A Day in the life*

*Thank You John Lennon
We had our first sick run yesterday. It showed me how unprepared I was for it and how we will have to depend on others to help us.
Up to yesterday, my plan, I don’t know what Teri’s was, was to hope the kids did not get sick until we had a plan in place to take care of them being sick and having to come home from school. Well Nastia wasn’t feeling good yesterday about 1 in the afternoon and the school called Teri and said someone should come and pick her up.
Elena had a cough the week before and Teri gave her cough medicine and that seemed to take care of it and I figured we were out of the woods. Then Nastia started coughing and I hoped we could skate by like we did with Elena and of course it did not work out.
Teri got the call to come pick her up and Teri called me to see if I could find anyone to pick her up because she had no one. I called my mom, but she was not home. I then called Lynn. I hate calling Lynn. She has agreed to take the kids on Tuesday so they can get out of Tony’s house. It’s not that Tony’s house is a bad bad place; it’s just that the girls have no place to go and nothing to do when they are there. They can’t go outside, because the only attractions around the house are a hole in the ground and busy streets. Both are low on the list of things you would want a child doing in the twenty-first century. As a kid growing up my mom would see us when we got home from school and then she would call us to come home for dinner when it was ready. No kids need to be looked over by an adult or at least we all think so.
Lynn agreed to pick up the girls and take them to Tony’s house, but Teri didn’t want a sick child near her eighty year old father, understandable. She arranged to pick the girls up from Lynn and she took part of another day off. Thank god for an understandable boss.
Teri called me later to pick up a thermometer, about fifteen years ago I purchased one of those ear reading thermometers and since Teri and I never get sick enough to need our temperature taken it was never used and I have no idea where it is or even if we still have it. Which is a shame because the price on a new one is now fifty dollars and I refuse to pay that? The thermal head scanning ones were thirty dollars and I was going to get one but I didn’t like what it said on the package about how long it took to work and you still needed to touch the child with it and if the child was sleeping you would wake them up and it made no sense to spent that kind of money. I ended up getting a battery operated one with an extra large display so I can see it and it changes color depending on wither the temperature is normal or border line or a high fever. It is pretty cool and it cost fourteen dollars. A regular thermometer non mercury style cost nine dollars so I figured the extra was ok and worth it so I could read it.
I got home and Teri had sent the girls to bed for lying about something so I went up stairs to check their temperatures. The problem became very clear when I told Nastia I wanted to take her temperature and she didn’t understand. How do you tell someone who doesn’t speak English to put this pointy thing under their thong? I think they figured it out. Their temperature came out a little low 97.6 and 97.8 so I think they were ok. I checked it on myself later and it read 98.6 so I guess it works.
The next day they were full of pep and energy and ran all the way to school and almost got hit by a bus turning into the school. Times like this make me feel like a real bad father. I was trying to give them a little freedom and I almost get them killed. It wasn’t like the bus slammed on its brakes, it was just the crossing guard telling me to have the girls stop at his corner and wait for him to cross them. I hope they live long enough for me to get being a parent down before they kill themselves. Could someone tell me about the rules for running with succors please?
Well it’s another week down and they had hot dogs for dinner, they called them sausage, hot dogs. I guess back in the early 1900’s if you read the Nathan’s tray cover they were originally called Vienna sausages. Elena had three dogs with some good fried potatoes and corn, she ate well. And Nastia had two dogs, potatoes and corn and ate almost as well. It’s nice to see them eat and enjoy their food. Most of it is so different from what they used to eat. I might try cooking something from the mother country.
The most heard sentence at the table these days is speaking English please. It is coming from the girls they are trying to become American and they don’t want us to speak Russian to them. I was told Nastia told the only Russian speaking girl in school not to speak Russian to her. I am also told that they were insulted when a Russian speaking teaching assistant came by to determine how well they read in Russian. They were not overly friendly to her. It is classic behavior of people from other cultures who come here to want to fit in that they stop speaking their native language and become more American than Americans. I read that somewhere.