Short Rant:

   I tend to write here about the bigger or funnier things in our lives. The adventures that we have, and the havoc that we (mostly him) cause. But the devil, as they say, is in the details. The day-to-day, everyday circus that is our lives. It's the constant loud quotes and babble, the imperfect potty-training, the daily struggles for understanding: Him trying to understand us, us trying to understand him, and everyone else trying to understand just what in the hell is going on.
    (Warning: Sudden segue' alert!)   One of my favorite Lucille Ball movies is 'Yours Mine and Ours' with Henry Fonda. If you want to know the plot, you'll have to look it up (1968 ver.). Basically all you need to know is; Man with 10 kids meets woman with 8 and then they have one together. As they're heading to the hospital for no. 19, Fonda explains 'Love' to Ball's eldest daughter...  Life isn't a love in, it's the dishes and the orthodontist and the shoe repairman and... ground round instead of roast beef. And I'll tell you something else: it isn't going to a bed with a man that proves you're in love with him; it's getting up in the morning and facing the drab, miserable, wonderful everyday world with him that counts.
    If you adjust the content slightly (the going to bed part, particularly) the sentiment applies to Dudes as well. Not wanting to sound harsh (but hey.. it's my blog, so what the hell...), but this is the criteria that shows me the difference in the 'love' of his mother and the love he gets every silly, loud, aggravating, crazy, wonderful day from Raine. Like dough-boys in the trenches we're ill-prepared, but every time the whistle blows we still go over the trenches in the face of the withering fire of game and movie quotes. (Drama much?)
    On a regular basis I try not to deal with 2 state agencies, 2 county agencies, 2 schools, 1 school district, and the Federal Government (Your Tax Dollars at work to confuse the hell out of Everybody). Thankfully, not all on the same day... well almost never anyway. And I have to say, in my humble, yet all knowing opinion... that working for the government, any government makes you do strange and stupid things. Mostly just so some one person can't later say that you didn't do, whatever it was, for them... And then sue your ass off.

   A case in point. (Nice way of saying, I'm having a little rant now) David is technically part of the Cornell School District. He doesn't attend classes at Cornell School, he's never met any of the students or faculty in any official capacity. He's never been in the building, or even on school grounds. He's only technically a senior in this school he's never attended, he's autistic, physically handicapped and maintains a godlike indifference to the very existence of  the place. But at least twice a week I get automatic notices on my cell-phone from Cornell telling me about the doings of all of the activities that Dude doesn't participate in, at the school he doesn't actually attend. The comings and go-ings (never far enough) of the PTA, of which I'm not now, never been, nor likely to ever be a member. And sometimes, in the heat of the moment I guess, I even get VM messages about parenting classes and football rallies and I don't know  what all. Most are cleverly designed to reach my phone as I'm riding my cycle home and can't hear them. So I can't just ignore the call, I have to go to voice mail and delete them... (Okay... breathe...the Bad People can't hurt you now) But their greatest tribute to senseless bureaucracy is that about once or twice a month (depending on the phases of the moon, I guess) I get a letter. An actual paper, sent through the US Snail, letter. With a stamp and a post-mark, and everything, advising me how to get student loans! So that David can go to college.  Let's pause here, and have a Moment of Silence for the death of Common Sense... or any Sense at all, actually. I'm eagerly waiting for the notice that it's time to sign him up for the SAT's.

   Student loans? Really? If I weren't almost certain that this was just a case of 'he's 18, so he gets this stuff' I would be really REALLY pissed off. I mean, it kinda feels like someone is sending me this stuff, just so they can laugh at me. That would suck, but it can't really be true. Because if it were, then that would mean they were making fun of Dude, and then I would become an ever-expanding, radioactive, mushroom cloud of righteous  parental fury, laying down death and destruction throughout the entire Ohio River Valley. And let's face it. Nobody really wants that, do they? I hope not, it's very tiring.