We have a family owned and operated business that keeps us pretty busy. Each of us takes care of a certain aspect of the business and together, we keep it running fairly smoothly most of the time. And then, there are those days when The Brain gets in my business and prevents me from taking care of business, thus adding stress to everyone else's business. Such has been the case for the past two weeks.

Iman, our newlywed daughter, takes off every other Friday because her Awesome Egyptian Dude, has the day off from his job. (Note that my Egyptian Dude is Amazing, hers is Awesome.) Under normal circumstances, this isn't a big deal because I am in the office picking up the slack that her absence leaves. But when The Brain asserts its authority, things get really interesting on these Fridays. Like yesterday, for example.

The day began with a headache. Not a bad one -- certainly not bad enough to cause me to test out the newly acquired oxygen tank, not even bad enough for me to take more than 2 Ibuprofen to knock it down. The dull thumping was definitely something I could deal with, and deal with it I did. I processed orders for shipping, answered telephone calls, and shuffled paperwork all around for several hours without incident. The Brain maintained its presence but instead of taking center stage, played overseer to my activities from behind the scenes; however, The Brain couldn't be without the spotlight for very long. And so it was that during a phone conversation with my favorite aunt, The Brain, flipped the switch and sent a jolt of electricity through my body. Thankfully when the seizure came, I was not the one talking; I was listening. When The Brain decided that playing shock therapy was no longer fun, the usual coughing fit began.

A cough, cough here. My aunt began to sense that something wasn't right.

"Your headache isn't making you cough like that, is it?" she wondered.

"No," I answered honestly. "My headache isn't that bad, really." My family worries too much about me, and this call wasn't about me, no matter what The Brain thought. My aunt returned to the conversation, and The Brain returned to the coughing.

A cough, cough there. And my aunt pauses. "Are you sure that you're ok?" How do I tell her, without freaking her out, that I had a seizure? She worries enough already and, like my other family members, knows that stress is the typical trigger for my seizures. If I tell her that I had one while she was talking to me, she'd end the conversation, worried that she had been the cause. "I'm fine," I reassured her. But The Brain had other ideas.

Here a cough, there a cough, everywhere a cough, cough. "Carleen," my aunt said nervously, "something is wrong! Why are you coughing so much?"

"It's nothing, really. I had a seizure, and the coughing is The Brain's way of letting me know that it's finished. No biggie," I told her. A seizure that is followed by so much coughing is one that requires a nap right away, and I knew that; however, I was not about to cut off the conversation and leave my aunt worrying.

I fought the need to sleep and finished the conversation. It was mid-afternoon and I knew that if I took a nap at that point, I wouldn't sleep at night. The Amazing Egyptian Dude, who had wandered in and out of the office during the whole thing, packed me up and took me home as soon as the call ended, hoping that I would give in to The Brain's demands and sleep.

I did fall asleep, but not before an amazing thing happened. In Greek mythology, Zeus gives birth to his daughter Venus in a most unusual way: fully formed and already an adult, Venus emerged from her father's head. I am now convinced that The Brain studied Greek mythology a little too much in college because,


after intense labor that included four more seizures, a Diva was born yesterday. Why? Because The Brain is convinced that it's