Beasts of Burden and the Kindness of Strangers

Forgive me for not blogging sooner. I've not learned to conquer the intracacies of the european keyboard. The W, A, M, and other keys are all in different places and it proved to be too much for me to overcome. I was spending more time making corrections than actually blogging and eventually gave up.

Thankfully we brought Rashele's laptop along for Mason and I've got a WiFi that I'm working off of to publish this blog.

Yesterday (Sunday) proved to be a trying day. I should've known it was due to be ugly when I woke up at 2am and stared at the ceiling until 6am, falling back asleep until 830am.

We gave the kids some more time to sleep in while we discussed the day's agenda. We were to meet Rashele's cousin and Godfather in the Belgian countryside for a visit to a farm. That was all I knew.

I awoke my daughter Claire-Marie and my son Kyler and did my best to get them psyched for the adventure to come.

I was greeted by my daughter saying "Daddy I don't feel so good."

I comforted her as best I could and got our typical european breakfast of fresh fruit and bread prepared for everyone.

As we got the kids dressed, Claire-Marie repeated to me "Daddy I don't feel so good" with her sprinting in the direction of the bathroom.

She ALMOST made it.

She threw up everywhere.

I had immediate flashbacks to our last trip to Europe where we all came down with a bad stomach virus. I thought we were all doomed.

After getting her cleaned up, she said she felt remarkably better.

I was not convinced but had little control over the agenda for the day so we thought we'd make the best of it. Her color had not quite returned to normal and she wasn't her typical "Claire-Marie" self, often exhuberant and bouncing off the walls at all times.

We packed out things for the day and made our way out the door. Amidst the chaos of greeting family members and all splitting up into cars for our trek to the countryside, we forgot one of the most basic fundamentals of traveling with Mason.

Take him to the bathroom.

We weren't in the car for more than 10 minutes before Mason said " need to go pottie "

@#$@^@$%@%^

Understand the conveniences of public restrooms aren't quite the same here in Europe. You can't just stop and hop into a McDonald's to use a urinal ad hoc. Every bathroom visit here costs a few coins. The kids think thats funny.

Anyway.. Back to Mason having to go potty. We couldn't stop because we were following Rashele's Godfather, and he was speeding ahead of us and our attempts to ring his mobile phone failed.

So we figured we'd have to ad lib.

Good news!!! I found a plastic grocery bag in the car! Satisfied at my inginuity I unbuckled Mason and he stood up, we dropped his drawers and managed with precise aim to do his business in the bag without spilling a drop.

Then came the bad news.

The bag was not watertight, or in the case, urine tight and Mason barefoot because he refuses to wear shoes and socks in the car now had a urine soaked pair of shoes/socks sitting on the floor.

More @#%!#@$^T@$%@^

Then came Claire-Marie again, "Daddy I don't feel so good"

I saw her breakfast of strawberries in reverse.

She missed the plastic bag she was carrying in her lap (not the same on Mason peed in)

Mason looked at Claire-Marie as if she was from another planet, and was doing all he could to distance himself from her, but amazingly was acting like a typical disgusted brother would.

We arrived at our destination, a donkey farm in rural Belgium. Robert, Rashele's Godfather quickly learned of our adventurous commute and did his best to help, summoning the owners of the farm.

These kind strangers immediately shuffled Claire-Marie and I into their home and allowed me to wash her up, and provided her with a clean change of clothing.

Once done, I met the rest of the family at the back of the farmhouse where their display of their work was demonstrated. These wonderful people teach people of all ages how to do various farm activities, but they were recently featured on a Belgian news station for their work with Autistic children. They regularly see a range of children, and provide various means of therapy to them. Allowing the children to work with the animals. They provide a great service to our children in a region of the world that is short of such resources.

Mason unfortunately is very affected by the weather and in typical Belgian fashion, yesterday was cold and rainy. This makes him very uncomfortable and his stress level, now riding high made it impossible for him to participate. He opted to observe from another room.

While Rashele and I were both contemplating turning around and heading home for the day after the urine/vomit debaucle, we are glad we continued on with the day. They made us forget about the lowlight of our trip by replacing it with a hightlight.

They offered us their shelter, their clothing, and some really, really awesome food.

And even though Mason was a bit stressed at the beginning, he adjusted well and by the end of the day was freely approaching the donkeys on his own and interacting.

It's 11:45pm here. I've got to get to bed as we drive back to Paris in the morning. More stories to tell which I'll hopefully get to tomorrow night. Met a wonderful woman tonight with an 11 year old son with autism.

More on that later.