Pink ponies and purple giraffes roamed the field.

Cotton candy grew from the ground as a chocolate

river meandered off to the side. What looked like stones in the pasture were actually rock candy.

Everything in her dream seemed to be perfect except for the fact that she had no mouth.

I've rented a car in Las Vegas and have reserved a hotel in Twentynine Palms which is just north of

Joshua Tree. We'll drive from Las Vegas through Mojave National Preserve and possibly do a short

hike on our way down. Then spend all day on Monday at Joshua Tree. We can decide the next

morning if we want to do more in Joshua Tree or Mojave before we head back.

He heard the loud impact before he ever saw the result. It had been so loud that it had actually

made him jump back in his seat. As soon as he recovered from the surprise, he saw the crack in the

windshield. It seemed to be an analogy of the current condition of his life.

The lone lamp post of the one-street town flickered, not quite dead but definitely on its way out.

Suitcase by her side, she paid no heed to the light, the street or the town. A car was coming down

the street and with her arm outstretched and thumb in the air, she had a plan.

Sleeping in his car was never the plan but sometimes things don't work out as planned. This had

been his life for the last three months and he was just beginning to get used to it. He didn't actually

enjoy it, but he had accepted it and come to terms with it. Or at least he thought he had. All that

changed when he put the key into the ignition, turned it and the engine didn't make a sound.

I inadvertently went to See's Candy last week (I was in the mall looking for phone repair), and as it

turns out, See's Candy now charges a dollar -- a full dollar -- for even the simplest of their wee

confection offerings. I bought two chocolate lollipops and two chocolate-caramel-almond things. The

total cost was four-something. I mean, the candies were tasty and all, but let's be real: A Snickers

bar is fifty cents. After this dollar-per-candy revelation, I may not find myself wandering dreamily
back into a See's Candy any time soon.

It was a question of which of the two she preferred. On the one hand, the choice seemed simple.

The more expensive one with a brand name would be the choice of most. It was the easy choice.

The safe choice. But she wasn't sure she actually preferred it.

There was a time when he would have embraced the change that was coming. In his youth, he

sought adventure and the unknown, but that had been years ago. He wished he could go back and

learn to find the excitement that came with change but it was useless. That curiosity had long left

him to where he had come to loathe anything that put him out of his comfort zone.

Balloons are pretty and come in different colors, different shapes, different sizes, and they can even

adjust sizes as needed. But don't make them too big or they might just pop, and then bye-bye

balloon. It'll be gone and lost for the rest of mankind. They can serve a variety of purposes, from

decorating to water balloon wars. You just have to use your head to think a little bit about what to do

with them.

Since they are still preserved in the rocks for us to see, they must have been formed quite recently,

that is, geologically speaking. What can explain these striations and their common orientation? Did

you ever hear about the Great Ice Age or the Pleistocene Epoch? Less than one million years ago,

in fact, some 12,000 years ago, an ice sheet many thousands of feet thick rode over Burke

Mountain in a southeastward direction. The many boulders frozen to the underside of the ice sheet

tended to scratch the rocks over which they rode. The scratches or striations seen in the park rocks

were caused by these attached boulders. The ice sheet also plucked and rounded Burke Mountain

into the shape it possesses today.

The wave crashed and hit the sandcastle head-on. The sandcastle began to melt under the waves
force and as the wave receded, half the sandcastle was gone. The next wave hit, not quite as

strong, but still managed to cover the remains of the sandcastle and take more of it away. The third

wave, a big one, crashed over the sandcastle completely covering and engulfing it. When it receded,

there was no trace the sandcastle ever existed and hours of hard work disappeared forever.

Colors bounced around in her head. They mixed and threaded themselves together. Even colors

that had no business being together. They were all one, yet distinctly separate at the same time.

How was she going to explain this to the others?

There was something special about this little creature. Donna couldn't quite pinpoint what it was, but

she knew with all her heart that it was true. It wasn't a matter of if she was going to try and save it,

but a matter of how she was going to save it. She went back to the car to get a blanket and when

she returned the creature was gone.

I'm meant to be writing at this moment. What I mean is, I'm meant to be writing something else at

this moment. The document I'm meant to be writing is, of course, open in another program on my

computer and is patiently awaiting my attention. Yet here I am plonking down senseless sentiments

in this paragraph because it's easier to do than to work on anything particularly meaningful. I am

grateful for the distraction.

Do you really listen when you are talking with someone? I have a friend who listens in an unforgiving

way. She actually takes every word you say as being something important and when you have a

friend that listens like that, words take on a whole new meaning.

It seemed like it should have been so simple. There was nothing inherently difficult with getting the

project done. It was simple and straightforward enough that even a child should have been able to

complete it on time, but that wasn't the case. The deadline had arrived and the project remained
unfinished.

Josh had spent year and year accumulating the information. He knew it inside out and if there was

ever anyone looking for an expert in the field, Josh would be the one to call. The problem was that

there was nobody interested in the information besides him and he knew it. Years of information

painstakingly memorized and sorted with not a sole giving even an ounce of interest in the topic.

They rushed out the door, grabbing anything and everything they could think of they might need.

There was no time to double-check to make sure they weren't leaving something important behind.

Everything was thrown into the car and they sped off. Thirty minutes later they were safe and that

was when it dawned on them that they had forgotten the most important thing of all.

I inadvertently went to See's Candy last week (I was in the mall looking for phone repair), and as it

turns out, See's Candy now charges a dollar -- a full dollar -- for even the simplest of their wee

confection offerings. I bought two chocolate lollipops and two chocolate-caramel-almond things. The

total cost was four-something. I mean, the candies were tasty and all, but let's be real: A Snickers

bar is fifty cents. After this dollar-per-candy revelation, I may not find myself wandering dreamily

back into a See's Candy any time soon.

He watched as the young man tried to impress everyone in the room with his intelligence. There was

no doubt that he was smart. The fact that he was more intelligent than anyone else in the room

could have been easily deduced, but nobody was really paying any attention due to the fact that it

was also obvious that the young man only cared about his intelligence.