And we’re back.

Some of you may have speculated that I was lost in a days-long swoon over the discovery that American democracy, increasingly vanishing at the polls, has been reincarnated with gusto in the form of “American Idol.” While it is true that this phenomenon preoccupies me to no end, the truth is that I have spent the past week in a state of both extraordinary activity and extraordinary illness, leaving me in a condition that brings to mind my mother’s notorious self-diagnosis of being simultaneously sick and tired. “I am sick and tired of this!” she would shriek when confronted with the antics of her five raucous sons and the swirl of troublemaking friends, mischievous pets, and other youthful disasters we trailed in our wake. How she survived for so many years without turning to the bottle I cannot even begin to speculate; we took sick days from school as often as it was possible to hoodwink her into it, but there was never a provision for her sick-and-tired days.

“I am sick and tired of this!” As soon as we heard it, my brothers and I would scatter to the winds. Later, we would learn to adapt this declaration to our own nefarious purposes. “I’m tired of him!” became our irreproachable excuse for beating each other to a pulp, and “I’m tired of you!” was either a war cry or a pretext for walking away from a fight without admitting defeat, depending upon the occasion. The “sick” was lost in the shuffle, but it turned out to be infectious among our large family.

Now, lying in the home I came of age in, I am sick and tired once again, although this time the rebellion of my body is the result of productive and valuable work. Here, with the earsplitting sounds of construction, dogs barking, Fox News blaring, babies crying, phones ringing off the hook, flocks of honking geese streaming by, and people screaming to make themselves heard from distant corners of the house, I am amongst pure chaos once again. At least I can recover my nerves through the realization that, this time, I am not the cause of it.