My Dad had a few health issues this year that have slowed him down. The first one was a case of Sciatica. It was so bad for him that whenever he walked, he would have to crouch half way down before he could move. As a result he hasn't really been able to run his errands like he normally does.
Trina was feeling the brunt of having to care for my parents and was feeling resentful of my other sister Tasha since she pulled a disappearing act when it came time to help. There's no doubt a lot of unresolved issues between Tasha and my parents. That could take up a whole nother entry so they won't be mentioned.
Plus since I'm over 300 miles away it's not as easy for me to assist. That in itself has made me feel guilty. But to alleviate Trina some I took my work with me to Detroit for one week so I could help take our Dad to his physical therapy appointments.
My Dad started improving somewhat in the sessions and was even able to drive himself after a couple weeks. But then he hit another setback. It started with him feeling very exhausted when driving to a local Micro Center store. He could barely walk a few feet without feeling out of breath. Trina ended up taking him to emergency where it was discovered that he had a blood clot in one of his lungs.
So he was in the hospital for a week getting treatment and recovering from that. He afterwards had to be put back on blood thinners and every week a nurse came to the house to get blood samples from my Dad to make sure his blood levels were normal. My Mom had to administer several shots of blood thinner to my Dad each day. So he got past that and now has to take blood thinner pills indefinitely.
So my current visit found him doing better and full of ideas of what I should do while in Barcelona. He was suggesting catching a ferry to Morocco. But from what I was able to gather, it would take almost half a day to get there and I would need at least two days to get a sense of the area. Plus from what I heard, Morocco isn't the best area as far as visiting but rather Tangier gets that honor. He also wanted me to find him a Spanish beret to add to his growing collection of hats. But that in itself wasn't the big announcement.
The announcement of the weekend came from none other than Trina herself. She came by after work on Sunday to pay the family a visit. Earlier this year Trina and her fiance experienced a loss of their home to a house fire. The house luckily wasn't a total loss and thankfully they were able to get out of the house okay. While repairs were being done they stayed at a temporary house that unfortunately was the barest of basics. It had no air, a lot of the place was dirty (including clogged jet heads in the bath), and the landscaping left little to be desired. It took about eight months of repairs to get the house ready but they were able to move back in around end of September. But that wasn't the announcement.
It turned out the announcement was a wedding date for Trina and her long term fiance. She told us that the event would take place May 19, 2012. I congratulated my sis and was thinking of the irony that my youngest sister would be the first of us to get hitched. In talking to her though she's mentioning how expensive renting a hall is. The minimum price she's seen is 10K and renting a yacht is even more pricey, almost 40K. It has her thinking about just going to Vegas and getting hitched.
My attitude is you definitely don't want to go into debt paying for a wedding so maybe an alternative location like Vegas might not be a bad idea. We'll see what the final verdict is.
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