A lovely evening.

I love being able to run errands and help out at home. Taking morning walks with my dad and the dogs, going on shopping trips and to the surgeon's office with my mom, putting dinner on the table for my mom and dad when they get home. This week, one of the first things I did was to look up the local rock climbing gym and check it out. My dad went with me last night and I showed him bouldering, taught him how to put on a harness and do the figure 8 with follow-through and back-up knot, and he did two climbs, I was SO impressed! It's very different belaying something that much heavier. He didn't think he could do it and he did! And I got to be cheerleader to my father instead of 8 year old girls. I wonder if I can get him to take the belay class and we can be climbing buddies when I'm home? I had a great time with the old man, and I'll remember last night for a long time coming, if only for the fact that Dad put his life in my hands and never questioned me once.

Shelter animals

Mom and I visited my father down in Los Angeles County at the East L.A. shelter, which used to be a place where they housed dairy cattle, and was meant to be a temporary facility 15-20 years ago. The place is a mess, not room for anything, they've got 50 healthy rabbits with no place in the new facility (that they moved to today, and unpacked, and put animals in, and are open to the public tomorrow). Literally, my dad made decisions to have five animals destroyed while we were there. There were at least two big dogs to a run, five or six or seven little to a run. It was crowded, smelly, vast. And this is one of, what, like four shelters my dad works with in the city? Anyway, kind of crazy, but their new facility is beautiful, if lacking in kitty quarantine and places for the rabbits. It's definitley a job my mom couldn't do, though. She's too compassionate, too sensitive. Cares too much about each little creature; There's just not room for mom in a place like that, it'd break her heart every day to make those decisions, and my dad does it and can make those decisions pretty easily because somebody's got to.