The stress ofhaving to do an awful job, and be the sole support in our household dueto my failings caught up to her, and she had a stroke.She survived... but her working days, and in fact her days of taking careof herself were over, forever.I talked my brother into setting her up in his basement, and for a whiletaking care of her gave me a reason to keep fighting. Well, her, and mydaughter, of course.Until both of those reasons were taken away from me.First, my ex finally realized how feminine I. Luckily, we didn't find too many of those outside the local zoos though.We made sure and picked up a few souvenirs for the crew back at thepiercing shop while we were there. I wasn't sure the chocolate foilwrapped Nobel prize medals were going to survive the week though, theywere pretty tasty.A day later, it was the big day. Not the day of the medal ceremony, thatwas still 2 days away. No, today was the day I was going to be reunitedwith my parents. A roil of emotions tore my insides up, and. I'd been pretty reluctant tocheck out my new body completely, but was surprised that when I sat onthe toilet and peed, it felt sort of normal. I mean it came out of thewrong spot, and sprayed out a bit instead of coming in the stream I wasused to, but for some reason, it didn't really feel that odd to pee thatway. When I was done, I wiped myself down, and my hands seemed to knowjust how, and where to wipe.I went to bed early, hoping this would all be a bad dream, and would endwhen I woke. We were close enough to walk to school but I would have my Jeep and since we couldn’t justify the condominium car at the college house, I bought a three series BMW convertible that I kept in the garage and Patty would drive it when she needed a car. The last bay held a new Suburban SUV that was driven by the security team.Britt must have had some say in the new place because when I walked out into the back yard, there was a big old dump truck tire that must have been six feet in diameter and.