You say it's your birthday?

It's my sister's birthday, too!!!! OK, that's a great, big lie. I really should be honest and confess that I lie all the time. It's not vicious, it's just.... poetic license. The big lie is so much more interesting than the ordinary truth. So it's not really Amy's birthday. Her birthday was last week. I sang happy birthday to her several times that day, and for the next few days I kept singing. I like birthdays. I believe that people should make a great, big fuss for them. I try to be modest and all, but really -- I think birthdays call for cards and *huge* presents and big slabs of tiramisu and candles and parties and party hats and flowers and fireworks.

(Emphasis on the fireworks.)

(And the tiramisu.)

(Hey, man, cake is good, regardless of the occasion.)

Anyway, Amy's birthday was last week, and I missed it. I'm here, and she's there. Bummer.

But that's OK, because I've been working on a surprise for her, anyway. I estimate that I will get it into the mail on Wednesday, God willin' and the creek don't rise.

Oooo, but the creek just might rise. We're having the most spectacular thunderstorms here tonight!!!! They're putting on a glorious lightning show -- 'way off high in the clouds of the night sky, I saw jags and fountains of lightning that lit up the tops of the clouds for miles. That was before the rain broke open and tried to wash some gullies/ strangle some frogs/ [insert Southern euphemism here].

After the rain, I ran to a convenience store for milk -- OK, milk and Guacamole Doritos. Yummers. That was almost another lie by omission. Anyway!!!! I went to the convenience store for *stuff*, and that's about a 15-mile drive, round-trip. It was so hot here earlier today that the torrential rains didn't even totally cool the roads. At midnight, there was still steam rising from the surface, causing a thin mist to hang softly in the cooling night air.

If I haven't mentioned it in the last five minutes, I love summer. I love the South. I love the way the night air smells in the country, all green and hot and fertile. I love the way the clerk in the convenience store thinks nothing of chatting with you for five minutes about which trees smell good in summer (almost everything) and which ones smell bad (chestnut and something else I haven't identified; it smells like extra-salty Fritos).

I wouldn't live anywhere else on earth. I don't think I *could* live somewhere else. I just love this place, this time, this *home*.

And happy late birthday to Yamy -- I'm going to be nice to her, even though she moved all the way across the continent to get away from me, my Southern propaganda, and my very late birthday gifts.