A visit from my Dad...

My dad came to visit me on Thursday night, Thanksgiving Day. His flight arrived early enough that we were able to share somewhat of a small Thanksgiving meal. My husband and my dad enjoyed some honey baked ham with a mixture of pineapple and brown sugar, Rutabaga mashed potatoes, gravy, and french cut string beans and mushrooms, with pumpkin pie for desert. Friday, I cooked the turkey, Yams, sweet potatoes, Dressing, Cranberry sauce, gravy, and more!

My dad has come to visit me several times over the years especially since the diagnosis. I will never ever forget him visiting right after I got diagnosed and that huge huge surgery. He stayed with us for about 10 days in our tiny little apartment. Well during that stressful time, he was able to witness our wedding (December 3, 2002) and he got the opportunity to walk me down the aisle at the Moss Beach Distillery. It was a very impromtu perfect little wedding.

The next couple of times my father came to visit was incredibly scary for him seeing me in such severe pain and suffering. I think it nearly killed him to see me in so much pain.
I was in the hospital when he arrived and he came right to my hospital room. It was a few weeks after my second abdominal surgery and it was during those many weekends we spend in the hospital. I was discharged just 2 days later, then a couple of days later, I was back in the emergency room. This had proceeded to be a problem for many weeks in a row. Anyway, my dad and I went to San Francisco together and was able to have some fun prior to my next severe abdominal blockage.

One thing that was cool was that he was able to witness the real miracle of the power of medicinal cannabis in my situation. He had watched me struggle with severe pain, to the point that tears were streaming down my face and I struggled with breathing due to the sharp, sharp pains resulting from my blocked and twisted intestines and then all of a sudden after smoking, I felt almost instant calmness and relief from the severe pain. It was quite a contrast in a matter of 5 minutes. Even though it was only temporary relief, those were moments where I was not crying in pain and was able to be somewhat normal.

I try to take the pain as much as I can because I know in my heart how difficult it must be for my father or even any family member to see me in such pain. It can't be easy for my father to know how hard I am battling for my life. I am true testament of how important it is to cherish life and each waking moment.

Well this visit we were so busy on today. We went and had breakfast at Carrows (won't go there again because of the awful service). You would think in this economy that the bad workers would be let go but not here. Anyway enough about bad karma, we still had a blast. The neighbor's daughter came and spent the entire day together with us. We went to the dog park and Blue Belle got to show off her skills playing frisbee and romping with another beautiful Blue Merle Sheltie (Jagger), then from there, we went to the pet store for more food for Blue Belle and while there, my father got to see these huge snakes molting, then some huge tortoises, and more pets. We walked to the back of the store and Blue Belle got very nervous as we approached more huge snakes. I think she could sense that these animals could easily eat her for dinner. I felt bad for this poor rabbit in a cage as it was very obvious that he would be dinner within a few hours for the huge snake in the cage in front of him.

After the pet store, we took Miss Blue Belle home and we continued on to the Gun Show which was held at the Santa Clara Fairgrounds. No photos were allowed at all (we even had to take our camera back to the car=bummer). We saw lots of old guns, redneck t-shirts (many ignorant racist t-shirts), lots of really nice jewelry for which me and Amanda (my neighbor) couldn't get enough of. We saw a really neat hand made lamp that was made out of a fishing pole, and the lever part turned on the light (it was stringed like a fishing rod). Very cool. We also saw this guy selling lots of tasers starting at $350 and of course he has pistol in his belt.

The coolest part was when we got to the very last booth where this older gentleman had a bunch of old Winchester Rifles and even one which was priced at $26,000. That particular model, only 183 total were made of that particular gun. I was trying to explain to Amanda about these guns and old Winchester Mystery House. The man then started up a conversation with us to include a very, very interesting history lesson about Sara Winchester. It is weird that in that house, you don't really see much of a gun collection. Most of the Winchester gun Rarities are found in North Eastern Wyoming at the Wild Bill Museum.

The man continued to tell us that all the things about Sara Winchester and how the whole ghosts and seances were pretty much untrue and that the real reason Sara Winchester had built this huge house was partly because she was the very first woman to ever graduate from MIT in Architectural Design. It just seemed so unbelievable, but very fascinating.

I was hoping this might all be true but I seriously doubted it but we listened anyway. He claimed that most of the areas of the house that were so strange for some like the stairs to no where were from designs and paper drawings from school and why they were designed the way that they were was simply because she mostly just wanted to see up close what she had learned in school. He had claimed there were many homes that now featured many of Sara's building designs from that house.

Now I did do a search in Google and found nothing at all about any of this, so I do plan to at least call MIT to find our more and to see if she actually did graduate MIT? I have to know so if you are curious I plan to find out for sure soon.

We then left the gun show and went home to pick up Miss Blue Belle and take her over to a friend's party. She had some Dungeonous crab which my dad had never tried before. It was very good and Blue Belle got to play with a Rottwieller until she got too rough with Blue Belle (she nipped her little bottom or tail?) Blue Belle also got to meet my friend's rat which she didn't want much to do with. Amanda played with the rat the entire time at the party. It was a good get together as me and Celeste exchanged stories of our unusual childhood's with wild animals.

That was one thing we had in common; both of our mother's loved animals much more than humans and even treated them better in many ways. On one occasion when I was about 6 or 7 years old and my brother was maybe 3 or 4, we were riding along in the back seat together (before child seats) and my father was driving. A family of skunks were crossing the road and my mom had my dad immediately stop. With that, she bolted out of the car to grab two of those little skunks by the tail. She threw both little skunks into the front seat right next to my dad where both little assholes were pointing directly at my dad enough so that he got some double spray action. My parents were fighting like crazy but it was hilarious. My brother cried because the smell was just god awful while I laughed because I was more aware of what was happening at the moment. The smell was so horrible that my eyes were burning. I don't even think the smell phased my mom at all because she really wanted to take both those cute babies home no matter what. My father yelled for her to take those little skunks out of the car immediately and it took her a few moments before she finally picked up both babies by the tail and placed them back with their family. My dad had also remembered that it must have taken months to get the smell out of the car. Everyone was in stitches as I told this story especially Amanda.

Celeste had several cool stories about how her mom had rescued animals and she mostly had snakes and alligators since she was originally from Florida. It was funny our parallelisms in our moms and our fathers. It just goes to show how we live in a parallel universe.