Who'd have imagined...

Decisions, decisions...

So we get this notification from the insurance company that insures our vehicles that my driver's license has been suspended. Would have been nice for whoever did the actual suspending to let me know, I would imagine. Well, as you can imagine, insurance company doesn't like underwriting people with suspended licenses, and All Sorts Of Issues now demand our attention.

I haven't been behind the wheel of my truck for somewhere between six and nine months. I haven't even tried to get into my truck for months. Truck has hand controls, which I've always thought were superior to foot controls, for years. I don't, and never have, even tried to operate foot-control vehicles also for years. 

I have no idea who thought I had done something meritorious of license suspension. My wife thinks it was Some Medical Entity who told the DMV that I had Some Medical Problem and thus, my "driving privilege" as DMV likes saying, needed to be suspended.

How to get the suspension lifted is equally dense and unclear. Especially because nobody seems to know what it's about. It's the Usual Big Government Agency Thing... see the right person, get the Right Forms Filled Out The Right Way, problem disappears. Alas, though, the antithesis of "easy."

So basically, since I don't drive nowadays, mainly because the Glory Days of hoiking my wheelchair into and out of the truck by myself, and getting around the outside of and getting into and out of the truck are, at least today, ain't happening, so for the foreseeable future, it doesn't matter whether I have a let's-me-drive license or not.

So... I think I'm gonna just keep the underwriters happy, take myself off the insurance, which means I'm not covered if I drive, but since I don't drive, what matters it? When it seems doable to go struggle with the DMV, we'll see to that, then.

Thank God for my wife driving me places. And for the friends that fill in for her when she can't do the driving.

Instead of automotively roaming the world, I will sit on the back veranda, smell the air, and listen to the birds. Go back to bed and meditate. Simply repeating mantras, as Ram Dass discusses, is changing my life vastly for the better. Will I write more music? I hope so... We'll see about that. We take each day as it comes.

Just like life, right? 

And so, I can't get myself into my truck to cart me off to the Taiwanese tea place. Someone else has to do that for me, which means they do it with me. And that's definitely a nice option!

And if none of that happens, I sit. I listen. I smell the air. Maybe I call friends or family on the phone.  My wife is a constant source of joy for me, and when she goes off to have fun with her friends, I rejoice at her joy; when she goes off to perform, even just "acting over the microphone" instead of "trodding the boards" on stage, I rejoice. Yeah, I have body difficulties and annoyances, who doesn't? God willing, I write music, but whether I do that or not, I meditate.

And all this, all things considered, isn't a bad life. It has been an amazing life, and it keeps getting more interesting, just in new and different ways.  Given that much of the "interesting" is specifically thanks to living the "MS life," Actually... it's quite a good life.

So I don't drive, nowadays. It's still quite a good life.

Now, medicinal herbs, lunch, bed and meditation. Maybe some oolong tea. Not "the good life" as most people imagine it, but it is very, very good, MS cruft and all. If someone would have regaled me with the list of what I've lost, I wouldn't have imagined you could even call this a life, but... Yes, it is a good life. A wonderful gift of MS.

Who'd have imagined?