This weekend my father turns 70, so I'll be baking a lemon cake today and then tomorrow leaving my three cake-deprived boys to their own devices while my mother, my sister, and I convene for a small surprise weekend. (Note to my father's friends: you know nothing.) Meanwhile, James will be attending a masquerade ball . . . dressed as a mustache. I cannot believe that I will be missing this and can only beg him to send pictures.

In between editing and election fretting, I've continued to work on my essay about poetry-writing states of mind, which is suddenly overflowing with famous men. So far I've introduced Thoreau, Auden, Graves, Fowles, and Coleridge, and I'm only on page 5. I'm not sure if this bodes well for my desk; already the book stack is tottering. Moreover, James has managed to get Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer" stuck in my head, and who knows what effect that will have on any writing I get done? Not an effect that Thoreau, Auden, Graves, or Fowles would care for: I do know that. Coleridge, on the other hand. . . .

By the way, my mother, Janice Miller Potter, has a poem out in the new issue of Poet Lore. This is an excellent journal, and I'm really pleased for her.

Dinner tonight: oven-fried chicken and dumplings, kale, salad greens with roasted red onions, brownies (as a sop to complaining boys who won't get any of the lemon cake I'm making for my dad)