Life's been good to me so far

If you are someone relatively educated on healthy eating, I'd like your opinion on the same issue in two parts:

1. How often do you think it's safe to eat wild-caught Pacific salmon?
2. Is it really possible that a giant nuclear reactor melted down into the Pacific last year and has not effected what we're getting out of that water and eating? I mean...someone has to be testing for this...right?

Seafood and honey are really the only animal products I'm eating anymore. I know wild-caught Pacific salmon is both a "superfood" and included on every list of safest, lowest-pcb, practically-mercury-free list out there. I love it, and can get it really cheap in bulk in several different ways at BJ's. But whenever I find an actual solid guideline somewhere it says something like "once a month" which I feel is both suspiciously low and also a drag ;)

Safe seafood guidelines are really hard for me in general, I grew up eating fresh yellowtail, snapper and dolphin my father caught and grilled the same day pretty often (less often shrimp and lobster he grabbed out of the water himself...literally). Restaurants and other people where I live often act as though seafood is pretty much a consideration for every freakin' meal. When Grant had his own business he was once paid for setting up a network with a bag of fresh lobsters. But if I do e-search I always come up against articles talking about how Americans don't eat enough fish and blah blah blah canned tuna (I don't even consider that seafood!).

Sometimes I find myself justifying by saying, "Uh, nobody is worried about the health dangers of eating McDonalds more than once a month or quantifying how often weird dye is safe relative to eventual cancer risk - at least seafood is very good for you and very low fat and actual real food!" (note: I do realize Some People are worried about those things. I give myself license to be less than meticulous when thinking) I adore that there is no factory farming involved with (the kind of) seafood (I eat); I can consume an animal that has lived a free and happy life!

Then other times I think about how catching some things kills other things that are endangered and we're polluting my beloved ocean and Gulf oil spill in my dinner but DAMNIT THIS CRAB LEG IS DELICIOUS OK?!

Feel free to prattle on about this issue (I certainly do) in the comments.

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It feels very taboo to me lately to admit that I really enjoy time spent away from my children. This is because I hang out, literally and figuratively, with people who really enjoy spending time with their children - which I also do! I get nothing but awe and admiration - and suspicion, and raised eyebrows - from people who parent in more "mainstream" ways and can't believe I seriously have afternoon tea with my kids, dates with my daughter, bike rides with my 10 year old, etc.

But sometimes I am left looking around in frustration, like, "Really??? Nobody else who wears and co-sleeps with their babies, nurses them past their toddler years and even keeps them home from school finds themselves in need of a freaking BREAK sometimes??" I've been doing this fulltime for ELEVEN AND A HALF YEARS NOW and I'm gonna continue doing it for, oh, at least THIRTEEN MORE.

The overwhelming, resounding answer when I say (or type) things like that seems to be, "Oh no totally, I know what you mean, I have to have a break! That's why I enjoy my half hour in the car alone while they're at dance class" or "my husband is awesome - three weeks ago I went out shopping for a whole Saturday afternoon alone and I just feel so much better!"

O_O

Color me neglectful, but this is not any sort of break in my worldview. It's annoying to be stuck in the car during kids' activities, barring rare exceptions, and my period of feeling refreshed from a Saturday afternoon alone would not really extend past Monday or Tuesday. On a bad week it wouldn't survive the evening back at the ranch executing dinner and bedtime.

When I was a kid, my sister and I spent every weekend of summer vacation with my Nana and Pa. We loved it. We watched Nickelodeon, swam in pools that morphed from baby to above ground to in ground as we grew, ate popsicles, laughed with our grandparents, rolled our eyes at our Nana. They took us out to cool places occasionally, like to see hot air balloon launches or out for breakfast; more often Nana ironed and dusted Saturday afternoon away while we swam and made up stories.

Twice a year, for Thanksgiving and Easter break, we spent a whole week at our Ma and Pa's. We played pretend games, went along on grocery runs, bonded with cousins, and ate SO MUCH GOOD FOOD Pa made us. We were always happy to go and sad to leave, and not just because we lived in nuthouses normally.

I feel like these are things my parents did right <---I don't say that very often.

And I cannot even IMAGINE the glory and splendor of having somewhere for my kids to disappear to for love and nurture with people I trust, for whole weekends and even weeks on a regular basis! I mean...WOW, you know? You might be thinking, well, since I can't imagine it I don't know how hard it is! If I experienced it, I would be in anguish!

You are wrong :)

I think back to the weekend away Grant and I had for Valentine's Day a couple of years ago. I got told things like, "Man, you must not have known what to do with yourself! I'll bet you just missed them the whole time!" NOPE. I knew exactly what to do. I had a super hot bath with my husband and ate amazing food and went parasailing and snorkeling and generally felt desolate to have to return to a life of dishes and laundry from the moment I opened the door to being smothered in clingy people whining about petty complaints. I was EXTREMELY ANNOYED when my (poor, sweet) sister called me to give me updates on how they were doing like, dude, I get 40 hours away and I have to have play by plays of what's going on in Homestead the whole time? Call if there's a problem!

Likewise the weekend last year, in a resort Grant's job was paying for. I was swimming at night with a pina colada in my hand! I was sleeping with the doors to the ocean front balcony open! I was laughing my head off that we managed to flood the entire bathroom by accident! IT DID NOT LAST LONG ENOUGH AND THEN I GOT IN THE FIRST CAR ACCIDENT OF MY LIFE ON THE DRIVE BACK, so we missed this PATH field trip and I had to call Elise's preschool and wait for State Troopers and blah blah blah, so it goes.

I have missed the older kids when I'm stuck here at home and they dissapear for more than 3 consecutive days at a time, though I also am happy for them and it helps that I get emailed pics and they text now. It's a subtle thing, like I'm really glad to have them back but really glad they got to go as well.

I didn't miss anyone the whole week Aaron and I spent in NYC.

Anyway. I just wish these two things - that I am overwhelmed with love for my kids and do meaningful stuff with them every day, and also that I am a person who really enjoys autonomous experiences - weren't so mutually exclusive.

How do people who can't deal with separation from their older children (I never left an exlusive nursling without me AT ALL, and would have worried about a toddler beyond a few hours apart) for a day or two cope with them growing up and moving out? It seems like a really natural progression to me, to gradually "detach".

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Me, while trying to write this entry: What's up, Isaac?
Isaac: I can't read what the game says is the next step.
Me: Can you ask Annie to read it to you?
Isaac: I did, she said, "She didn't say I HAD TO, did she?"
Me: Oh good grief, tell her to come here.
Annie: What?
Me: Why can't you just help your brother when you're out there with him and he needs help, or even when I ask nicely? Why does it have to be an ORDER?
Annie, bursting into tears: Because it's HARD for me to read out loud, I hate it, I'm dyslexic ok and -
Me: WHOA! Ok, come here. I did not know this. Isaac, go tell Aaron I said he has to read it to you. Annie, is it only when you look up at things to read or is it any time you try to read out loud?
Annie, sniffling: Anytime.
Me: Alright. I didn't know that. You burn through all your schoolwork and take down novels so quick. I thought you were just being a brat.
Annie: *laughs*
Isaac: MOM, Aaron read something to me but then he said, "Mom didn't say I had to not lie to you about what it said, did she?!" so now I don't know if that's what it really says or not!
Me: AARON!
Isaac: Mom why are you laughing, this is serious!

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Yesterday Aaron asked to go swim in Emily's new above ground pool. Emily lives a few houses down; he sold her his old bike once upon a time, they traded shoes once (only Aaron, I'm telling you) and Annie sold her mom Girl Scout cookies last month. Most of the kids who play basketball on our corner were going swimming there, too - it's within shouting distance if I needed to call him. So I said yeah, get a towel and go, it's Spring Break and your local friends are home during the weekdays - awesome. He confirmed my idea that it's one of those pop-up pools you can buy at Target.

He came home about an hour and a half later and basically collapsed on the tv room floor (Aaron has only slept in weird places pretty much since he was mobile - I have a picture of him sleeping with his head under Elise's bed?), and slept the afternoon and half the evening away. Then he threw up several times in the night. I stayed up with him, rubbed his head, talked to him, got him drinks. Today he coughed up a bunch of weird crap but mostly seems better. Variably sweaty and glassy eyed.

I expressed my suspicion that this could be pool-related and he acted like that was an epiphany, since the pool "was basically sludge". He told me the diameter was about from my bedroom desk to the door, i.e, 10 feet, and that when swimming under in a mask you couldn't see the opposite side at all from the murk.

When I managed to close my mouth and stop staring, we had a long, long talk about urine, sweat, snot, saliva, skin cells and other slow-rotting organic materials such as bird poop, bugs, dead leaves and so forth. We went into canals vs rivers and stagnant water, the purpose of chlorine, MY GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH HIM HOW COULD HE NOT SEE THIS POOL AND IMMEDIATELY GO OOOOOH NEVERMIND. This potentially parasitic protozoa had better not be contagious in any way.

I'm picturing this damned pool as something with lilypads on top, now, with a raccoon corpse somewhere down below the opaque depths.

This is the second absurd health hazard we've had this month; previously we found dozens of wrappers under the couch and Elise confessed that she had snuck and eaten (as in swallowed) ALL the gum Isaac got for his birthday. As in, all 6 packs of 5 pieces of fat Bubble Yum each. I waited until her fifth day of constipation to start reading terrifying case studies and talking to the doctor on the phone, after which she immediately began pooping.