It's been a long couple of days: more than 500 miles of solo driving, interspersed with hours of teaching and gig playing, plus driving twice over a bridge that made my hands sweat and my knees shake. But I managed to get to the other side, and today I woke up to cool gusts swirling through the open windows of the doll-house. The heat wave has broken.

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Today: housework, a baseball game, the usual Sunday patterns. Mid-morning we may walk up to the AME church to sit on the curb outside and listen to gospel music. We're not very good churchgoers, but we do like the sounds. By the way, somebody has been driving around this neighborhood in a white van and blasting Bob Dylan's "Tombstone Blues." That is another sound I like.

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I haven't mentioned politics for a while, which I'm sure you feel is just as well. But really: how stupid can they be? This presidency is turning out to be the plot of an Ian Fleming novel--one of the ones he thought was too obvious for publication and instead used the pages to wrap up old soup bones for the trash.

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Tomorrow I start a new work project: copyediting the winners of the Juniper Prizes. I am looking forward to taking a break from academic editing and immersing myself in these collections. I'll be doing at least one book of poems and one of short stories. Maybe I'll even end up doing all four; that's not clear yet.

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People keep telling me to read the Elena Ferrante novels. What's your opinion on that? I hate to jump on bandwagons, plus the cover art on those paperbacks are terrible, but are the stories themselves actually good?

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Yesterday Tom accidentally bought a four-pound Arctic char when he meant to buy a two-pound one, so the refrigerator is now filled with the meaty remains of a giant baked fish. My plan is to pick the bones and make fried fishcakes for dinner. I am very fond of accidents.

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While I was away teaching and driving, Tom visited a photo gallery, bought some tiny watercolor prints at an open-air sale, listened to records, acquired the aforementioned giant fish, and made a 3-d mockup of his proposed kitchen plans. He seemed very cheerful when I returned.

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I am reading an Iris Murdoch novel I've never seen before: The Flight from the Enchanter, first published in 1956. It is encased in one of those utilitarian library hardcover bindings that were so ubiquitous in my youth: you know, the ones that seem more or less like book linoleum, varying only in color (though gray and green are common), with the titles stamped on the spines in a sturdy white font. I feel quite sentimental when I hold it in my hands.