In which Doris joins facebook

Are any of you guys on facebook?

I am.

I waste way too much time there. I post almost every day and sometimes more than once a day. I don't get too personal - I posted this exchange there once and took it down almost immediately because TMI. Here, though, it is relatively anonymous. Those of you who know me in real life can just pretend I am a complete stranger if it makes you squeamish to read this.

Primo: You're just going to have sex with me because you feel sorry for me. You really don't feel like it right now.

Me: Yep. This is pity sex.

Primo: That's fine with me.

See? A little personal. But it did not last long - maybe five minutes. The post, I mean.

I don't write about politics. I try to save my trash talk about Primo's parents for here, although I did chronicle the entire Christmas of Ought Nine disaster on my FB wall. On my mother's advice, I removed it. Good thing my mom doesn't read this blog because she would learn more about me than she ever wanted to know and more than I ever wanted her to know. Fortunately, my family has boundaries and we respect each other's privacy and don't go where we're not invited, unlike some others I could name but won't.

But I still write about my life and I don't want Doris to be part of my life.

Maybe that's mean.

Maybe I'm mean.

But you don't get to complain to my husband that I should be over that threatening not to come to our wedding and don't marry me by now if you have never apologized to me. Heck, you've never even mentioned it.

And you don't get to be my friend.

Not that I spend a lot of time holding a grudge or nurturing anger against Sly and Doris. It's more that I just don't want their presence in my everyday life.

So imagine my distress when Primo told me today that his mother was on facebook and she had friended him.

"What am I going to do if she tries to friend me?" I asked.

"I don't know," Primo sighed. "I have to accept her. She's my mother."

Which is true. I would never ignore my mom's friend request on FB. I might not tell her about my double secret probation blog just to maintain some discretion and privacy in our relationship, but I would never not be her FB friend.

"If she asks, I'm going to tell her no," I told him.

And I would.

But then I posed the question to my FB friends: What do you do when your husband's mother goes on facebook?

And that's when I learned about the BLOCK function.

Oh block how I love thee.

If I block Doris, she will not even know I exist on FB. She will not see me in Primo's profile. She will not see anything I write on Primo's wall. She won't see any comments I make on Primo's posts. Not that I ever comment on his posts because all he writes about is politics and sheesh - I argue enough with him in person. I don't need to argue about politics on FB. With anyone.

Now all we have to worry about is if she asks Primo if I am on FB. I am telling him to lie. He is all "the end justifies the means" (that's what his political arguments always reduce to), so this should not bother him.