Yuk, I'm full of cold. First one in ages, it really took me by surprise. The first shivers arrived as I was working outdoors on Friday afternoon and by bedtime I was in a right state. Niki had the same thing earlier in the week and just worked through it; both the kids had what I assume was the same thing before that and we suffered no more than a bit of a runny nose and mild to moderate whinging. Seems like the bigger you are the harder you fall, or maybe they're just hard as nails, but it's definitely got me reeling. I've been fighting it with all sorts, Paracetamol-ed up to the eyeballs, lots of vitamin C, big mugs of coffee to keep me going... and something I haven't seen for years: cod liver oil. Whatever the science behind all the hysteria over swine flu, this cold has made us appreciate the need to load up on vitamin D, especially at his time of year, and cod liver oil delivers it in a reliable way. I've just spent all morning reading up on it and the message is: vitamin D will stop you getting flu and cod liver oil is the best way of getting a regular dose of it.
It also gives you a big dose of vitamin A and some recent studies have claimed there's a need to be quite careful with it due to the possibility of vit A overdosing. The web's own GP, Dr Mercola, is one of those to have suddenly stopped recommending daily doses. It's true that you don't need cod liver oil to get enough vit D; just 15 minutes unprotected exposure to the sun per day is enough for the body to synthesize it – assuming you're in a permanently warm-enough climate to sunbathe every day. If not, it's entirely up to your diet to provide it, especially during winter months when more people get flu... and why more people get flu then. I tend to go with the Weston A Price Foundation on dietary matters, who argue that the two vitamins in the natural form of the oil complement each other perfectly. It's the synthetic, lab-produced "fortified" cod liver oils that are the source of the controversy – and that recent study data. As a rule (to save you reading the whole thing) remember cod liver oil is a nutrient dense food, not a medicine, and if you make sure yours is a natural oil it should contain vit A and vit D in roughly 10:1 proportions, which makes the vit A content perfectly safe and actually very beneficial, just as it was when I was a kid.
Yes, I have all sorts of opinions about the whole swine flu thing too, but I won't bore you with them here. What's important is that we protect ourselves and that we absolutely do not include vaccination in that protection. You don't need a vaccine and nor do your kids, you just need a decent diet and a functional immune system. Even Dr Mercola agrees there. Just say no! And get your cod liver oil down you.
Ok, enough of that. Because we're both working things are extra crazy here, complicated slightly by only having one car, exacerbated by Nik also doing a teacher training course and thrown into total disarray by two young children and their frenetic social lives. I've been working on some offices near the city three days a week, fielding the kids morning and night and getting drawings and plans together for the house, while Nik does 30-odd hours at school plus a further 20-odd on her university course, so it's pretty full-on. To be fair, were it not for the kids' play dates we'd be completely stuffed, as they get collected from school and ferried to a neighbour's house where we pick them up after work. It's great to let them have that semi-independence; it builds a sense of responsibility and self-confidence in them but you can't help worrying, largely because you know they're more than capable of running a mile with every inch you give.
So it was with Oscar's burst lip. He's still not very good at all on the skateboard and although his scootering seems to be pretty fluent, he's a bit lost (as I admit I am) on wheels without handlebars. A bit like unicycling, I suppose. You're fine while you're on the move, it's the stopping without serious injury that's the problem. In this case, the inch I gave was not only agreeing to him riding the board on all fours, it was the push he wanted besides. I really should have known he wouldn't make any effort to let go with his hands to stop himself when the board hit the kerbstone and he was thrown forwards onto his face... despite this happening at ludicrously low speed, he managed to land mouth-first with an audible splat, causing a perfect gob-print on the pavement and one extremely large fat & bloody lip that took three days to subside. Poor little bugger.
It also turns out we were even more lax with Sally rabbit. She had the run of the old chicken coop and her hutch in there, serving as canteen and sleeping quarters, was lockable but we never really thought anything could get in there so we never locked her in at night. One devastating morning last week I went to feed her and found her dead, killed by a stoat we think. Sure the kids were a little bit upset (and Elly still misses her) but we were completely distraught. She was such a lively, lovely pet and had only just settled in with us, spending more and more time in the house and growing in confidence all the time. Such a sweetie, everyone loved her and I guess worst of all we feel like we really let her down, even though all we ever really wanted for her was the freedom to do her own thing. Certainly gave us pause for thought, anyway.
How that gets me back to cod liver oil I don't know, but if you didn't click the link in the first paragraph and you're in any doubt about the importance of dietary vitamin D, please do have a read of this article, it's a real eye-opener. Also remains for me to point you to the losNemo gallery again: you need to click on the "next gallery" link to find two new albums. And, as is becoming traditional after a way-too-long post, a promise to make them shorter and more frequent in future. I really don't want to rely on cold-induced house arrest to find the time to write them, at least. Took me so long to grind this one out, I'm starting to feel miles better already :)
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