Recovering from holiday travels/travails/treks, what passes for normal bogging ought to resume shortly.
It was a fun trip! My favorite part was this morning when we were getting ready to go, and the 9-Year-Old, who is in a Gifted Program, disappeared into Grampa's bathroom to perform, presumably, bathroom-program-related activities.
He was in there for quite a while, long enough so that his father became... irritated. You see, the need had developed within his father to occupy that particular area himself, and, moreover, the 9-Year-Old had failed to pack, despite his father's Repeated Instructions to the contrary. (It is important by the way at this point to remind you that the 9-Year-Old is in a Gifted Program.) "I'm washing my hands!" yelled the 9-Year-Old, somewhat frantically, over the sounds of water gushing from the tap.
After much Knocking and Warnings of Imminent Bodily Harm, the 9-Year-Old (a student in good standing in a Gifted Program, you will recall) emerged from the bathroom, and informed his father that he might enter the bathroom. As his father did.
Pretty much every towel that Grampa possesses was strewn on the bathroom floor. In addition, there were soap suds about 8 inches high on every possible surface, from the toilet bowl lid to the top of the sink to the bathtub rim.
Upon inquiry, the boy informed his father that he "couldn't figure out how to turn off the taps, so the sink overflowed, and the hand soap bottle went underwater and got all foamy." Asked why he did not, you know, ask for help, he said, and I quote, "I just thought I'd put down a few towels."
So his father cleaned up the bathroom, which was really alarmingly sudsy, got the boy to toss the towels in the hamper, and finally began to use the bathroom himself... and at the damndest moment you could imagine, from the living room came a scream of Primal Terror!
The 9-Year-Old, instead of packing, had tried to put on a videotape, and had screwed it up, somehow managing to tip over the entire TV stand as well as the TV, and was desperately holding up the entire apparatus with all his scrawny might before it crushed him to death.
I saved him, yeah, but not before reflecting that his predicament was pretty damn funny, for several reasons. First, getting smooshed by a television would be kind of an ironic commentary upon contemporary American cultural mores. Second, it was the most hilarious thing I've ever seen in my life, a skinny little kid being attacked by a giant TV. And third, this was the second completely ridiculous predicament he'd created for himself in the space of half an hour, and, like I said, he's in a Gifted Program.