Odyssey questions. help!?

The Odyssey begins "medias res" - a fancy word meaning, the middle of the story - so it isn't surprising that you are a little unsure of what is going on. Books 1 and 2 don't even focus on Odysseus' journey and instead are focused on what is going on back home in his kingdom of Ithaca (Book 1, Question 4). By the way, for the rest of this I am just going to call him "O" because I don't want to keep typing the name. So, your answer to the first question actually occurs during a conversation on Mt Olympus. Athena, who is O's patron approaches Zeus and asks him to help O (who is trapped on the island of Calypso) and Zeus reminds her that Poseidon is still angry with O for blinding his son, the cyclops Ployphemus. Zeus finally does agree to help out so Athena heads off to Ithaca to let O's son, Telemachus, that his father is not dead and to not give up hope. She appears to T disguised as Mentes of Taphos (a family friend). T is upset because his house is filled to the brim with rude, greedy suitors trying to marry his mother and become the new king of Ithaca. He is also upset because he feels his mother is enjoying the attention just a little too much and is thereby betraying his father. The mother's name is Penelope. The soothsayer's name is Halitherses and he is interpretting the signs sent by Zeus, specifically a pair of eagles. There is a lot of pressure on Penelope to give O up for dead (it has been 10 years since the end of the Trojan War and 20 years since O left in the first place. The kingdom needs a king after all. Things have reached a point that the assembly is threatening to throw her out on her head if she doesn't pick a new husband. So, to stall them she gets them to agree to wait until she has finished weaving a burial shroud. Once that is finished, she tells them, then she will be able to select a new husband in good conscience. T decides to leave Ithaca and heads to Pylos and Sparta to seek word of his father.