Learning to drive can be very stressful for the person learning, the teacher and the parents. This is especially true if you don’t feel like paying for a driver’s education class and your parent is the teacher. This means all parties have to stay calm. That is truer for the teacher because if the teacher is freaking out about every little thing then the driver will not be able to learn anything. Its chaos and totally unmanageable and places unneeded stress on everyone involved.

The teacher needs to be calm and supportive and start out very slow. That way the driver’s confidence can work its way up. Starting out small lets the driver learn how to control the vehicle and all the little things that go along with that. Breaking smoothly, turning, and turn signals are all things that should be learned before actually getting on the road. And even when you get there, you should go easy.

Take back roads and roads that aren’t used very often or by lots of people. Guide the driver through these places if he or she is unfamiliar with them. Once they get the hang of the road, then they can learn to navigate themselves. And eventually you can turn the driver loose to be on their own even though you may want to ground them until they are thirty!

Have you ever really had to use the restroom and there was no good place in sight? You don’t want to go to a gross gas station or McDonalds. Now that is just nasty and nobody wants to have to do that. I was in this awful situation the other day and I can tell you it wasn’t fun.

There are a few easy fixes for this. Some are easier than others. The easiest and, let’s face it, a classic, is to just go in an empty bottle of some sort. Water, Coke, Gatorade. Anything will do in this situation. Another thing you can do is look around for a nice grocery store. In my experience, nice grocery stores have very nice restrooms. I understand that there may not be a nice grocery near by but even a sub-par grocery is better than a convenience store.

So over all there are some good choices out there. And when disaster strikes let’s just hope you have one of these choices available to you. If not, you may have to use the bottle method. But that’s better than nothing.

Do you ever watch children’s movie that you enjoyed as a kid nowadays. I always enjoy it because there are so many things I actually understand now that I am a little bit older. I think that filmmakers do this on purpose so that even people of all ages can enjoy their films.

Two great examples of these are Shrek and the Wizard of Oz. In the Wizard of Oz one of the witch’s evil tricks is to cover the yellow brick in poppy flowers. This reference just flew right over my head as a child. Now I understand that poppy becomes heroin and heroin makes people drowsy. That got a little chuckle out of me last night. Shrek also has some great ones. My favorites are the Donkeys constant musical references. One thing I’d like to say is that in my opinion, Donkey has a great taste in music. Now that I have become more familiar with music, his character is that much more enjoyable.

There are plenty more examples than these but those were just to name a few. I think it’s a good idea for people to go back and enjoy some of the older movies to see how much more they like them now. It might just be a good idea.

My step father in a general physician and the senior partner in his practice so he was one of the doctors I spoke to about healthcare. In the beginning he was all for the changes that were being proposed and then something changes; it became about the insurance industry and not about the care that we get from our doctors and hospitals. No one is arguing that we should do nothing; the question is what do we do?

Today it was released that the average American spends 17% of their total income on healthcare. That’s over a third of the average American’s mortgage payment since most house payments cannot exceed 45% to be approved. That is a staggering amount of your household income spent on healthcare but again; what do we need to do? I suggest you ask your doctor on your next appointment and find out what he or she thinks they need us to fight for in order to improve care. When I have asked mine the questions they had said some very smart and creative things. We should be talking to the people who take care of patients and NOT the administration big wigs whose only job is to make a lot of money. Until we get our priorities straight, a solution will never be found.