Be A Good Girl, Take Your Vitamins

It's not exactly a big surprise, to any regular readers, that I'm sort of a freak about germs. I don't fall anywhere remotely near Monk on the OCD scale, but the older I get, the more and more aware I become of nasty germs and the nasty people with nasty hands that touch things. Shopping carts, public restroom door handles, tables at restaurants all send a shiver of neurotic germ freaky impulses down my spine.
I'm a friend of hand sanitizer. I love it like it were my own child. If it had a Facebook page, I'd become a fan. I'd follow it on Twitter. Everyone has a Twitter account these days, I suppose it won't be long before Purell will too.
Craig's brother works for some governmental agency with an acronym that now escapes my cloudy mind, and he said that hand sanitizer isn't all it's cracked up to be. And my response to this news was: "I don't care." I don't. I'll forever use it. I like the sting of the alcohol seeping into every knick and scratch on my hands. It's a satisfying burn. It makes me feel like I'm doing something to shield myself from the icky people of the world who do not take the precautions and instructions provided by the CDC to heart.

With that being said, I'm not one to jump on the swine flu frenzied panic bandwagon. Sure, I find it mildly alarming. Yes, I'll do my best to shield myself and my family from it. But the thing is, I've been regularly washing my hands for years. It's a habit. And it's the most important factor in preventing illness. I realize it's the CDC's job to reiterate this, because some people clearly don't listen. However, I find it mildly insulting that I need to see report after report in print and on tv reminding us to wash our hands.
It's not rocket science. It's just common sense.

I do remind Caroline to wash and wash well, but she's a kid. She likes dirt. I've trained her well to avoid putting her mouth on foreign objects. I've drilled into her the importance of hand washing. Thankfully, she obliges my obsessive ways. It's a secret hope of mine that she'll continue on this path forever, and not vere off course when she's older and feeling contrary.

So with the saturation of swine flu chatter and Caroline's two bouts of pneumonia within the last year, I've been pretty militant on the health front. Fruits and vegetables are prevelent and she takes a daily vitamin plus acidophilus to aid in a healthy digestive tract. A few weeks ago I encountered a powdered vitamin mix geared towards children. It's made by the same people who produce the Emergen-C drink mixes, which Craig happens to be quite enamored with. The vitamin drink has a super amount of vitamin C and other vitamins which help promote strong immunity.
Bingo. The magic word: immunity. I was sold from the moment I laid eyes on the box.

So I bought the stuff.

And it's totally disgusting.

I can't make Caroline drink nasty junk, unless it's prescribed by a doctor, so we're back to her regular gummy vitamins. She does drink one of the yummy Emergen-C drinks in the afternoon, to, you know, boost that immunity of hers. Sigh. I love those words.

The box of drink mixes used to come with 36 packets. Now it's 30. The box is the same size, but the packets are fewer in number. I hate when that happens; who do they think they're fooling?

Being the quasi frugalista I am, I decided that instead of throwing the packets away, I'd put one in my green smoothie yesterday. I'm happy to say that I found a winner. It actually tastes good all the while providing me with extra nutrients.

I love a happy ending.