I Do Not Care

We have been in Denmark 42 days since Christmas. We have moved twice (from GA to the B&B to the studio). With jetlag and homesickness. We have packed and unpacked and emptied out a storage unit and put together furniture from boxes and run countless errands on foot and learned new bus routes. We have been back to work: Tim at the lab, me with data projects and custom orders, and Isaac to school. Our social calender, if you can call it that, is filling up at an alarming rate. We have readjusted to the snowstorms, the biting wind, the short daylight hours, and the general overcast grayness that is Denmark (Tim all gung-ho, because he loves winter; and me like a resentful toddler, because I hate winter). And we have made many a purposeful plan for the upcoming months with all the energetic candor of new-year-resolutions that have yet to lose their charm.

And we've been sick. (This past week, not this past 42 days.) 

Head-colds, fevers, sore throats, stomach virus, sleepless nights, miserable achey exhaustion. 

I wake up every morning to an internal alarm that yells at me in my own voice: Get that project off your desktop! Sketch out that custom order! Clean this messy apartment! Catch your bus on time! Do those other five things you were planning on doing for who knows what reason! And for the love of all things good entertain that sickly feverish child moping in the corner!

So I obediently get out of bed and then watch, in utter amazement, as my day trickles by in slow motion. My head feels fuzzy, my neck hurts, I can't swallow properly, and if I make myself drink another cup of that awful tea I will lose my last shred of sanity and, Kathleen-Kelly-like (from the little book store), may very well start purchasing those horrid dolls from the Home Shopping Network while leaving a trail of kleenex in my wake.

... When all I really want to do is sink into this couch with my book, pull a blanket up to my chin, and then stare absently at the wall until I am well again. To suddenly (inexplicably) decide that I do not care anymore.

I do not care that there are an exponential amount of dust bunnies under the beds, even though I just vacuumed yesterday. I do not care that Isaac has decided Today is the day he must USE ALL THE SCOTCH-TAPE!, and is, at this very moment, busy taping up the entire apartment and everything we own. I do not care that this is primarily my own fault, as I was the one to buy him the scotch-tape in the first place. Can't think why. I do not care that I have worn the soft pink tanktop every day this week because I am making a conscious effort to create less laundry (although apparently no one else got the memo), or I’m just lazy. I do not care that it is probably the latter. I do not care that I haven’t been efficiently productive in two weeks (although I have been productive); that, other than the tape thing, Isaac has done nothing but watch Looney Tunes; and that he has recently decided his new favorite word is ‘it’s-stupid’ (and yes I do believe he thinks it is one word). To top it all off, I do not care that it is snowing. Again.

And that, ladies and gents, would have really bothered me this time last week.

The most poetical thing in the world is not being sick. ― G.K. Chesterton