Juan Antonio and I went to his cousins home for New Years Eve. They were really nice people. They made me feel very welcome, like I was family. Even though I couldn’t understand much that was being said.
There was a few things that happened that I had to ask Juan to explain. One I remember well was around midnight the women started crying. I was sort of shocked at this. I have always laughed and had fun when the New Year came. I finally got Juan Antonio off to the side to ask what happened. He explained that they were crying for the dead people in the family. All the people that passed. I understood but yet I didn’t, why cry when its supposed to be a happy time. It is some Dominican tradition that I needed to learn to accept, never understand.
One thing I remember well about that night was they took me to see some Cacatas or the Dominican tarantula. I was saying I never saw one. They told me they go out and kill them because they come into the house at night and scare everyone. We went out with a stick and some water. They found a little hole in the ground and dug around. They were so close to the hole! I was really jumpy cause I expected this giant tarantula like the one my son had for a pet, to jump out! I was told the spiders are slow in the day time. I still didn’t trust them. I wanted to put my spider armor on and have a large can of bug spray in hand! Finally a spider came out of the hole. It was the most anorexic and spindly tarantula I ever had seen. Not that I had seen many, but if I was to describe an anorexic tarantula that one would have been the prime example. He same out and looked around (it seemed that was what it was doing) and the stick came down on it and that was it. On to the next hole. I’m not really into killing spiders. I usually put something over them if they’re in the house and let them free outside. But this was a real experience. I was a little jumpy the rest of the night thinking one was crawling in the dark under my chair.
But we had our New Years Eve celebration. We returned to Juan Antonios home and went to sleep because I had to wake as soon as the veterinarian was taking phone calls to check on my Sniffy.
We had to pick her up to take her back to Santo Domingo with me. I had to get home. She wasn’t walking yet. The vet put a newspaper around her foot so she didn’t scratch her face open. In USA they would put one of those cones around the head. But this way worked just fine. I could imagine the headache poor Sniffy had. The way she was bashed into the road.
Her missing eye hole was draining. It was a mess. I had to keep putting drops into it. Her other eye was swollen out of her head so I had to keep dropping that to keep it moist. Her face that was sown up wasn’t pleasant to look at. My poor girl.
When we got her home I let her have my bed. I slept on the floor. I didn’t leave the house for over a week. Then I went out once for a few hours to get some food. Thank goodness for Colmados that deliver. They were such a life saver. My back was killing me having to carry her around. And sleeping on the floor wasn’t very good for the back either. But I had to take care of my girl.
Just a little note here. She did survive all this. She was blind. I was her seeing eye human. People couldn’t believe she was blind because she got around so well.
Now back to work on the web site.
I’ll try and put some Dominican Traditions on the site today. (Hope I can. I’m still feeling yucky after the little operation I had on Tuesday.) I added a few words to the list and some more history stuff.
