We got an update from the Braun factory yesterday, my wife's van should be done the first of next week. *YEAH*

Then another week to ship it back here, they have to find a truck headed this way, and a few days at the local facility to make final adjustments and install a few more items.

So, we are looking at a delivery date of around May 4th.

Can't wait, and I know she's getting very eager, and nervous, LOL.

She's worried about using the hand controls, so I'm taking her to an empty parking lot (Kmart store that closed) when we get the van and let her practice.

So if you see a van driving in circles in a old Kmart parking lot....honk and wave, it's probably us. LOL

So...a little over a week ago, during her regular visit to her psychiatrist, my wife mentioned her low libido and asked if the doctor knew anything that could help.

Her old doctor, whom I made her stop seeing as he had her on way to many meds, and even meds that were not to be taken together, had told her that there wasn't anything that could help with low libido caused by her antidepressants.

This doctor however, said that Wellbutrin has been known to help in situations like this. He wrote her a script and she started taking it a week ago today. He warned her it could take a month to take effect...but it didn't.

Sunday afternoon when I got home from work she practically dragged me into the bedroom where she proceeded to "" me. LOL

Sunday night, when we went to bed, she was all over me again, and I "xxxxxx" myself to accede to her demands.

Monday night it was more of the same, and Tuesday, due to a family emergency, I was out until 11, and she was asleep when I got home and in bed. Wednesday morning she wanted to know why I didn't wake her up for sex when I got home the night before, lol.

So last night we made up for it...)))

If it's going to take a month to get the full effect, I'm going to need a prescription for Viagra. LOL

The down side is it hasn't helped her achieve orgasms like she used too, and the doc said it won't.

However, she heard on Doctor Oz the other day that doing Keigel(sp?) exercises helps, and according to Dr. Oz, doing these exercises will help 90% of women who can't, haven't, or have trouble achieving orgasm.

I've suggested these in the past and she told me that she didn't believe they would help....but since Dr. Oz suggested it, she's going to do it now. *rolls eyes* I'm not complaining, if she gets the desired results I'll be happy. ))

Anyway...LIFE IS GOOD!! LOL

Hope your all doing as well as I am this morning.

and my back is killing me.

Yikes, spent the last two days working in the yard. Tree limbs to cut up and cart to the wood pile..@#$&^@#$ tulip tree drops limbs like crazy. I'd cut it down but it's 80 feet tall and would fall on my house. Yeah I know I could fall it the other way, but then it would fall on the neighbors house. On second thought....LOL.

Got all the limbs, big and small picked up, and mowed the lawn for the first time...hated too as it was full of white, pink, and red wild flowers, but the grass was getting tall enough it was either that or move.

Cleaned out all the gutters, fukin' pine trees, lol, and raked up the leaves the oak in the front yard waited until march to drop.

Tilled the garden, planted some spuds and sweet peas, everything else will have to wait a bit until all danger of frost is past.

All in all, a busy couple of days, and there is more to be done, as usual. Found some siding damaged when a limb fell and hit the side of the house, minor but needs fixed, and a rotting board behind a gutter that had plugged and overflowed.

Hey, owning your own home is great, right?

One of the pecans I planted last year isn't budding out, although the other is, and one of the wife's three rose bushes and her lilac she planted last year aren't looking real spry. So, more work replacing those.

Moles are tearing up the yard already, fukin' blind tunneling rats, so I have that to deal with too.

But hey, life's great here, how are you all doing?

Yes!!!!, she passed the simulation...

However, it brings up another hoop to jump through. *sighs*

She got her DL back, and is ok to drive the van we have now....which she can't drive because her disability has gotten worse. But she got a "learners permit" for a van with hand controls.

Now, my question is this, who's supposed to be teaching her to use the hand controls? ME? Other than the few minutes I spent playing on the simulator, I've never used them, and besides, without the proper "classification" on my DL, I can't legally use them anyway.

So....what, she just learns by doing? LOL, ain't bureaucracy great?

Anyway, basically the permit gives her a few months to drive the van with the controls and get used to them before she has to go and take the actual driving test using them.

Now all we have to do is wait for the modifications on the new van to be complete, and we are good to go. YEAH!!!

Thanks for all the best wishes for her.

Well, I'm in the parking lot at Mc Yucky's, they got free wifi now, yeah! My wife's just down the road jumping through hoops for the state so she can get her driver's license back. (see prev. blog) I've got an all day wait (ugh) but have to pick her up for lunch and then she goes back for more training followed by a driving test on a simulator.

I did get to check the simulators out, pretty cool shit actually. I figured it would be something like a video game type thing, and it is, if you could feed a Wii steroids. LOL

It has a dash and all just like a car, pedals and hand controls exactly like she will have in her new van. She pulls up to it in her chair and there is a wrap around screen that makes it look like you are really driving a car. Even the images are vids, or really damned good cgi, cause it looks like real scenery, like you are really driving.

They let me try it out and the lady doing the testing kept telling me it wasn't a NASCAR race. LMAO. I guess I would have failed.

Anyway, hopefully at the end of the day my wife will have her DL back and then all we have to do is wait the six to eight weeks for them to complete the modifications on her new van.

The company that is doing the mods loaned us one identical to it, only a year older, that they use for a rental, so we could try it out today. Pretty cool stuff, and my wife is hoping she has her DL when we leave so she can drive home.

Well, that's what's exciting in my life today. HA HA!!!

God I feel like I'm in a fucking circus or something, jumping through all these hoops.

I bought a new van for my wife a few weeks back, her's is worn out, and it's off to be modified for her wheelchair.

Anyway, her disability has progressed to the point where using the standard gas and brake pedals is becoming difficult, so we thought we'd have hand controls installed to make it easier for her now, and in the future.

Now the State of Illinois has informed us that she has to take a special driving class before she can use the hand controls. OK, I said, no problem, we'll just wait and get them when she really needs them.

NO!! Fuckers suspended her license (she's NEVER had a ticket or accident) and now we got all these fucking hoops to jump through to get them back!!!

First, it was off to her doctor's for an evaluation. He signed off saying she was physically able to drive. Took that letter to the DMV, they said it wouldn't work cause she had to have an evaluation by their doctors.

So, they schedule the evaluation....and it's with the same fucking specialist that is HER doctor...WTF!!!!

So, he signs off on it again, and they say, ok, NOW you have to have to go to training in the use of the hand controls.

Not getting hand controls now, I told them, and they informed us that she wasn't getting her driver's license back until she had the evaluation, whether we were getting hand controls or not.

FUCKERS!!! The bitch we are dealing with has the attitude that if you have a disability you don't need to drive. She even suggested that my wife didn't need to drive since I could take her everywhere she needed to go.

WTF...It's not her fucking place to decide where and when my wife goes anywhere, fucking cunt.

Now we are headed to Peoria, a three hour drive, so she can do some training with the hand controls. Oh, and I get a letter last night from this DMV bitch that at the end of the training, all day Friday, Lori has to pass a fucking test on a simulator or they STILL wont give her license back.

And, from now on every year she'll have to take the complete driver's test, written and driving exam, before she can renew her license.

Haven't these fucking people ever heard of discrimination? If her driving record was poor or something I would understand, but she has a perfect driving record.

FUCK!!! I'm about ready to go postal on this stupid bitch we've been dealing with. ARRRGGGHHHH!!!!

Sorry, just needed to vent.

So a while back I posted a thread on Immigration in the General Discussion forum, and rather than revive the debate there, I decided to put this here instead.

This weekend, despite the loss of an old friend in an accident, I made good on a promise to take my wife and son to the Abraham Lincoln Museum in Springfield IL. I'm glad I did.

It was a rather interesting, and sobering trip back in time. Honest Abe was a hell of a man, and overcame a lot of adversity in his life.

One thing that struck me as I was working my way through the exhibits was the handbills from when he was running for election. There, from a time that nearly tore our nation in two, were Abe's words in Spanish, German, and French.

I got to thinking about this, and about the complaints many of us, including me, make about having road signs and such in Spanish. I mean, this is America right, shouldn't we all speak English?

Yet here was a man, who I dare say was one of the greatest Americans to ever live, who embraced his fellow citizens, no matter what language they spoke. There was no "political correctness" in his time, yet he saw fit to have his platform printed in the native language of the new citizens in the area so that they too could understand what he stood for.

If Abraham Lincoln could embrace the differences in the local people, who am I to say he was wrong? Abraham Lincoln was the son of a pioneer, one of those Americans who ventured into the "wilderness" and opened the way for those who would come after.

A self made man if ever there was one, he pulled himself up from the hard scrabble life of the frontier to become the President of the United States, and to lead the struggle to preserve the Union.

As I stood looking at the photographs of the battlefield at Gettysburg, littered with the bodies of those men who died to preserve the Union, my eyes were drawn to the inscription along the top of one wall of the room, a copy, in Lincoln's own hand, of the Gettysburg Address.


It was the first line that got me-"...and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

"...that all men are created equal."

Lincoln was a firm believer in that statement. Here he stated it plain and clear. All men, no matter where they are from, or what language they speak, or the color of their skin. ALL MEN...

How many men, and women, who never learned to speak "proper" English, have shed their blood, not only on the battlefields of the Civil War, but on battle fields all over the world, to support this American ideal...that all men are created equal?

How many have sacrificed their lives so that I might have the freedom to gripe and bitch about "foreigners" taking over 'my' country? And how many of them were born here, how many weren't. Those men traveled to this country, swore an oath to uphold it's ideals, and DIED to protect them.

It was a humbling look at myself, and I hope that I came away from it with a new understanding of my fellow Americans, no matter what language they speak, no matter where they were born. We are, after all, a nation of "foreigners".