The Boys on the Weekend

Note from yesterday: John stood up and banged his head on the sand box roof at one point (sound familiar?) and Nick adjured him “as-ta-rozh-na, Papa” (be careful). He has heard us say this again and again and again . . . Somehow he seems to have a better understanding of why we say it now.

Last night I slept well and John was up – thirsty and with back pain. He was very sore this morning. After an 11:00 stroll to the French bakery (to be reasonable, recall) we went to an Abteka (pharmacy). The lady behind the counter was very pleasant and helpful. We could only pantomime what we wanted to treat, and she was able to ascertain the problem was with the muscle, not bone or joint. She handed us a tube of something, wrote down the price which we paid, and we said ‘thank you’. Between that and some ibuprofen John started to feel a lot better. I just hope eating the gel with multivitamin juice didn’t affect the efficacy – just kidding!

We ate leftover macaroni tuna salad for lunch. (Oh – two chocolate pastries and two cappuccinos at the bakery – we smiled because they knew our order, they smiled when John produced the exact payment before she calculated it.)

I worked on the sweaters and read journals (infective endocarditis and thrombocytopenia today), John watched television (in Russian) and napped. Not much new here.

Finally it was 1600 and time to go see Nick and Dennis. We picked up Dennis first, then Nick. We were inside again today, but in a smaller space at the end of a hallway because the other area was being used by a new couple meeting a baby (must be Ukrainians to have a child under the age of one year). We had stocked up on new books for the weekend. The bookstore in the orange building above our ice cream bar spot is first-rate (and so are the salespersons). Nick enjoyed the book that you “paint” using plain water that makes colors appear. Unfortunately the paint brush was nowhere to be found when we cleaned up later. Dennis is pretty tired of all of the toys – we brought everything except the balls and truck – and seemed to just be tired in general. We had a nice long cuddle while he gnawed a couple of crackers and drank water. We were in the landing just above Nick’s room. When the rest of the group returned to their room (near 6:30) we took Nick down. He was very upset and crying that we didn’t delay by taking Dennis back to his room first.

We ate at McDonalds on the way home. I have some ironing to do for tomorrow, will probably clean the bathroom, too.