the oil is definitely not milky or messy.

LIM is lower intake manifold
UIM is upper intake manifold.

If you pull the throttle body and look in to the intake you will see coolant if the UIM is bad.

O, so some things seen to have been figured out.

1) there appears to be a leak at the UIM(shoudl explain the coolant loss)
2)my valve cover on the front side was a little loose(would explain the oil useage) snugged that up and hopefully it will be good.
3) dad wasnt sure but he says he put in motor oil. looking at the shelves where all the fluids are kept, sure enough ATF and motor oil are right next to each other, and both the ATF and the motor oil for my car are both in dark red, one quart bottles, so it seems like it would be very easy for him to have mixed them up, specially if he wasnt wearing his glasses(all to common an issue)

so I guess now, with the UIM leak, will it be an issue, or can i just keep re filling the coolant when it gets low? if it is an issue, what goes into fixing it?

The problem with a UIM leak is it can get real bad real fast and hydrolock the engine. It'* possible to bend a rod when this happens. Something I would really look in to fixing ASAP.

guess i got a project for next weekend then.

May as well do upper and lower gaskets since you are going to be tearing down. That way you know they have been done.

good point. will do

If he added ATF, at least you won't have to buy Gunk motor cleaner, Seafoam, etc. Your engnine internals should be squeaky clean now!

Guess he did you a favor in more ways then 1.

The only way that trans fluid would go into the motor is if the trans cooler in the radiator was bad, unless someone added it by mistake. Usually, when a cooler fails, coolant goes into the trans, but very rarely does it only go into the motor only. If coolant goes into the trans, the fluid will look like a Strawberry milkshake.