The Rhododendron Dell

On January ninth, 2021 I wrote that that morning I was in bed not really sleeping and the boys started making noise. I told him to go to back to sleep and they did. They snuck away 15 minutes later and I told them to go back to bed and while they did go to the living room they actually went to bed.

This continued until crying woke me from a snooze at 7:45. I got them dressed and then made them a meal. I cleaned up and played with them and did other things until I got a text from dad calling off for the day.

By 1145 I was outside enjoying the fresh air. The boys got in the bike with the bocce balls and we were at Waller, Haight and Page until Scott where I rode really fast all the way to Stanyan.

The boys kept screaming “no honking” and “no cars.” I was singing along. I thought the whole experience was really wonderful. They got on their bikes at the Conservatory and we went to Rise and Grind before playing with my acquaintance and his son at the blue playground

We were in the swing sets when we decided to go to what one of the boys calls The Secret Forest. I had told Andrew about the dentist and showed him a map of the bridge in Fairfax.

We wandered through the tunnels and around California Academy of sciences and entered The Secret Forest which is our name for the Rhododendron Dell. The boys did time trials. We ate snacks, played bocce and got some fresh air. When we were done we said by at Big Rec.

One of the boys asked about grandpa’s house but we decided against it. The ride from fifth and Lincoln was sketchy but the rest was great. We had a snack at Stanyan and also at the Page Street library. I fixed the safe streets barriers at Masonic.

This is an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.