Seriously Dude?

Every morning , on my way to work, I drop B off at the high school.  We stop on our way to school and pick up his best friend, Chris.  B usually drives, since he's working towards a license in the spring.

This morning, Chris got into the back seat and said, "Dude! Where were you last night?  Why weren't you at rehearsal?"

"Dude!  Seriously? Rehearsal?" my mildly sleepy son repeated.

"Dude!" Chris admonished him, "Band practice!  Seriously!  For the concert tonight?  Where were you?"

"Dude!" said B, "I thought that was next week.  Oh crap!  Mom, we seriously have a concert tonight!"

I sighed as I recalled the old Rosanne Barr bit about some animals eating their young.  "What time do you need to be there tonight?" I asked them.

Silence.

"I dunno, Dude," Chris said.  "We'll check at school today.  Prolly around 6:30."

"I hope Mr. P isn't too pissed off at me for missing rehearsal, Dude," said B.

"Dude, he was like asking me where you were and stuff, and I was like I dunno Dude."

As B pulled up to the school, I asked them, "Can either of you use a sentence without DUDE in it?"

"Have a good day, Dude," my son told me with a self-satisfied smirk.  Apparently the answer to that question would be no, they can't.

(Please insert clever transition of subject here.  I can't think of one.}

If you Google Rheumatoid Arthritis (go ahead, you know you want to), you will get all kinds of crap, some very helpful information (mostly from the Mayo Clinic), lots of great blogs, and then a lot of propaganda-like misinformation from people who want to sell you supplements. The whole goal is managing your RA.  In fact, most of the articles you read are about how rheumatoid arthritis is managed.

I would like to know how one actually gets to the point of managing one's RA.  Mine is currently managing me, and I don't have it nearly as rough as some of the RA bloggers I read.  I can barely walk most of the time, and it hurts like hell when I do.  I smile and pretend I'm fine because it's too hard to explain to the other 300 people in our office who look at me strangely as I limp away.  But my hands, while stiff and swollen, still work.  I am still able to type fairly well, talk on the phone, attend meetings, and generally work all day even though I'm thoroughly and completely crispy fried to a crackly crunch at the end of it.  How long can I keep doing this?  I feel quite out of control with the physical manifestations of this disease.  RA decides how long it takes me to get ready in the morning.  It decides how early I go to bed at night.  It decides what's for dinner and even who is going to cook it.  RA decides if I'm going to attend a meeting or cancel it and reschedule and do that again four times before my boss thinks I'm avoiding a project.  RA stabs at me while in those meetings as it will jab me tonight at my son's band concert.  It will also decide if  I should sleep tonight and how well.  When and how do I get to the point of managing it instead of the other way around?

I know, I know.  It's a process.  I hear that a lot.  I'm just not enlightened enough for the "mindful journey" my lovely Buddhist daughter tells me this disease can be for me.  Have you ever tried to sit still and meditate when you're in a great deal of pain?  I know they say it can help, but it's hard for me to clear my mind of the "Ouch, oh crap, ouch," mantra that takes over the rest of my day.  I don't want to be mindful of my pain, thank you.  I'd rather have mindless oblivion, but I'm not going to get that while trying to function all day.  Dude!  Seriously?  How does this get managed?  My doc has been trying.  The meds are supposed to be kicking in.  But they aren't yet.

And my husband just let me know that he's going to leave work a couple of hours early and get a nap before the band concert.  He's really tired.  Dude!  Seriously?  I can't do that.  I am resentful and jealous as hell that he can not only leave work merely because he feels like napping, but that he's healthy and doesn't need one anywhere near as badly as I do right now.  See?  Failing at marriage #2...

Dude.  Seriously.

Creepy or just the age he's at?

My husband and I had a little talk with my son last night about the fine line between pining for a former love and being a stalker.  He's still upset that the Singing Valentine he'd sent to a former girlfriend through the school choir last week wasn't a hit.  He said she's been really friendly again lately and he'd like to have her back, but she appears to have a current boyfriend who was less than enthusiastic about B's very public attempt to win her back.  Fortunately, no students were harmed in the making of this drama. It seems, though, that B had approached her again at school yesterday and told her she was the only one for him, and she told him he was sweet, but needed to leave her alone.  He doesn't want to leave her alone.  He wanted help winning her over again.  "Please mom, what do girls really want?"

Oh my.

To begin with, I don't really know much about teenage boys.  I wasn't one.  And I have a sister.  No brothers.   Plus I was one of those annoying girls who giggled too much and made a complete idiot of herself when cute boys tried to talk to her.  Girls today seem to be much better at negotiating relationships on their own terms, I'll give them that.  But what do girls want at that age?  Social standing, mostly.  They want the cutest boyfriend, lots of attention, decent grades and pretty things.  They want to feel important.  But they don't want a guy they've rejected chasing them around making them feel guilty or weird and they certainly don't want him drawing negative attention to them.

This girl is the one he went to Homecoming with more than a year ago and on whom he has had a crush for a very long time.  Well, more than a year, which is an eternity in teenager years.  It's a bit too much of a crush, though.  I gently explained to him that he needs to move on from the hurt that this girl caused him and find another girl.  He reminded me of the disastrous summer relationship that was supposed to help him move on but turned out to be Way Too Much when said replacement girl told him after a couple of weeks that all of her other current boyfriends bought her jewelry.  He was smart enough to recognize that particular racket when he saw it, which is a good sign.  But he went back to missing the first girl who had a name I've only ever heard used on TV as a stripper's stage name.

Mind you, B's dad has officially stalked me, broken into my home, and been charged with domestic violence in our not-distant-enough past.  Thus, any sign of obsessiveness in our son makes me rather nervous.  I knew that attempting to discuss this with his father would result in undesirable drama, so that wasn't an option.

Really Great Guy Husband to the rescue!  I am so glad I married this man.  (At least today.  He'll piss me off some time soon and I'll wonder what I was thinking, but for the most part, he's Really Great.)  He sat down next to me and said to B, "Dude, where do you find all these girls with stripper names anyway?  I would have killed for a girl like that in high school!"  I looked at him sharply.  "Oh...um...just saying..." he corrected himself.  "Anyhow, B, it looks like there are LOTS of girls with stripper names in your high school.  You're in serious danger of looking completely lame if you keep following this one around.  You don't want to be that guy that everyone in the cafeteria points to and whispers about because his ex-girlfriend's parents had to get a restraining order.  That stuff is going to be really hard to live down at school.  Plus you never want law enforcement involved in your life."

B looked from RGG to me and sighed.  He mumbled something about the fact that he truly loved this young woman with the stripper name and always would.

"Well, of course!" my husband agreed.  "You always have a soft spot for your first love.  But it's the one that winds up being your LAST love that really counts.  I had to marry the wrong woman and go through a lot of crap before I found your mom.  It may take you a while to find the right one.  Just dedicate yourself to having a really great search.  Have some fun with it!  Plan on getting married around 30.  That's a logical time to settle down.  In the meanwhile, date all the girls you can!  Get to know them.  Figure out what you like and don't like in a girl and warn them that you aren't planning to get married until you're way old.  Then they'll try to get you to change your mind. It will work like a charm."

B seemed slightly cheered at that prospect and began discussing a girl from band and the relative merits of the trumpet, at which point I wandered off to let the guy talk really commence.

Think any of this will hold the stalker tendencies at bay?  Or will he turn out to be scary like his dad?  Only time will tell.