What Was I Thinking?

Kory had a doctor’s appointment today down in Kirkland. It was his last “mercury detox” with the naturopath he’s been seeing for several years now. In a few weeks we’ll know if his mercury levels are now “safe.” In my search to find out why his heart arteries are clogged, I ran across some information about mercury toxicity. Much to Kory’s dismay, we had his blood checked and sure enough, he had a big problem with that. The scale that measures how much mercury is in the blood goes from 0-3, with 3 being dangerously high. Kory’s level was 27. The doctor was shocked. Kory had all the metal fillings taken out of his mouth, and then started the process of “washing” his blood to remove the mercury. He needed ten treatments with an IV drip, and today was the tenth one. In two weeks he’ll take another test to see if his mercury level has gone down. Hopefully it’s at zero because I’ve also read that mercury poisoning can affect the brain function, and at this stage, he needs all the help he can get. I’m trusting we aren’t too late.




So, knowing that Kory was heading south today, I thought the boys and I could hitch a ride and go have an adventure of our own in downtown Seattle. It costs so much to park the car all day, I thought I was being “green” by having Kory drop us off at the park and ride in Lynnwood where he veers east to go to the doctor, and we could catch the express bus straight into downtown. As soon as I paid the bus fare, I had to ask myself “What was I thinking?” It cost twice as much for all of us to go on the bus than it would have cost to pay for parking. How is that going to encourage people to take the bus? And taking the bus took up way more time than if we would have just driven down directly. The boys were pretty tired so they could have slept in another hour or two this morning. Kaleb complained bitterly about my wild idea. Tobias didn’t say a word.



The worst part about my plan today was that it was over ninety degrees, and being downtown with all those buildings and concrete sidewalks was just insane! We had to walk several blocks in the heat from the bus stop to the “Ride the Duck” tour that was our destination for the day. The “Duck” is a World War II vehicle that can go on both land and sea, so it makes for a great tourist attraction. Kaleb has been asking to go on it for a long time, so today was the day. I had bought a newspaper to read for the bus ride down, and in today’s news was an article about a “Duck Boat” back east that had some engine problems, got hit by a barge yesterday, and sank. All the people on board ended up in the water, and two are still missing and presumed dead. I made sure the boys didn’t see that article before we took the ninety minute tour around the city on out onto Lake Union (see photo). All went well though and it was the highlight of our day as it was cool and we got to sit down. The rest of the day wasn’t like that at all.



I planned to take the boys on the underground tour of Seattle (something else Kaleb has said he wanted to do), which I thought would also be “cool,” but they decided they didn’t want to do it after all. We rode the monorail and hung out downtown a while (Tobias went shopping but couldn’t find anything he wanted to buy), until the heat was just too much. We hopped on a bus back to our apartment building in North Seattle where Kory was working, and he took us down to a park to dip our toes in the water to cool off. I didn’t want to sit in traffic on the freeway to go home, as it was so hot, so we had dinner at a Mexican restaurant with an outdoor patio. Tobias is working on a world record for the number of days in a row he can eat tacos. Today was day five, and he couldn’t be happier about that. He’s so easy to please. Afterwards we went to the movies in an air conditioned theatre and he had a good laugh watching the latest Adam Sandler movie (which I thought was really stupid, so it was obviously made for the teenage boy market.) Next time we have a ninety degree day, I’m heading to the beach, no matter what.