee. She also refilled Tootsie Roll the cat's dry kibble bowl and gave him fresh water. (Tootsie Roll was named by Lucy's seven year old daughter Minnie.) After that, she padded back into the small bedroom...

Ginny was irritated. Another day of single digit temperatures. She had the worst case of cabin fever ever - even if her "cabin" was a perfectly respectable $300,000 home in a lovely suburb in Madison, Wisconsin. Was there no end in sight? A string of frigid temperatures - the other day, the wind chill was negative thirty - and a brand new snow storm every few days, rendering driving to the store a truly dangerous undertak...