I can milk a cow

Cyrill is a terror and likes doing things with either his fecal matter or another person's.

Preface: He has ADHD and probably more things wrong with him. He is a pseudo-foster child that the Fellmann's take care of. He is here during the week to go to a school in Hemberg and then goes home on the weekends.

Tuesday's it is my job to get him out of bed, eat breakfast, and get him on his way to school. He must leave by 8:30 to be at school on time but he usually leaves much later, sometimes by 8:45. To battle this lateness, I decided to set the clock forward about 15 minutes. Much to my amazement, he left at exactly 8:30, but the clock he was looking at said 8:45. Dirk and Maya thought that was a novel idea. However, they learned at lunch that he was still late. I don't know how he can get lost on the way to school, there's only one road between here and the school.

He was also late on Wednesday. I brought up an even better idea, better than moving the clock forward, at lunch. I walk him to school, in through the front door, all while holding his hand. How perfect would that be? We still haven't put that plan to use, but it's there, ready to be launched.

(This has nothing to do with Cyrill, but for the sake of telling things in chronological order, it needs to go here.) Last night, Salome was running around and it was a bit after her bedtime, but there was no Dirk and Maya around. So I did the only logical thing and took her to bed. After she 'read' the story of Bambi to me, I said, "Gute Nacht," walked out and shut off the lights. Dirk appeared and asked where Salome was and I told him I put her to bed. He, the soft-spoken man that he is, said, "Vielen Dank!" and Maya was equally happy this morning when she found out.

Today he got in trouble. Apparently he took someone's shoe off of their foot, took it into the bathroom, and pooped on it. Because of this, he got to work with me this afternoon. Hooray me! From 2-3 pm, he helped me split wood and stack it. Then he was supposed to do homework for a half hour. While he was doing homework, I made more No-Bake Cookies. He came down at 3:30 and I asked him if he was done with his homework, to which he replied no. Then I asked him to go and finish his homework and he asked me why. My German is not so good that I can explain to 8 year old ADHD kids the reasons why it is good to finish homework. So without a suitable explanation, he began playing with Salome. 20 minutes later I again asked him to finish his homework, to which he and Salome ran upstairs and 'hid' underneath his bed. In this time, I was cleaning up my small mess in the kitchen. He comes flying down the stairs and throws the diaper that Salome was wearing at me. Luckily the contents were only yellow in nature. In response to this, I marched up the stairs after him, pulled him out from under the bed, sat (threw) him down in his chair, placed (shoved) a pencil in his hand, pushed his chair closer to the desk, and walked out of the room. I didn't see him until it was time for stall work with the cows.

He helps Dirk in the stall twice a week and today was that day. Dirk has been teaching me all the aspects of the stall so that I can eventually do it all by myself. This includes the ability to milk a cow, by hand or by machine. I've never been able to milk anything before. Anyway, today Dirk had some other things to take care of and only got the cows hooked up to their chains and the poop cleared from under them. He put Cyrill in charge of cleaning the fenced area outside which left me to do the 'Misten' (poo cleaning) and milking. Then I got to keep Cyrill busy and on the other side of the stable so I couldn't hear his complaining. We finished in decent time. Dirk got back from what it was he was doing and asked me how it went. Maya said, "He did it all!" Dirk shook my hand and said, "Mega cool!"

I'm also beginning to use the descriptive word 'mega' when I'm describing something. Perhaps it was a former trainee that got them started on it, but it's fun.

I'm coming up on a month of being here. I know I wrote this at the month mark in September, but wow, time sure is flying and I don't know how I feel about it.

Until next time,
Jon