Today is the first day in the last week that I awoke breathing clearly. Since last Wednesday I’ve been plagued with some kind of evolving infection that has circumnavigated my entire immune system. Sore throats, coughing, congestion, stomach aches, fatigue and head pains ... according to the pamphlet in our kitchen area at work, I fit the symptoms of swine flu, but so has every other illness I’ve had in the last couple of years. (By trying to cover all their bases on those things, they completely fail in offering any useful information.)

The best part about not being sick, besides being able to breathe, is the returning clarity of thought. Trying to get through the days in a sickly state of reduced mental capacity can be straining and at certain illness low points, I felt I had gone completely mad.

So with my health now on the mend today, I can now return to Earth in a state of being I can recognize. Out of the last several dreary mornings it’s the first time I’ve woken up feeling rested and I’m not taking my good health for granted, or my restored mind for that matter.

I took some time this morning to sort through the last couple weeks worth of stories and now I’m starting to wonder if maybe the world was as crazy as I remembered it being.

Sometime around Jan. 23, I was sitting in court when a man appeared in a position to cut a deal with local prosecutors over an affair he had with an underage teen.

Kind of an interesting case to sit in on because the love affair also involved the sexual participation of other parties, including the defendant’s girlfriend. It’s always fun to watch pious judges and image-conscious attorneys bat around such socially taboo language in court, like those people who always refer to our private parts in their proper clinical terms and in lowered voices. It reminds me of a tone similar to parents giving the sex talk to a adolescent teen, but with a defendant disturbingly versed in the subject.

The defense attorney and the assistant district attorney debated the idea of offering to the court some controversial information on the teen victim in the case. The defendant said it showed she wasn’t much of a victim at all, the judge said it showed a lack of accepting responsibility for the crime.

Wanting to think about his options, the defense attorney asked for a brief recess and as his client exited the courtroom, he apparently needed to vent some and did so by declaring to those standing around the courtroom that he’d “take care of” the victim himself. About 45 minutes later, he was throwing a temper tantrum because the judge decided to toss him back into jail after hearing about the threat.

Another incident that left me with the feeling of crazy took place Jan. 28. Writing about it in the newspaper had me looking my notes two of three times over and thinking, “Is this really what they said?”