Tuesday, October 24, 2006

This morning Shannon and I were actually on time to Dancu. The day was alright, but really long. Iuliana was pretty good most of the time, Mihai was jealous and difficult to please again, Petrica was doing really well on standing again, but I’m frustrated because I don’t feel like I have a good system set up for him where it’ll be likely for him to make any progress and I’m not sure what to do about it and Costica was really good. He was crying at the very beginning, when we first got there, so I held him for a while and he laughed the whole time, so then I put him down again and he barely cried the whole rest of the day. We didn’t get to feed the kids, but Maria was working, so we definitely got nasty soup again. This time, we got soup, with soggy bread in it, liver and bread that was made into croutons. Shannon was fasting, so we poured her soup down the sink, then we threw the liver out the window to Bullet, who was really happy about it. Now, for the actually interesting part of Dancu. So, Shannon and I were at the other end of the room and I looked out the window and saw that there were like 10 people outside all staring in the same direction. I started walking over there and as I walked, more and more people came into view until I saw that it was a funeral, right outside the window! Yeah, there was a bunch of people gathered around a flatbed truck. On top of the truck there was a big setup, with funeral wreaths and the coffin and the dead woman laying on a decorated sheet outside of the coffin. Everything was kind of helter skelter and it looked as though they were still kind of setting it up as they went. I remember them carrying a big metal cross from one side of the truck to the other and just lying it down and there was a guy carrying around what looked like a big metal streetlamp without a base. Every once in a while everyone would cross themselves. We really wanted to go outside and see, but it just wasn’t possible. After leaving Dancu we went to the hospital. I started on the 6th floor with Baker Baby who was just so sweet. I even got him to smile a little bit. After a while, I went down to the first floor and spent some time with a little boy named Dennis. He’s the other kid who was in the room with Mihaela, only Mihaela isn’t there anymore. He has this glass box over his head with oxygen being pumped into it that makes him really hot, so he was sweating really bad. It made him really mad, so he was crying as hard as he could most of the time too. I tired to calm him down, but for a while everything just made him even more mad. Finally, he calmed down a little when I started rhythmically bouncing the bed. I’ve seen a lot of moms do it and I imagine it’s the next best thing to actually rocking them. He started crying again after a while though and then I switched with Shannon. Next I went in with Maria and Iulia. I’ve been pretty depressed because of Iulia lately because one of the nurses told Holly that she’ll never be off the oxygen tube. That just took away all of my hope for her and now I can’t bear to think about how she’s just going to lie there crying in that bed all day and get bed sore after bed sore and never have a boy fall in love with her good looks and get married. At this point, I can’t help but think she’d just be so much happier if she died. I know God has a plan though, so I’m going to just accept it. Shannon, Melissa and I had been planning on leaving at 3:40 to walk to Tirgu Cucu to go to Dacie, but I hadn’t found Jenna yet and I wasn’t sure how I was going to meet up with her, so I decided I’d leave Iulia at 3:30 in case that’s when Jenna tried to meet us. She wasn’t there, so I went over with Shannon for like the last 10 minutes and then started walking with Shannon, Melissa and Bri. Right as we left the hospital we met up with Holly, who told me Jenna was planning to go and who let me use her phone to call her. It was decided that she’d just meet me at Tirgu Cucu and I told her to bring Holly’s tea set to use with the kids. I was amazingly hungry though, so I grabbed a gogos, met her and we took the tram together. On the way there we talked about Podul and how they’re not getting along and about how Marina has issues and needs to figure out a lot of things but it’s such so that there’s not really any way to help her. I totally understood exactly what she meant about Marina. Dacie was pretty good. I love the kids. They’re great. I’m happy with Dacie if I’ve managed to keep them all fairly occupied and happy while I’m there and if none of them get hurt. Today they played a lot and with fairly little arguing with the tea set. I also had my hair done by Viorel and Georgiana. I also think I may have gotten Georgiana to warm up to me just a little bit more which is always good. I can’t quiiite figure her out though and really wish I knew the language, especially for her. I also got to spend some time with Costica. When the girls got home, Catalina had caught two ladybugs which she wanted me to hold. Then I asked the worker for something to put them in and I ended up just putting them in a cardboard prescription box. The ladybugs, of course, ended up perishing because they were being taken care of by 6 fairly dysfunctional 5 year olds. They got over the loss quickly. I love Down Syndrome kids. After they started eating, Jenna and I left and took the tram home, with 4 really annoying Romanian guys making fun of us and trying to talk to us the whole way. We managed to completely avoid them til the very end when they started tugging at Jenna’s bag of teacups. I also had to walk home alone because we weren’t with Melissa and Shannon, but it was ok. Once at home I worked a little on my systems paper, then Roberta called and I talked to her. Anyway, that’s it for tonight!