what i learned from the parenting book i read:

“every baby starts life as a little savage.  he is completely selfish and self-centered.  he wants what he wants when he wants it: his bottle, his mother’s attention, his playmate’s toy, his uncle’s watch.  deny him these once, and he seethes with rage and aggressiveness, which would be murderous were he not so helpless.  he is, in fact, dirty.  he has no morals, no knowledge, no skills.  this means that all children – not just certain children – are born delinquent.  if permitted to continue in the self-centered world of his infancy, given free reign to his impulsive actions to satisfy his wants, every child would grow up a criminal: a thief, a killer, or a rapist.”

Minnesota Crime Commission, probably circa 1960

i’m awake at 1:37 am. this is not because i want to be, nor is it because i’m doing something fun that’s kept me up this late. it’s actually because i have an eeg (electro-encephalogram) and an mri (magnetic resonance imaging) test tomorrow and one of the rules is that i’m supposed to only sleep for four hours the night before. i believe that’s for the eeg. so, i figured that it would be much easier for me to stay awake until 4 and get up at 8 than it would be for me to stay up until 2 and get up at 6, or something similar. the tests are at 1 and i didn’t want to be too dead when the time comes.

i have epilepsy. it’s been a couple of years (roughly 14, to be exact) since i’ve had my brain scanned and its waves recorded, so the doctor i got hooked up with when i moved to chattanooga decided that it would be a good thing for me to have done now that i’m an adult. it’s a good thing that i agreed with him before he suggested it, or he would have had to do some serious arm-twisting. i know, i’m not supposed to make things difficult for the guy, but i don’t know him and therefore don’t trust him yet. just like he doesn’t know me and therefore must treat my condition with the worst-case scenario in mind until he gets to know me better and how my body acts before, during and after a seizure. it’s only fair, i suppose.

what i really want is for my condition to be cured, but until that happens we’ll just have to keep praying and trusting that God knows what’s best for me and is doing it as we speak.