Music is playing in my ears. The rain is pouring down and in the background of this experience lightning is flashing all around me and thunder is roaring. This is the beginning of what sounds like an incredibly depressing scenario. Why do storms always seem so melodramatic? Why can music set a scene, paint a picture, and change an emotional experience?

Sitting two feet from me is my giant chocolate lab. He is the combination of dog, human child, man, woman, mother, puppy, spider, knight in shining armor, lover, and teddy bear all in tiny parts that make the collective. He, quite honestly, is a marvel of a dog.

Right next to him is my other dog Spaniel. She is tiny, neurotic, incredibly emotional, snotty, needy, clingy, and irritating about ninety seven percent of the time. She is also the greatest cuddler on God's planet, and should you ever feel down or lonely or sickly, she will love on you until kingdom come without moving an inch, unless you want her to. I joke that I hate her, but the truth is that at three o'clock in the morning, you would probably find me snuggled right up to her fast asleep.

Did I mention to you that the storms seemed to roll in right after you left? Did I mention that they seem to be worse at night?

I find that the conversations playing out in my mind are a bit ridiculous. I talk to him, even though he isn't here. I tell him things, even though he doesn't hear me. I think on some level I have to believe that he does hear me. I think that when two bodies, two hearts, to souls are enmeshed and intertwined together so that they are no longer just soldered together, but actually rusted together from time, they have to be able to feel each other even from opposite sides of the planet. It's almost like even the poles can't keep us apart. Or maybe it's actually that they're holding us together.

The sand is trying to corrode us. I can feel it burning against our skin, and sucking us dry. Its powers of depletion are intense. It cloaks itself in an armor of heat and wind and before we know it we're turning into sand ourselves. Don't let it get us baby. Don't let it win. Bring on that thunder, lightning and rain, and wash over us and make us new.