Life's been good to me so far

Today, I read Jake and Elise 1.5 chapters of The Goblet of Fire. I read Elise The Long Forgotten Doll. I read Jake Never Too Little To Love and I Love You More.

I didn't actually read to Ananda and Aaron, today, but the three of us did watch both the first and second updates on the Reading Rainbow kickstarter (along with contributing with them sitting next to me, all of us emotional), and this Mental Floss video that they recognized just about every single thing from (including the author narrating):



This is how I found Isaac sleeping last night, not long after I left his room following our HP chapter:


The child that I was so freaked about being unable to read, just 2 years ago. I've lost count of his re-readings of those Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. Other than that, there's a very battered copy of The Order of the Phoenix, and an Archie comic, on his bed there...

I have some parenting regrets, and some parenting insecurities, but I feel really good knowing that I've done this right, with them.

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Once we got to the pool yesterday, I took this:

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This weekend, I think that all seven of us are going to go see Maleficent together, which is exciting. We also have a birthday party for a friend, and Ananda is turning 14. She's electing to have an outing rather than a party - we'll see where that goes. I've got tons of stuff stashed away for her. FOURTEEN!

I feel like absolute crap today, physically. I don't know what's going on, but ever since we got back from swimming yesterday I've been semi-nauseous with a low grade headache. I can't shake the feeling that the pool made me sick, even though everyone else is fine and that doesn't even make sense. Just, ugh. It rained a lot today though, so I didn't have to go outside to water anything, and it felt very cozy and nice in the house. Annie made us chai and a big plate of mozzarella, tomato slices and basil leaves, this afternoon. Grant took care of dinner after I washed yet another epic mountain of dishes.

Bleh, I do not feel like I'm going to be able to sleep at all (because horizontal=more nauseous), but clearly it's past time to do so. I developed the ability, while I felt like shit CONSTANTLY, to be physically upset and emotionally happy at the same time. It's weird how that can happen. I mean when pain really amps up or exhaustion really kicks in, they can take over everything, but my baseline was so awful for awhile there that little things like "kinda sick" still don't really effect my mood overly much.

I've been having THE WEIRDEST and most vivid dreams every night. I mean everything from summoning demons with a big group in an abandoned house, to slow dancing on a stage in the middle of a crowded stadium, with John Goodman? Seriously wtf. And, I've been waking up 1-2 minutes before my alarm is set to go off for about a week now - which is really fucking bizarre, because I set my alarm for totally different times on different days and have nothing even vaguely resembling a regular bedtime. This even happened at the end of a nap over the weekend - normally I have to set alarms for naps because otherwise I'll just sleep for hours and hours. It's starting to be almost expected, though, that I'll suddenly wake up, grab my phone off the windowsill and see that my alarm is about to go off O_o

Tomorrow morning, after I take Isaac to school and pay some bills, I s'pose I've gotta schedule an eye exam for Aaron (based on some complaints he had today) and my annual pap/IUD check (since I realized that's about 6 months overdue). And get my supah-late shot. And do my laundry. And then basically concentrate on Elise learning to read, all day long.

I'll leave you with this video my friend Kristin made - it's a contest entry for the Tour de Fat car to bike trade, and she won. That means she'll get to donate her only-barely-sellable car to be auctioned off for charities she likes, as a tax deduction, and will get thousands of dollars to spend at a bike shop to outfit herself and her kids with bikes/gear. She's been planning to go car free for a long time, so she wasn't as upset as she would have been otherwise about her car's new problems. But finding and winning this contest is such a KRISTIN thing to do - I swear she can just manifest...anything.

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.

We're back from Boca Raton (since late Thursday night). It was pretty good. The kids and I glutted ourselves on delicious and very pimped out free breakfast every morning and went swimming every day. I felt I was friends with the omelette and pancake chef guy by the time we left (laughter and tips each morning...he cooks better than I do).

The noodle fish in it's native habitat.
The first day at the pool I got to be the mom of the four year old girl running around the deck with a pool noodle between her legs telling everyone to look at her giant penis. *headdesk*

I drank rum every night (free bar, and kiddie drinks and snacks, every night from 5:30-7:30). I took them to the Gumbo Limbo Nature Center one afternoon - it was totally worth it as a FREE trip that involved seeing injured and rehabilitating sea turtles up close, their amazing butterfly garden, lots of (outdoor!) aquariums full of great exotic things like urchins, starfish, sea horses, etc, and climbing to the top of their 40 foot observation tower that sways in the breeze...but it also turned awful because it was a 100 degree day and we didn't realize the reeeeallly loooong boardwalk was ONE WAY...until we got to the end of it. Everyone was bright red from near heat stroke and long past done by the time we got out of there (nevermind that we'd guzzled probably a gallon of water combined and poured that much on our heads, as well).

A and A went by themselves to see the extended version of The Lord of the Rings (1, 2 and 3 are upcoming, this is around the country) in theater. Neither Grant nor I wanted to spend our one evening together in a FOUR HOUR LONG MOVIE we've already seen. They came out FLIPPING THE HELL OUT about the EPICNESS of it so large, loud and surround-sound. G and I were actually able to lock the bedroom door and make some private adult time happen while they were gone, and the three littles watched Noggin. Other than that evening he was doing team building and social activities with/for the company, eating dinner with them, etc.

I managed to get three social studies quizzes taken (well) online and do/email my 3 page paper for SLS, and I got a callback on the first Craigslist job I sent a resume in for, while we were there :) I also got all my studying and homework for algebra done within the first 36 hours we were back. Understanding algebra is a whole new world for me over here, I'm really glad I'm doing this now before my older kids hit higher level math.

( Camera Phone Pics from Gumbo Limbo; 9, 8 of which are far too big )

I felt pretty isolated while we were there (when I didn't feel like a boss for all that was getting accomplished), on my own with the five kids without Grant or my sister/friends in town or even internet access most of the time. I mean you talk to strangers in the pool but come on. Still, I've had to deal with hotel withdrawal from the first morning I woke up with everyone wanting to know what was for breakfast and what we were doing that day O_o Seriously, I could use some automatic maid service around here.

I'm currently having my first IUD period and, well...it's pretty horrific. Both in pain and debilitation levels and in blood loss. I mean...this is carnage. I spent all of yesterday dizzy and weak trying to just lay around as much as possible :/ I'm having to deal with things like "Oh I bled through all that onto the van seat...and...the chair at Starbucks...this is awesome...." I changed clothes 3 times yesterday *sigh* I had to sit on a fucking folded towel to ride with my sister to Whole Foods (because we don't have time to hang out, like, ever anymore). I thought I was going to have to take oxycodone to sleep last night - it actually hurt badly enough that I was wondering if I had perforated or something - but my wonderful and open minded husband helped me with alternate pain relief, if you know what I mean. And if you don't you probably don't want to.

Supposedly a lot of women's bodies adjust to the IUD within some variable number of cycles and then this shit lets up a little. That would be nice... I mean I don't have any other complaints here, I had no cramps or spotting between periods and still started on time as I would have normally. But, uh....sheesh. The last time it was this bad was when Dama was down last year and I was just LAYED UP by it, but that only lasted one or two days and we're on day 3 of insanity here now. I'm so thirsty it's impossible to drink enough.

This is my new fb profile pic, taken at Cauley Square by Grant.


Pics from the TLC end of the year pool party that I talked about in the last entry, stolen (with permission) from Cybele's facebook :)


cake Annie and Sophia made.


Annie and Sophia :)


My daughter in the purple shirt.


Outdoor living room.


The other 2/3 of Aaron's "gang", the Ninja Dolphins.


He thinks it's hilarious that someone else who went tagged this pic of him "that crazy guy" on fb.


All pools all the time.

I don't know who these TLC kids think they are even having an end of the year party; they've already had one more "meeting" (Christina's birthday party, at her house) since and are resuming meeting at the library on Friday afternoons for the summer :p

Since we've been back, my broke ass has scored an espresso maker and a stair climber for free (freecyle and a neighbor giving away). I've gotten to a point in my coffee consumption where I can clearly no longer afford to depend on Starbucks alone (plus I can use almond or coconut milk at home), and I've wanted a stair climber ever since Aaron and I went to NY last summer and I realized how woefully hard stairs are for me and how nonexistant those muscle groups are in my body.

Grant is considering a way higher paying job that is almost impractical it's so far away...he'd be driving half an hour to take 2 trains O_O But...it's a $20k a year leap, with a solid company, and the guy is talking about commuting reimbursement and 2k-3k a year raises. Still health care industry, which seems to be the best and most solid for IT down here (digitizing records, having to keep up with new HIPAA laws, and Obama funding). The job Grant has now straight up doesn't pay enough; it's a great work environment and it's a huge blessing that it's close but there's very little opportunity for advancement, no raises, and we're basically just digging ourselves a deeper and deeper hole the longer he stays there. I mean we can barely scrape by with enough side jobs done for other people, but those are inconsistent and it's a stressful situation. We aren't willing to move for the job (we love and own this house, and we love where we live and don't have any desire to live in Ft Lauderdale).

THEN AGAIN, the company Grant works for has acquired land to build this massive huge expansion that's like 3 times the size of the currently existing facility...so maybe he will have room for advancement there if he waits it out. If we can manage to wait it out. We don't even know how long that will be, I mean a year seems conservative and it's not like anybody has even said he can count on it down the line...the dude offering him the far away job is a former supervisor from the job he lost in January, who also left that company they were at together. Grant DOES love listening to audiobooks and NPR and things during a commute (enough that he misses it sometimes, though he says it's outweighed by being home so much more).



Alright, I don't know what today has in store for us...probably Grant and Shaun will build more of Kristin's chicken coop and I'll do more editing and rearranging of my short stories (which will soon be available for e-readers!!!) I think for now I may join Elvis on the bed for a nap. The King has the right idea.