Prescription Time Killer

Hello,

My name is Jess Mann, and I have a problem with things being beyond my control.

I don't know when it started...perhaps when I was eight and we moved away from everything that was familiar and normal to the other side of the entire world and never went back...

Not to knock my parents or anything. They did what they thought was right at the time. They did the best that they knew how to do. I often think they attribute every bad thing that's ever happened to our family to the "big move" but I wouldn't be who I am if I wasn't where I am, and there would be no Beard, no Bastian, nope. I'm very glad we left Australia exactly when and how we did.

That doesn't change the fact that it was devastating at the time, and I had absolutely no control over what was happening to me, my family, or my life.

So I guess I save a few bucks on therapy or something?

I know for a fact that it doesn't take an earth shattering event to give people control issues. I know tons of people with relatively delightful, mundane lives, who are constantly anxious and controlling to the point where it has interfered with their everyday business. It's all about perspective and inclination. We all have coping mechanisms. Some of us like to be in charge, okay?

Right now my house is under quarantine.
Sometime last week, the dreaded summer cold made an entrance into my house, and both my boys are in the thick of it right now.
It's a doozy, so just skip it if you can.
The Beard first started feeling lousy on Tuesday morning. He complained of a headache, and over the course of the day, he kept saying he was super tired and achy.

Welcome to Sick City. Population: Us.

Since, through some psychotic miracle (I might have to chalk this one up to breastfeeding or some old pact with the devil I forgot about) I am the lone non-effluvia spewing family member. Of course this means, I have taken on the essential duties of nurse thing.
I cancelled my Saturday writing class and had to renegotiate when my current project is due for my contracting job. Let it never be said I don't have my priorities in order.

This means every day, since Wednesday has been a weird haze of activities with only echoes of the usual routines.
I make coffee (this is standard) and then I make soup and tea.
I walk the baby to sleep, feed the baby, dance/play/exhaust the baby because somehow, even while snotty and coughy and sneezy, he is also active as fuck.
I walk to the store and buy tissues and snacks because when we are sick we like treats. I say we, because even though I have yet to come down with this, I like any excuse to buy peanut m&ms.
I make the dinner and I do the dishes.
I cut lemons and grate ginger into hot water with gobs of honey.
I walk the dog, take the baby's temperature, hoover all the fluids out of the baby's nose, and then stay up with the baby when he's coughing and congested and can't nurse properly because his little nose is blocked, so we hoover it out again, and he screams and cries, and then we sleep a little more, before getting up and making the coffee again.

These are jobs i do gladly. I list them in my head and I shuffle and reorganize and prioritize them each day to make it feel as though I am contributing.
I pump breastmilk and count seconds in my head on each side. 600 seconds is ten minutes which means I can switch.
I started doing this when Bastian and I were first learning how to breastfeed, because staring into the unblinking eye of the television for hours was making me feel crazy but not as crazy as staring into the darkness did.
Here's the thing.
Counting seconds, making pancakes, juicing ginger, running the shower for steam, and greasing up noses with vaseline does nothing for the cold.
Walking 4 miles so Bastian sleeps for an hour and serving shots of nyquil so Beard sleeps at night does nothing for the cold.
Reading Helen Oyeyemi aloud at three in the morning to my son while he nurses and stopping ever paragraph to make sure he's breathing does nothing for the cold.


The only thing that makes the cold go away is time.

And according to my mother, who is about three days ahead of us with this bug, we have another 24 hours before we see an improvement.
This is a ten day bitch y'all, so if you can dodge it, I highly recommend that you do.

I remain ineffectively active.

Measuring my days in increments of 600 seconds the way when I had an eating disorder I used to measure my day's worth of calories into 600 of them too.
Sure, they're old demons, but they're the friendly kind, the kind that won't mean I shed thirty pounds in two months and scare my family come Christmas.

I have always liked counting things.

I liked counting the steps from the school bus stop to my front door. I liked counting the number of times I brushed one side's worth of teeth and then doing the other side the same number of times so they'd be even.

It gives the world order and makes me feel that even though I have absolutely no control over what is happening, I am the master of managing my time.

As an adult, I can recognize when this stuff gets unhealthy. Like when I start totting up calories unconsciously, and I need to step back from the blender or the sink or the fridge and take a couple of deep breaths, and shake my head like it's an etch-a-sketch that can be reset.

There really is nothing I hate more than feeling like I can't help, especially when it's that i can't help people I love. I almost wish I was sick too because then I'd have the excuse of not being up to it, but somehow, I am not, and I am not helping either. I am merely shepherding the two physical bodies that are acting as hosts to this plague.

I use the term plague because I'm running out of synonyms for "sick" not because anyone is actually bleeding from their eyeballs.

Even writing this blog is part of the equation.
Bastian is taking his midmorning nurse. He seems to feel better today. The fluid is moving more easily out of his nasal passages. His activity levels are high. He's laughing and snuggling and remembering that he's also teething right now and attempting to shove handfuls of my hair in his mouth.

I should be working on my contracting project, catching up on emails and researching.
But I just need a minute more to gaze ahead at the activities that make up the day.

I've already made the coffee, the breakfast, the batch of vegan, wheat free, chocolate, zucchini muffins. I've walked the dog, done the dishes, fed the Beard his pancakes, played with the baby, and then settled him down on the boppy cushion and counted 600 seconds on one side.
Now I need a minute to refocus, to remind myself that there are ten and a half hours before I put Bastian down for bed tonight, and in those ten and a half hours, there are 63 increments of 600 seconds, and I will need to be doing something for each one or I will start to feel crazy and awful that everyone I love in this house is miserable, and there really is nothing I can do but kill time.