David

Well, my time with David is over for at least a week. What a good child. It hasn't always been that way. During his terrible threes, I decided to just leave him with his mom and dad until he grew up a little. Now he is eight, almost nine, and we had such a good time together.

I didn't take any pictures because most of our time was spent at the pool, and pools and cameras don't really go together too well. His other occupations were a computer game -- he got to level 78 -- and reading. He is so very smart, like his daddy, and he was devouring the books he got at the library on Tuesday.

Alan and I taught David to swim and float and doggie paddle and breast stroke and cannon-ball. So, David did his swimming thing, and as he was doing that, all I could see was my son, Phil, and remember him as a child about David's age. In fact, I almost called David "Pip" a few times.

David never said "no" to me, and he was helpful the whole time he was here. He made brownies and took care of his own clothing, very neatly (amazingly so). He wanted to eat at the table all the time (well trained, I supposed), but I allowed him to eat in the library while he was watching TV, which was mostly just for breakfast.

The poor kid -- last night I put him to bed around 8:30. He was going to read until around 10:00, and I was going to let him stay up until 11:00, if he wanted to finish the book he was reading. But he turned his light off around 9:00 p.m. and was putting out z's by 9:05. He didn't get up until around 9:00 this morning. He was really, really tired. I guess spending six hours in a pool, and swimming or cannon-balling the whole time, is strenuous.

I was also in the pool, but I was mostly treading water, which is easy for me because with my weight I'm pretty buoyant. I hurt my knee again in the pool so I could hardly walk again last night. And this, after three weeks of feeling so very, very good with limited pain in my joints and nerve endings. But today the knee is feeling a little better, so if I stay off it, I should be able to clear up the problem in a few days.

Next week I plan to have David back to "practice" his swimming and I'll invite Rosie to join him.

The word of the week is "awesome". The word used by my grandson for every event we had planned, and those we didn't have planned. Even my pork chops (which he ate very little of) were "awesome".

OK. 'Nuf said.

ttfn