Did anyone occupy his normal seat aboard the Dadwagon this week? It appears not.

Matt, our househusband, spent the start of his week in Rome, alternating between scarfing down bucatini all’amatriciana and explaining his life to various bemused Italians. (Hey, man, maybe you’re not getting weepy over your kid–maybe it’s the wild swings in blood sugar? Just a thought.) He did follow it up with a happy homecoming, though. He’s also offered a persuasive creation myth for Dadwagon itself; true or not, it allows us to make fun of Southern California life, which is always fun.

Speaking of California, Nathan spent the week there, and it clearly made him dream, just a little, of Golden State life. Consider this reverie about the particulars of daily West Coast existence, and this one, about the charms of growing up far away from subways and street vendors. Nate, you going all gooey there?  Nah: His post about this discovery, from SXSW, made it clear that he’s still jaded enough to be one of us. (But not so jaded that he’d dress his kid up like a dictator without expecting repercussions.)

At least Theodore stayed true to type. Mocking dead little people, contemplating his son’s prospects in the smoking wreckage that is the publishing business, taking a poke at the Times‘s shapeless story about mommyblogging, making fun of the truly tragic. But even he had an uncharacteristically lighthearted moment, offering up this droll set of subway-passenger sketches made by an artist friend of his. We expect him to post about death-metal suicide or something on Monday, just to keep himself in check.

Me, I swapped my usual day-job deadline fever for three days at home coughing and sneezing. But having a horrible cold did give me time to contemplate the historical record: both the prospect of a Texan whitewashing of American history, and the faint possibility that my kid will actually figure in said history. That is, if I didn’t render him totally stupid in this little incident.

We’ll be back to our usual posts (both the positional kind and the blogger kind) on Monday.