2 . I Still Look for Patches

Aren’t we lucky, when we had a childhood friend willing to be our everlasting, faithful companion(同伴)？I can still remember the day I met my special _________ .

One spring evening, my mother and I patiently waited for my father to come home. His_________ in the doorway made no clear impression on my mind. Suddenly, I heard a_________ “Yip”. “Did I hear something? Daddy, please tell me. What was that?”

As he_________ his pocket he answered, “Nothing. It was only my pocket.” The look on my face must have been a sign of_________.

“Amy!” Softly, daddy called.

I slowly turned around to look at daddy’s_________. There, crawled in his palm was a little dog. _________ several brown spots on her white fur, I named her, “Patches(斑点).”

Patches became a_________ and blame taker. If I was troubled, I could depend on her two ears to listen_________ to everything I had to say. If unfortunately I broke a glass, my trusting companion would willingly__________ responsibility. Her__________ devotion(奉献) only made it hard to separate from her.

When I was about 10, my family moved into a house which wasn’t__________ enough to contain a dog. Sadly, we had to__________ her. My auntie, owning a house with vast pieces of land, __________ her.

I can still remember her eyes__________ at me forlornly(可怜地) as she left. The__________ in her eyes will be with me forever.

I saw her once or twice before she__________. Until my dying day, I shall always expect to see her. I believe that, to this very day, she is still trying to find her way back to her true home. Because I have no__________ that she died, I continue to have faith. The picture is__________ in my mind: a thin white dog comes jumping up, __________ me in loving dog kisses.

3 . Margie and John Stites were picking out carpet and hardware finishes for a new 3,000-square-foot home here three years ago when Margie Stites came to a startling realization. “We’d already put a $17,000 deposit down, but I didn’t want to have another house again,” said Margie Stites. “I cried for three days; it was so hard.”

When the couple rolled a 41-foot Monaco Knight motor home into the Las Vegas Motorcoach Resort, it was supposed to be a temporary stay while their dream house was completed. But the resort became their permanent place when the couple found something unexpected: an area with all the facilities of high-end gated suburban communities, without the upkeep and bother of a traditional piece of property.

The resort has a terra-cotta-roofed clubhouse, five pools, two hot tubs, a fitness center, tennis courts, twice-weekly water aerobics classes and a nine-hole putting course — all at the center of a maze of 407 lots where owners and renters park RVs (recreational vehicles).

The Stiteses canceled the house and instead bought a 35-by-80-foot lot for $95, 000 in early 2016. They added an outdoor barbecue and bar, an expansive roofed living space and a large storage cabinet that also houses a washer and dryer. “I can’t tell you how many people have come to town to visit us and seen the property and said, ‘Oh, I would never leave,’ ” Margie Stites said. “They say to us, ‘I had no idea you were living like this.’ ”

The Stiteses are not alone. Eugene McCord and his family sold their 4,400-square-foot home in 2017 to live here in the motor home full time. “You quit shopping for furniture and many other things needed to equip a permanent house,” McCord said. “You buy food in reasonable amounts. And this can be cleaned in 30 minutes, so you have more free time.”

Sales of motor homes, and the whole RV industry, have boomed this decade, owing largely to both the rising number of retirees in the United States and the increasingly relaxed view employers have of telecommuting. Vast improvements in mobile technology have made it possible for younger adults to pursue careers and a vagabond (漂泊的) existence at the same time.

4 . Sara Kays, a singer-songwriter from Indiana sees music as not only a passion but an outlet for her thoughts and feelings. As a ________ star on video platform, she not only uses TikTok to ________ her music, but posts partially-finished snippets (片段) of songs to get feedback from her ________. “It’s been cool to ________ people that way, and sometimes I’ll ________ to a comment of someone asking me if I could write a song about an idea they suggested.” said Kays.

Kays has been using online platforms to pursue her ________ to maximum effect. About three years ago, Kays ________ the app TikTok just to try it out. Now, she is a TikTok celebrity (名人) with about 1.3 million followers. She ________ her breakup song Remember That Night last year. This specific post ________ with almost three million views in just a few days.

Kays has ________ singing since she was young. At 11, she got a ________ from her mother and then started to sing while playing. Two years later, she started to ________ some live videos on YouTube, which got her more followers. At 17, Kays ________ to songwriting to help her deal with the confusion of adolescence.

Different from other content creators who update their content ________, Kays updates on a weekly ________ and only posts videos about her songs and ________ stories, such as singing, playing the guitar, recording or ________ music videos in the studio. Her videos are always ________ and simple, needing only three elements—her producer Martinez, a microphone and water to make.

“I feel very ________ to have the opportunity to release songs and that all these people are listening to them online.” said Kays. Recently, Kays has ________ with a music company. She hopes to sing live and go on tour.

6 . 35-year-old Stephanie Hongo has created over 100 sculptures(雕塑) of animals made completely out of wastes. Stephanie, who created her artworks under the name Sugarfox, explained that she________wastes to make her artworks as she was short of money after________her job in May, 2017. She was________by the artist Bordalo II, who made large installations(装置) out of________years ago.

She made a rule that she would________buy plastic for her sculptures. “I won’t ever buy________. I would not like to buy anything________the paint I need,” she said. “I________ask for plastic pipes or old basketballs on community pages on Facebook.”

Despite using recycled materials, Stephanie didn’t________the title of “eco-artist”as she used paint to complete her pieces. “I do find it________to tell people that I’m not an eco-artist. The recycling part of my art is something I’m________of, but it’s not the driving force behind it.”

The animal kingdom is Stephanie’s favorite________and she likes how putting wastes together gives her________a fantastic look. She________between ten hours and two weeks on each piece and has developed a way of________a perfect piece of waste for her artworks. “Some pieces need hundreds of pieces of wastes Ping pong balls are________used in my art as well as old telephones and lots of plastic toys.”

Stephanie, who________her artworks on her webpage Instagram’ sugarfox_art, said that she started to________her eight-foot long tiger for $300. She________to one day create a winged dragon________ten feet.

7 . With sunset on the horizon, Chad Rissman and his uncle Darrin Vick had waited all day for one bite. They were just sitting there talking when ______ the line got tight and ______. With that light bite, they got ______ in an unforgettable fishing tale.

Darrin was going to grab the ______. As the leader (接钩线) was coming up, Chad said he'd get hold of the shark. But before Darrin could, an eagle swept in and ______ the shark as its own. "In the sunset, the way ______ lined up for shooting; I couldn't have ______ a better time," said Chad. The family ______ their phones and ______ the moment.

Then, they ______ the line and got the line and hook away from the eagle.

"I think they did a really great job. It could have been a lot ______," said Kim Begay with the Clearwater Audubon Society and Audubon Center for Birds of Prey. Begay ______   that eagle as Eugene, first ______   in Bradenton in 2017, after breaking her leg. "The first time she broke her leg, she was in rehab (康复中心) for about eight ______   and she was in rehab at a very ______ time when she would be learning how to hunt and ______ her parents' hunt. Eugene appears to now be looking for easy ______," Begay explained.

If Eugene or any other bird is hooked, Begay suggested following these steps. "If you hook a bird ______, or the bird has line wrapped around them, you have to remove and then ______. If not, a bird could end up in ______."

9 . At a young age, Patti Wilson was an epileptic (癫痫病患者). Her father, Jim Wilson, is a morning jogger. One day Patti said, “Daddy, what I’d really love to do is ________ with you every day, but I’m ________ I’ll have a seizure (癫痫发作).” Her father told her, “If you do, I know how to ________ it so let’s start running!”

That’s just what they did every day. It was a ________ experience for them to share and there were no seizures at all. After a few weeks, she told her father, “Daddy, what I’d really love to do is ________ the world’s long distance running record for women.” Her father ________ the Guiness Book of World Records and found that the ________ any woman had run was 80 miles. As a freshman in high school, Patti ________, “I’m going to run from Orange County up to San Francisco.” (A distance of 400 milcs.)

________ her handicap, Patti was as ambitious as she was enthusiastic, but she said she ________ the handicap of being an epileptic as simply an inconvenience. She focused not on what she had lost, but on what she had ________.

In her sophomore year (二年级) Patti’s classmates got ________ her. They built a giant poster that ________, “Run, Patti, Run!” She finished her second marathon Portland, ________ her last mile with the governor of Oregon. After four months of almost ________ running from the West Coast to the East Coast, Patti arrived in Washington. She told the media, “I wanted people to know that epileptics are ________ human beings.”

I told this story at one of my seminars not long ago, and afterward a big teary-eyed man came up to me, ________ his big hand and said, “Mark, my name is Jim Wilson. You were talking about my daughter, Patti.” Because of her constant ________, he told me, enough money had been ________ to open up 19 multi-million-dollar epileptic centers around the country.

If Patti Wilson can do so much with so little, what can you do to outperform (超出) yourself in a state of total ________?