Susie's Leaning Tower of Chocolate for 2002 March 18

Today is seven days my kids have been in the hospital. Hopefully they will go home tomorrow. I have spent too much money buying those boys diapers. They are back to their usual selves. The five-year-old screamed when we came in today. That's typical. The little one whined really a lot. Oh well. A doctor showed up as we were getting ready to leave. We heard the nurse explaining to him we were from the center and we bring Pampers. That appeared to be a good enough reason for him. The Portar didn't ask us any questions either, like on Saturday and Sunday. We're a little scared now. Well, at least we understood what the guy on Sunday was saying.

They wouldn't let us into the Children's Hospital today, Pampers or no, because of a flu epidemic. The signs have been up for four days now, and no one stopped us before. The security guard was probably just bored. If it was up to the nurses we would have been treated like queens, considering how many diapers we had bought to bring today. Today was "change the whole sixth floor" day. But they wouldn't let us in.

The Elders came over to dinner yesterday. We made strawberry shortcake for dessert. We figured out how to beat 11 egg whites by hand, but it took us three hours to get it right. On my turn, I finally got it going, so the cake turned out ok. We seriously spent 3 1/2 hours beating egg whites. And we used something called "Bicarbonat de Amoniu" instead of yeast in the rolls, but the dough didn't rise. They ended up frying it, but it tasted and smelled like ammonia. We don't know what it was, but we know it was a food product because it's packaging was identical to the baking soda, and it said "pentru prajituri" on it (for non-specific baked sweet things). mmm, prajituras. It really means "Pastries!!!"