Thanks Weekend Dad!

The transition from stay-at-home dad to what's more or less weekend dad has been difficult. I don't think there are too many families where both parents experience what it's like to be a solitary stay-at-home mom or dad in the first couple of years of parenthood.

One of the best parts of our new scenario is that I completely understand most of what M-N goes through in her exhausting day. So on those days when my dinner isn't ready when I get home, alongside my slippers, newspaper, and pipe, I'm at least marginally sympathetic.

But I miss the boy during the week, when I only get to see him briefly in the morning (as we often share a banana and cereal for breakfast) and briefly in the evening (as we often share dinner, then he gets a bath and it's time for bed).

Fortunately, M-N's going to focus on getting herself some M-N time, which means me and the boy will have some quality time like we used to, back in the days of marathon park walks and meandering car trips through Dedham and Westwood.

Last Saturday, we left M-N at home and headed up. By up, I mean straight up the hill by our apartment. It's about 3 or 4 horizontal blocks, and about 15,000 vertical feet, to the top of Grandview park. From there, you can look west across our neighborhood to the Pacific, North across the Golden Gate Bridge to Marin, East to downtown and the Bay, or South to Ecuador.

I should've brought a camera. Fortunately, others did, and Google found pics for me. It's better that way, because if I had brought a camera, I would have probably left it somewhere as I jettisoned excess weight in climbing the hill.

The top of the hill is a little like a mini-Twin Peaks, which is the neighborhood sort of adjacent to ours. They just have 2 hilltops instead of 1, plus that TV show.

Twin Peaks is considered a great place to live if you're stupid rich, which I don't quite understand. Yeah, the view are great, but they put a gigantic cell phone tower on top of the hill, which may not cause cancer, but is certainly ugly. Our hill just has some trees on the top, plus one park bench.