It’s the lovely, gracious, talented, and all around awesome serasempre‘s birthday!

I hope you celebrate in style, babe. Wish I was there to bring you cake and kisses and all kinds of happy.

So, six-hour drive on Friday, six-hour drive on Monday, and what am I doing during? Plotting my latest novel? Contemplating the world’s problems? Engaging my toddler in educational word games?

No. I’m thinking about all the music mixes I need to make for our next road trip.

Specifically, a Long Songs mix, a Girls’ Names Mix, and a Cities Mix. (I think I’m going to be doing a totally cheesy Anthemic Rock Mix, too, but that sort of makes itself.)

Long Songs seems easy — throw on some Yes, Guns & Roses’ “November Rain,” any number of live Dead songs, and the Allman Brothers’ thirty-minute “Mountain Jam” and you’re good to go, but I want better suggestions. I’m thinking over seven minutes as criteria.

Girls’ Names will be fun, although the mix might end up heavily Springsteen-oriented if I’m not careful. Again, sugggestions?

And Cities is maybe the most (for me) ambitious because … I’m not sure why it occurred to me, and I can’t think of many songs with cities in the title off the top of my head. Um…

and the livin’ is easy.

I’m sitting here savoring what was nearly a perfect day. (Very few things are PERFECT perfect, but this day gets a 98 out of 100.)

Slept in. Lazed a little bit, caught up on some email, ate some breakfast.

And then went to the beach! FairHaven Beach, part of a state park here on Lake Ontario, only twenty minutes from our house, and reached via nearly deserted, mostly picturesque country roads. It was almost unbearably hot when we left the house, and the temperature at the beach was nicely lower, with a good stiff breeze.

I’ll admit it, I’m an ocean girl all the way. Atlantic, specifically, anything from New Jersey’s choppy, slightly gray water to the slurry green tide of the Outer Banks to Florida’s clear warmth. But the lake was awesome! The water was cool, but very clear, and shallow enough that Sara could walk in up to her shoulders even twenty feet out.

And it’s a park, so trees! Shade! Picnic tables! Playground! Clean bathrooms! (Well, you know, clean *enough*.) We spent a good four hours all told, sluicing off the heat in the water, eating an admittedly overpriced lunch from the snack bar (next time = cooler and bag lunches) at a shady picnic table, and watching Sara and Ben tear all over the playground before we left. We even parked IN THE SHADE.

And when we got home, there were lovely cooling showers, and fish fry for dinner, with corn on the cob and cake for dessert! Now we’re sitting on the screened porch, the coolest place in the house, after a short but refreshing thunderstorm, with citronella candles flickering and watching Daredevil. (That’s at least one of the points off the day, if you ask me.)

Very nearly perfect. Now I just need someone to bring me a beer.

I know what my true career path should be. Get ready, it’s big.

Sitting on the porch, smoking cigarettes, drinking Corona, and playing air guitar to Stevie Ray Vaughan. Or Clapton. Or Garcia. I’m not picky about that part, really, but I am VERY good at it.

I’m just saying. This could be my job, right? Right?!

When you see this, post a couple of quotations from your own favorite writers. These should be people you read over and over again, not people who had one great idea; go ahead and do it from memory, mistakes and all.

Louisa May Alcott, from Little Women:

It wasn’t at all the thing, I’m afraid, but the minute she was fairly married, Meg cried, “The first kiss for Marmee!” and, turning, gave it with her heart on her lips.

Sylvia Plath, from “Morning Song”:

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Edith Wharton, from The Age of Innocence:

There was no use in trying to emancipate a wife who had not the dimmest notion that she was not free; and he had long since discovered that May’s only use of the liberty she supposed herself to possess would be to lay it on the altar of her wifely adoration.

Stephen King, from On Writing:

This is a short book because most books about writing are filled with bullshit.

Lorrie Moore, from “How to Beoome a Writer”:

First, try to be something, anything, else. A movie star/astronaut. A movie star/ missionary. A movie star/kindergarten teacher. President of the World. Fail miserably. It is best if you fail at an early age – say, 14. Early, critical disillusionment is necessary so that at 15 you can write long haiku sequences about thwarted desire…This is the required pain and suffering. This is only for starters.

I say “great” with just a hint of irony. Stephen took the kids out to the backyard.

Didn’t diminish their excitement, though, especially Sara. At three, the idea of sleeping OUTSIDE in a TENT at NIGHT was, to be blunt, the bomb. Even Ben was keyed up.

It was perfect weather, too. High of about 72 yesterday, no humidity, not a cloud in the sky. So Stephen and the kids got the tent out yesterday afternoon and set it up in the flattest part of the yard. They gathered flashlights and marshmallows and the makings of a small fire in an old hibachi, and unrolled the sleeping bags in preparation. After dinner, Stephen waited until about 9 p.m. to take them outside, and they trooped out, dressed in long sleeves and pajama pants, with their pillows (and Sara’s bear).

Sara wanted to know why I wasn’t camping with them. The tent’s not big enough, for one (it’s 7′ by 7′), but there’s my ironclad rule: If a bed is available, INDOORS, there’s no sleeping on the ground, inside a tent or not. I went to Girl Scout camp in 1977 for a week, and even the raised platform tent and cots were too rough for me. I don’t like dirt, I don’t like bugs, and I am, I’m sure, distantly related to the Princess of “And the Pea” fame. Flat or not, there’s no part of that yard that would even approximate my mattress.

And secretly, I wasn’t convinced that the three people who trooped out to the tent would say there all night. Wrong. According to Stephen, who came in to use the bathroom sometime around eleven, Sara fell asleep within minutes, and Ben dropped off not long after. Which left my poor husband lying on the lumpy ground, staring at the ceiling of the tent, trying to sleep.

There was no fishing or hiking, no gathering firewood or … well, whatever else it is you do when camping, but it was a hit. Up till about five a.m., that is, when Stephen said all three of them were shivering (I think the temperature dropped down to 50 last night), and the birds and the dogs across the street were making a godawful racket.

Now we’ll see how often Sara, who latches onto ideas like a pit bull, wants to “camp”.

1) Lady, the laws of physics will prevent you from wearing that tube top, even if the laws of good taste don’t.

2) Who raised you? No, really, WHO RAISED YOU?!

3) Oh please, random young hot guy, with your slightly scuzzy bad-boy vibe, could you just stand there a while longer and let me look at you? Pretty please? With beer and cigarettes on top?

4) Do you really think it shows proper planning to shop for a suit for a 9 a.m. interview at 8:50 p.m. the NIGHT BEFORE?!

5) No, I’m not an escaped mental patient. The humidity has taken out its aggression on my innocent hair.

I *just* watched Brokeback Mountain for the first time last night. Yeah, yeah, I know, a bit behind the curve. But man, am I glad I finally saw it.

First, BEAUTIFUL. The photography, the lighting, the tone. (And yeah, the geography certainly helped, but still.) Second, BEAUTIFUL. The performances were fantastic, with the possible exception of Anne Hathaway (whom wasn’t given much to work with) and Jake Gyllenhaal’s sideburns and mustache, which were obviously campaigning for a nomination themselves. Heath Ledger deserved every nomination he received — his peformance was gorgeously restrained, but very intense. Lovely, lovely work.

And the story! Christ, I sobbed through the last twenty-five minutes. You all know at what, I’m sure, and even though I had absorbed some of the movie’s key moments through cultural osmosis, it didn’t dim their impact at all. Those shirts. God.

What was interesting, too, was that it made me a bit homesick. Homesick for a place I loved and hated, where I lived for only one year, but homesick nonetheless.

Stephen and I spent April of 1996 to April of 1997 in Powell, Wyoming, about two hours north of Riverton, where much of Brokeback takes place. Same enormous sky, same slightly barren landscape (in Riverton, that is, not on the mountain), same faded melancholy to aging buildings and streets, same circumspect realism to the people.

We didn’t like it much when we were there. We were two kids from Jersey in a town of 2,500 people, two hours south of the closest mall and completely ignorant of hunting, ice fishing, and ranching, a bit unnerved by the empty stretches of land surrounding town on all sides. But there was a definite peace to life out there, and a lot of beauty — hello, Yellowstone, and the ranches out on the South Fork past Cody.

Ben was born there, our “cowboy” baby. One day, we’d very much like to go back and show him where we lived, and visit Yellowstone again (when I’m not pregnant and therefore slow and cranky).

Also? If you haven’t seen Brokeback Mountain and you can stand a romance without a happy ending, see it NOW.

Our local weekly paper has an awesome ad this week:

FREE TO GOOD HOME: Billy goat, one to two years old. Found wandering loose.

A goat! For free!

I swear, I’m almost tempted.