Is it me, or do all the cutest zoo animals come from Germany?

Sealed with a kiss : Seals play at a seal-breeding station in Norddeich, northern Germany

Something Funny

To say my blog's been a downer the past week would be an understatement. I thought I'd post a funny joke I read today :)

A woman went up to the bar in a quiet rural pub. She gestured alluringly to the bartender who approached her immediately. She seductively signaled that he should bring his face closer to hers. As he did, she gently caressed his full beard.
"Are you the manager?" she asked, softly stroking his face with both hands.
"Actually, no," he replied. "Can you get him for me? I need to speak to him," she said, running her hands beyond his beard and into his hair.
"I'm afraid I can't," breathed the bartender. "Is there anything I can do?"
"Yes. I need you to give him a message," she continued, running her forefinger across the bartender's lips.
"What should I tell him?" the bartender managed to say.
"Tell him," she whispered, "There's no toilet paper, hand soap, or paper towels in the ladies room."

Update

Kitsune most likely has FIP, which is a fatal, incurable disease. We will give him antibiotics and steroids to treat the symptoms until his immune system can no longer take it. It could be weeks or months. The vet has seen cats last up to a year. But there is no hope. The cruel thing is that it normally happens with kittens or old cats, but very rarely with a 4 yr old cat. He most likely contacted it as a kitten and it has laid dormant since then. There is no definite way to test for FIP; so it's just all signs point toward it and there you go.

Kitsune is probably the neatest, most unique cat in the world.

Yup, you did just hear the sound of our hearts breaking.

Sick Kitty

My beloved cat, Kitsune (fox in Japanese), is sick :(

We took him to the vet today, and he has a crapload of fluid surrounding his lungs. They are going to remove it tomorrow. Then it will take about a day to get the results back and get a good idea of what is wrong. The vet said that no matter what the cause was, it's not a good thing. Which is devastating. It could be bacterial, it could be an enlarged heart, liver problems, or a tumor. We couldn't even see the poor little guy's heart in the x-ray.

I am not handling this well...please think good, positive thoughts for our kitty.

Christy's Half-Marathon in Seattle

Seattle was am-az-ing!

Here is the low down on our weekend! Sorry for the play by play...this could be partly to help me later remember our weekend! It's a not-so secret fact that I have the short term memory of a goldfish (thank you, medication!) So, I apologize in advance and hereby warn you of the long post! Feel free to just scroll through the pictures :)

We flew in on Friday afternoon. My adorably pregnant cousin Erin picked us up at the Seattle airport. Can I tell you how beautiful she looks pregnant?! From here is where my curse with electronics started. My phone wouldn't work when we got off the plane, and then my GPS wouldn't turn on...dead. That's ok! Erin had her own GPS that worked just fine...until I touched it! Seriously, as we were trying to find the recommended Italian restaurant for dinner, I touched Erin's GPS and it went absolutely nuts. Literally it kept taking us in circles going nowhere near our intended destinations. I say "destinations" because we started out trying to get to Christy's swanky hotel 2 miles away and finally gave up when the crazy GPS took us nowhere. So we gave up and tried to find the restaurant. Which took a while. Finally found it - and it was soooo good! I had this stuffed melanzana (eggplant) parmigiana that was divine!
Saturday morning was Christy's race day, and she had to get up at 3:30 AM! Holy crap! She was supposed to start running at 7 am, and then called us a bit later to let us know that they were running a bit late. Poor Sue had a migraine and was sleeping in a bit, so my mom, Mike, Erin and I headed down to the 12 mile mark at about 8:30 AM, hoping to get into position to catch Christy. The main problem was we didn't really know when she started or how fast she would end up running. We were so worried that there was a slight possibility that we had already missed her and a large possibility that if we hadn't yet missed her, we could very well still not see her with ALL THOSE PEOPLE! Christy's good buddy Taylor (who now lives in Seattle and was awesome this weekend. I just love him - such a good friend. But I digress...) met up with us at that mark and we waited and cheered.

The weather was amazing - it was scheduled to be 77 degrees in Seattle that day (did I mention that it was sunny and in the 70's all weekend?!). We sat there about 20 or 25 minutes waiting and then Erin spotted her. She was running at an amazing pace and didn't see us for a bit. We started cheering and calling her name. When she saw us, her face lit up! It was probably one of the single best moments of my life! Seeing my sister, who while growing up had to walk the mile in school because of her juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, run a half-marathon - it was amazing! She ran it in 2 hours and 24 minutes. We walked over to the finish line area and actually met up with her without any problem (it was like divine intervention). We got some breakfast, took some naps, and then relaxed for a bit.

Sue was feeling better, so we headed down to Pike's Market for dinner at the brewery. We had about an hour to kill until our table was ready and for Taylor, so we split up for a bit to walk around. Sue and my mom made it across the street to one store in that amount of time! I think they made the store owner's day! Two adorable jackets later, they met us up for dinner. After dinner, we got gelato and then split up with the mommies. On their way "home," they found Chico's and my mom introduced Sue to the store...lol. They joked about sprained wrists from swiping cards so much this weekend!

On Sunday we "rode the ducks," which is this old WWII transportation vehicle that can go on land and sea. It's an hour and a half ride that goes around Seattle and in the lake. The driver was an absolute trip, which I'm guessing is a pre-req on these kinds of things. I personally love those kinds of tours, because you can go around the city and spot out places that you want to go back to. Oh, and learn history. We loved it, especially Sue and mom! (Actually, Erin and Mike went to the science museum while we did that.)
=After that, we went went to the gay pride parade (wonderful!)...let me tell you one thing. I feel so freaking vanilla. Holy moly! What a drab, plain jane I am! It was great and I loved seeing the city celebrate equality. My mom got her picture with cross-dressers in rainbow colors and we got to see naked people ride bikes (ouch for the men?!).


After that, lunch at this cute little cafe. Lunch was great, but it was right around then that I started to feel really bad. I had been fighting a cold all weekend and it was starting to kick my ass a little. Erin had to get back to the hotel and take off for home, so Erin, Mike and I headed back while Christy, Sue and mom were able to do more touristy stuff (I was envious!). We said goodbye to Erin (sniff, sniff....it was such a wonderful weekend with her!!) and then Mike and I took our beloved naps. One thing that Mike and I share in common is our love of a nice nap. I woke up way before him, though, so I started reading. It was way cold in there, so I turned off the air conditioning. Or thought that I did? I guess it was not only turning off the air, but turning on the heat. Whatever it was, it felt great underneath a blanket. When mom, Sue and Chris got back, they just about screamed when they opened the door. Apparently it was a blazing inferno in there!? Mike hadn't noticed because he was sleeping. Needless to say, it dawned on all of us that I had a fever. Apparently I was flushed and completely hot. BUMMER.

They all went to dinner, and my pathetic but stayed home. They brought me back food though, so that was really kind of them :)

The next day, Monday, Christy and Mike took a super early flight out. Sue, mom and I just lounged around the hotel and watched TV, until our flight in the afternoon. I've been sick all week since (you should hear my cough). It was an amazing city, and I absolutely fell in love with it. We went there about 11 years ago, but I don't remember it that well. I know we got spoiled with the weather and the excitement of my sister runnning a half-marathon. But it's up there in one of the coolest cities ever! I'll let Christy explain the half-marathon experience to you...ask her about how she quickened her mile pace by four minutes in the mile-long tunnel...us Elder girls have very claustraphobic tendencies, especially in crowds. Hugs to you all!

P.S. Since I was sick, my pictures pretty much suck. I didn't take much of them, and I am not exactly happy with them! And my hair that weekend?! Well, you can tell that I wasn't feeling well and wasn't going to fuss with my looks! Anyways, some more pics of us all happy after Christy's race!

Independence Day

The 4th of July never really meant to much to me, until now.

I'm not sure why I feel the need to revisit last year, but I'm a bit emotional today and feel the need to write it out.

This blog post ended up long, fyi.

Last year, on July 4th, my mom was in Paris, getting ready to return back to the states the next day. My sister was on a cruise in the Greek islands. Ryan and I had a laid back BBQ with my dad at my parent's house. We watched lots of NCIS. And when Ryan and I left to go home that night, I had this horrible nagging feeling. We got in the car and I actually said to Ryan, "I don't know why. I just don't want to leave my dad tonight." You can ask Ryan, that actually happened. My dad had been cancer free for a while and was feeling fine. So I had no logical reason to worry. He looked a little tired from his late night quarter end days in June, but nothing going on besides that.

And then 9 am on July 5th, I got a phone call from my dad. I stumbled out of bed and couldn't get to the phone in time, but listened to the message as soon as the phone beeped: "Hi Sweets. It's Dad. I'm not feeling so well, so I'm going to go ahead and go to the ER. Ok, bye." I called him immediately back, and he told me he was already driving himself there. Over the prior year, my dad got sick about every 3 months - he would have intense pain and would throw up for an afternoon. The doctors thought it might have been from his hernia from the Whipple when the tumor was removed in 2004.

I don't know why, but I was hysterical. I had taken my dad to the ER a couple times before, for the hernia pain, but nothing serious ever came out of it. But my bad feeling from the night before haunted me. Ryan got up and we hit every single f-ing light on the way to the ER. They immediately ushered Ryan and I in a private room and told us to wait. The hysteria was pretty bad at that point, and became worse when the nurse came in to tell us dad was having a major heart attack. Bless her, though, because she immediately said that he was going to be alright. He had come in immediately and they caught it in time before damage could be done. They brought us back to my dad and there were literally about 10 people around him. My dad looked at us and said "Hi babe. How are you doing?" How am I doing?! Dad, how are you doing? Then he said to the doctors that he was really cold, and was that anything to worry about? At that point, we were ushered away. A doctor told us that they were going to do an angiogram and angioplasty, and put a stent into his artery to open the flow. I stupidly asked if that meant my dad would be staying overnight? The doctor chucked and said, "Uh yeah. You're dad will be here a few days."

It didn't even take 15 minutes from when we got there, and they were wheeling my dad down. They had us sit in a waiting room and told us to answer the phone on the wall when it rang. That sent me over the edge. I had held it all together pretty well (my hysteria from before was inward hysteria, not so much outwardly displayed). I should tell you that my paternal grandpa died of a heart attack when I was four, and my maternal grandpa had a massive stroke after having an angiogram, dying four months later in Sept 03 (I miss you, Papa. Te amo). So I can say that I had a breakdown in that room, alone with Ryan. It was then that we decided to finally marry. When my dad got cancer four and a half years prior to that, we had said to each other that if anything else happened, we would get married. So I turned to Ryan and said, "Can we please elope?" Ryan said "Ok. You know it was never about the commitment. It was always about the money." What got me through that next half hour was actually planning out our tiny elopement. Where it would happen, who would be there, when it would be (tentatively planned for two weeks after my dad recovered, on the beach, with Daren as our officiant).

Before I knew it, the phone didn't ring. The nurse opened the door and said "your dad's out. He's fine, it went wonderfully." We went out and saw him, and the nurses talked about how great he did, how nice he was (he was worrying about how they were doing that morning) and how he better never drive himself to the hospital during a major heart attack again (but they also mentioned that him doing it saved his life, so it worked out okay!).

Ryan and I had to wait for the cardiovascular surgeon to consult us - so more waiting in the room. His doctor was so kind. He asked about my dad's history, and the verbal diarrhea spewed out - my dad had pancreatic cancer in Oct 03, was operated on Jan 9, 04, the test results came back malignant on Jan 13, 04, he had chemo and radiation until Sept 04 (oh, and here was the cocktail combination of the chemotherapy), blah blah blah. So much that the doctor asked if I was in the medical field. Ryan and I started laughing so hard and told him that if he knew me, that couldn't have been farther from the truth. I just loved my dad and took a vested interest in his health.

Okay, I feel better. This has been quite cathartic. I'll sum it up by saying that my dad had a rapid recovery - he was out of the hospital two days later (two days too long, to him). My mom (who was supposed to be in Portland for four more days after getting back from the states), got a flight into San Jose that night and got there. Christy and Mike were scheduled to come into town on Tuesday or Wednesday anyways, and since my dad was going to be fine (and they were in the middle of the Mediterranean on a cruise ship), they shouldn't come back three days early.

My dad coincidentally has this next week off from work (manatory vacation week for the whole company) - so he and my mom are taking a relaxing vacation in SLO, visiting Christy and Mike. Ryan and I was supposed to go down there this weekend, but I am so sick. Still - see below blog from Seattle. This whole week, this summer cold has royally kicked my butt and it would have been not very good for me to travel and stress my body out more. Especially since I return to work on Monday (BLEH!!) So we are home in San Jose, and my family is in SLO (my favorite place in the world). Hence the hightened emotions. It was super important for me to be near my family, especially my dad, this Independence Day. But we can't go through life superstitious and my dad will be fine. Even though he ended up going through hell and back the rest of 2008 (I won't get started on the cancer scare and his three operations the week before Christmas). He's doing so well, and I am so grateful for his improved health and his nine lives (he really is the human cat). I love my family so much and I feel so incredibly blessed that despite all the adversity in my dad's health, he's had the best outcomes out of truly horrible situations.

We really have won the lottery - just without the money part. I'll take it anyday.

P.S. For all of you not aware, Ryan and I didn't elope - I got a nice big wedding that was the best day of my life, four months after the heart attack.