In which Primo has to hide the truth from Sly and Doris because Sly and Doris can't handle the truth

My mom turned 70 last winter.

Winter is not a good time to fly to Colorado, where she lives, unless you want to spend a lot of time in an airport, so we decided to postpone the celebration until nicer weather.

I didn't even know we would have a celebration but then my mom said she wanted one and the celebration she wanted was to have all her children and their SOs come to Colorado, drive to Durango, and take the narrow-gauge train from Durango to Silverton and back.

Which sounded great in principle and indeed was fun but when we were planning this event, I neglected to think through the "Durango is 350 miles from Colorado Springs"and "Colorado Springs is 1,000 miles from where Primo and I live" parts.

Which meant there was a lot of time spent sitting on our butts over the six days we were gone from home.

Which is totally not the point but may I say that my future brother in law, Bart, is a saint for having rented an SUV to get us all from Colorado Springs to Durango. I hate being in a car and I especially hate being in a car smashed up against other people and then throw in other people who want to talk for seven hours and you might as well give me a gun.

I love my family but man there is nobody who can press your buttons like the people who put them there.

I sat in the very back with my book and my peanut butter and jelly flavored almonds from the sale rack at Target and I was just fine. Mostly.

Well anyway.

The big dilemma was what, if anything, to tell Sly and Doris.

1. Sly and Doris think my family is "not close" and therefore I, or at least Primo, should never spend any time with them.

2. Sly and Doris are about to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary and their 80th and 75th birthdays, respectively. What are we going to do for them? they ask.

3. If Primo takes any vacation time or does any traveling, it should be to visit them.

I advised Primo against telling them anything. "It will just tick them off," I said. "There is nothing to be gained from telling them about this."

"But what if they find out I lied to them?" he asked. "And what happens when I call them? We'll be on the train on Sunday and that's the day I usually call, so I'll have to call on Saturday and they'll want to know why."

I sighed. My mother does not cause such drama. My mother, weeks before we got to her house, was emailing me to ask if Primo liked banana bread and if Primo liked zucchini bread and if Primo liked breakfast tacos and what did Primo  like to eat? What should she cook?

My mother believes in providing meals for her guests, unlike some people who think that just because they don't eat lunch, neither should anyone else.

Primo put off telling his parents and put it off and suddenly, we were in Colorado and he hadn't said anything and then we were taking the train trip on Sunday, which is when Primo calls Sly and Doris, so he wouldn't be able to call and they would get angry and send him a nasty email about how he doesn't even have time to call his own parents and they guess they just don't rate very highly in his life etc etc etc.

He gave them a prophylactic call on Saturday - "Just tell them you'll be doing something else on Sunday," I suggested.

"But what if they ask what I'll be doing?"

"Tell them you're doing something political. That will make them happy."

Primo was shocked. "But that would be a lie!"

I shrugged. "Sometimes you have to lie. If you tell them the truth, they'll get angry and they'll take it out on you. Even the Catholic Church has some doctrine about the lesser evil. Lying to them is definitely the lesser evil."

And then we were on the train and I was posting photos from the trip and tagging Primo and it wasn't until we were on the ride back that I realized that although I had asked Stephanie, who is our facebook friend, not to mention anything to Sly and Doris about the trip - "I never tell them anything about you," she said - Primo's half-brother Ted, who is a jerk and would happily say anything to Sly and Doris to upset them about Primo, might be able to see the posts on Primo's page. I have blocked Doris and Ted on facebook - as far as they are concerned, I do not exist there, but I didn't know if Ted could see a post from me with Primo in it.

I panicked for the two hours back to the house and then had Primo delete every post I had made about him.

He sent Sly and Doris a long email and then called them later in the week.

They have not found out about the trip. But if they do, there will be hell to pay.

Things Primo is agreeing to do if I agree for him to quit his job

Paint the garage instead of hiring someone
Let me change my name back to my maiden name
Only visit his parents once a year
Let me publish my book, although under a pseudonym
More housework

In which Primo is torn about which candidate to vote against

Primo: So I'm not sure who to vote for in the state party election.

Me: Why?

Primo: One of the candidates tried to get another candidate kicked out of the party. But his opponent is a transsexual who used to go places, like the bank, throw up her shirt, and announce, "I finally had it done!"

Me: I can see why that would be a tough choice.

In which my friend Bruce is going through a mid-life crisis

My friend Bruce told me that he was thinking of running for office. He owns his own business and is quite successful. He is financially secure, although some of that is due to sad circumstances: he was the sole heir when his grandfather and then his mother died. I think he'd rather have them around than have their money, but you don't get to pick these things. Nobody asks, "Would you rather your parents be dead and have $500,000 or would you rather they be alive?"

I would rather have my dad than have money. I would have been very happy to have had my dad around for the past 16 years. I didn't even get money in compensation, not that money can make up for the loss of your dad. It sure would be nice for Primo to have been able to meet him and for him to visit and hang out and do house and car repairs while he was here.

Oh I didn't take advantage of him. That's just how my dad rolled. He liked to fix things and he liked to stay busy. He came to see me once in Austin. I took him to my friends' lake place where they kept their boat. There was a problem with the lift or something and my dad was as happy as a pig in mud that he could diagnose and fix the problem.

A lot of my formative ideas about what makes a man are based on my dad. (Naturally.) And the idea that a man should be able to fix things comes from him.

My dad was an equal-opportunity dad - he believed women should be able to fix things, too, which is why he wouldn't let me get my drivers license until I could change the oil, change a tire, and change a belt on the car. I mean, I had to do all these things so he could see me doing them.

One gift bequeathed to me from my dad is the old Better Homes and Gardens (I think that's the publisher - I am too lazy to go upstairs to look) book on home repairs. I have used it - it is very useful to be able to fix your own running toilet or clear a clog in the kitchen sink.

How did I get on this subject?

So my friend Bruce is thinking of running for office.

I told him not to do it - that it was an insane idea and he would not get to see his family - he has two young children - for weeks, if not months.

"My wife is not excited about the idea, either," he said. "She said that if I need to do this - that if I have a strong spiritual need to run for office, that she will support me, but if it's just a mid-life crisis, she would rather I have an affair. Or buy a car."

"Any car?" I asked.

"A Corvette is OK. A Porsche is not."

"I wish Primo would just buy a new car," I said.

In which I have a glimmer of hope that I might escape from here but then my hopes are dashed

Primo: I was arguing with Potsie last night about the Polka Dot candidate for governor. He thinks she's our best option but he's pretty sure she won't win.

Me: So?

Primo: Rather than accepting it, he should be working to get someone else elected! If the current [Stripes] governor is re-elected, the state will  become even worse, with all the Stripes agenda. If that happens, I will have to consider moving out of the state.

Me: Cool! So we can go back to Texas or Tennessee?

Primo: No! They're even worse! I'd have to go to Minnesota.

Me: I am not going someplace that's even colder than here.

Ha! Sly gets nailed!

I saw this story in Slate and showed it to Primo immediately. He laughed and agreed that Sly is a grammar (and every other kind of) bully. (Remember the time he got all mad at me because he tried to correct his granddaughter about the proper pronunciation of "extract" and she had said it properly and I defended her? And then the kids, Primo, and I had a long conversation about how Sly is always correcting them and they are tired of it. He doesn't correct them lovingly, he corrects them with anger and scorn.)

We wanted to show the cartoon to Doris, but we can't: her email is not secure because she and Sly share an email and he opens the mail that comes into the house and there is no way to have a private conversation with her. She had to slip a handwritten note to Primo during his visit to them last month in which she said that she thought Sly would have mellowed as he aged but instead he has just gotten meaner.

We don't dare risk Sly seeing the article or the cartoon because as you know, he has no sense of humor, especially about himself, and he takes his anger out on Doris, who can't defend herself. He doesn't try to bully me any more because he can't but man will he make Doris cry. Annoying as I find her, she doesn't deserve that.

So Primo is going to print the article and the cartoon and show it to Doris the next time he visits. We can try to make her smile somehow.

In which my inner Machiavelli becomes useful

Primo burst breathlessly into the bedroom, where I was happily reading a book, minding my own business, not thinking about politics at all.

Primo: Remember that bill? The one about puppies? And how puppies should be taken for a walk every day, at least once a day?

Me: Yes. So?

Primo: Well, you remember that the people on my side were completely against the bill because they don't think the government should be telling people how to treat puppies?

Me: Yes.

Primo: They voted on it. And Slim Shady [Polka Dot majority leader in the state senate] voted for it! So did some other Polka Dots!

Me: Uh-huh. (I don't really care about this bill. I literally do not have a dog in this fight. Plus the bill contradicts a federal law about dog walking and you know what the constitution says about that.)

Primo: There were some Polka Dots in districts that are pretty evenly split between Polka Dots and Stripes, so they had to vote for the bill to keep the Stripes from making a big deal about it in the next election.

Me: Right. Standard political calculations.

Primo: But there are people who are not in contested districts who also voted for it! Why? I can't believe that Slim voted for it, too! I am so ticked at him! There is a huge facebook fight going on about this - a lot of Polka Dots are attacking him. Why would he do it?

Me: To provide cover.

Primo: What do you mean?

Me: He's providing cover so it's not so obvious why the people in the contested districts voted for it. Plus there's no chance the bill will ever become a law so it's a low-risk vote.

Primo [jaw dropping]: That's exactly it! That has to be it! I didn't even think about that. How did you figure that out so fast?

Me [modestly]: I was an English major. All I did was try to figure out why the characters did what they did.

Primo: But you don't care about politics.

Me: I don't want to talk about the issues with you, but I am very interested in the behind the scenes stuff.

In which Doris' present becomes a further burden

Rember that stupid Meyer lemon tree that Doris sent us as an anniversary present a few years ago? She was nice to send us a present and she was very nice to send us an anniversary present - as far as I am concerned, the only two people who have to acknowledge an anniversary are the people inside the marriage. Primo and I celebrate our anniversary by exchanging greeting cards with kittens or penguins on them and by going out to a nice dinner - the kind where you don't wear jeans. But other than that, we don't do much because 1. we don't need more stuff and 2. we are trying to save money.

So Doris sent us this plant which wouldn't be such a bad thing except

1. A Meyer lemon tree (a little wee baby one, about ten inches high) is a tropical plant.

We do not live in the tropics. We do not have ten hours of warm sun a day for the plant to bask in.

We live in a cold climate where the sun disappears for days in the winter. We live in a house that was built in 1928, which, to anyone else who lives in a cold climate knows, means a house that leaks heat and money in the winter. It means unless you want to spend over $400 a month on heating in January, you close off half your house, turn the heat way down, and wear lots of clothes.

A Meyer lemon tree is not supposed to live in the cold and the dark. I googled "Meyer lemon tree care" and got lots of information about "Florida" and Meyer lemon trees.

We are not in Florida.

(Thank goodness, although I would happily move to Miami again. No snow there! Cuban food! What's not to like?)

2. I do not like houseplants. I had no houseplants until the lemon tree. Now I have one. Which is one more than I want. Houseplants are way too much responsibility.

Wait. I have two, if you count the kitty grass that we keep for the cats so they don't get (it doesn't work) hairballs in the winter. They still get hairballs, but they happily graze on the small pot of grass that lives in the kitchen window. Which is not a place where the lemon tree could live because it gets too cold in that window and it certainly does not get ten hours of sun every day, not even in the summer.

The kitty grass is easy: it lives above the kitchen sink, so I remember to water it. If it dies, oh well.

But the lemon tree.

My gosh she might as well have given us a puppy. A potted lemon tree cannot be ignored.

So for the past few years, I have moved that darn tree in and out of the house, depending on the season. In and out of the kitchen and the stairwell, depending on where the sun is. Watered when I remembered. Which is infrequently.

I put it outside once the weather started getting nice and hoped I could forget about it for a few months.

That was not to be the case.

There was a huge windstorm the other night.

The only thing that was damaged at our house was the lemon tree. It blew over and the pot broke.

Now, I am not sad about the possibility of losing the tree, but the fall did not kill it. Which means I have to try to save it. Which meant that last night, rather than goofing off and reading my book in peace because Primo is on a work trip so I have the house all to myself with nobody bothering me, I had to glue that darn pot back together. Of course the first tube of glue was completely dried out, so I had to go back to the basement to look for more glue. I wanted to throw away the dried-out glue, but didn't feel like arguing with Primo upon his return and his eventual discovery that the glue was gone.

The man has a photographic memory for things like that, but if I ask him to do one tiny thing like print something for me next week, he will tell me there is no way he can be expected to remember something like that.

I think he remembers what is convenient for him.

Anyhow, I promised him years ago that I would not throw away any of his crap without his permission and I have tried to stick to that, although I was sorely tempted when I was in his office last night and saw the raffle tickets we bought in March still sitting on his desk.

We did not win that raffle, which happened in March.

Yet the tickets rest on his desk still.

I itched, I itched, I tell you, to throw them away.

But I promised.

Primo would be hard pressed to find anything of mine to throw away. Sure, I still have some old address books and calendars, but I have two boxes of stuff compared to his office full and basement full of crap. Phone bills from 1997? Employee manuals from 1992? He's got them.

I don't want him dead, but I have thought that if he did have a car accident, the first thing I would do, after tearing down and burning the protest signs in his office and the framed photo of themselves that Sly and Doris gave us for Christmas a few years ago, would be to throw away all of his boxed stuff in the basement without even looking at it. My theory is that if he brought that stuff with him when he moved here from California eight years ago and hasn't opened it since, it is nothing necessary for life.

I put the dried-up glue back and found another tube. Glued the pot back together, cursing the stupid plant the entire time. Tonight, I will repot it. And wonder why it continues to survive despite the neglect.

In which Primo and I negotiate over the terms of his possibly quitting his well-paying job that puts a roof over our heads and food on our table

You guys know that Primo wants to quit his job and do something more meaningful, which is completely understandable: the alimony ended last year and I have a job and we have a little more financial freedom plus he has been doing the same kind of work for a long time.

He is bored. He has ennui. And he wants to do something with purpose.

If we had children, he might not feel this way, as rearing children is a ton of work and you get to see results of that work and then one day, have grandchildren so all you have is the fun with none of the crap. But we do not have children and we don't have grandchildren to look forward to. Well, not grandchildren we can see frequently. Primo's two stepdaughters have three children between them, one of them brand new, and they are the cutest kids in the world but they are on the other side of the country so it's not like we get to be a part of their everyday lives.

I understand the desire for meaning and the desire to leave one's mark on the world.

And I want Primo to have this.

But I want something out of this.

As in, we have been negotiating.

So far, I have gotten an agreement that I would not face any opposition to changing my name back to my maiden name, which yes yes yes I know is as patriarchal as taking my husband's name - what's the difference between a father's name and a husband's name? - but I am not trying to make a statement against The Patriarchy or The Man. I just want my name back and I don't want to share a name with Sly and Doris.

Yes I am that petty. If you want a blog written by someone who is nice and who doesn't wish her in-laws dead (not enough to take out a contract on them - that would be wrong - but enough to wish they would either become nice or just disappear so Primo wouldn't be subject to their meanness), then you'll have to find somewhere else. There are a lot of nice bloggers out there.

(My friends' parents are starting to die. Nice parents are dying. The mean parents endure.)

I have also tried to get Primo to agree that we would never have a political conversation again. I have not had as much luck with that.

Primo has also offered to

1. paint the garage
2. paint the windowsills

I have informed him that if he becomes the stay-at-home person, he will be in charge of all the housework and the cooking.

Me: And you can't buy beer.

Primo: But that's one of the purposes of my quitting - to get to relax more!

In which a rose by any other name is a darn weed

Remember how Doris didn't like how I addressed the letter to her? And how she queried Primo about why I used my maiden name on the return address? Hadn't I changed my name?

Primo told her that I had changed it but only used it in legal circumstances - socially, I prefer to use my maiden name.

So. Now. A week or two later. She sends me a letter.

Addressed to "Gold Drunk" and not "Gold Digger."

I write back to her. Put a very pointed return address of "DIGGER." Get the point, lady! I write "Mrs Sly Drunk" for her because she told Primo that's how she wants to be addressed.

She writes back again. Addresses the letter to "Gold Drunk."

This is war.

I put a post on facebook:

My husband's mother insists on addressing her letters to me as "Gold Drunk," even though my return address on letters I send to her is "Gold Digger" and even though she asked Primo why I wasn't going by "Drunk." 1. She is an ardent liberal. 2. You'd think she would know why I don't want anything to do with her name.

Susan That's not even passive aggressive; it's full on aggressive aggressive.

Yesterday at 11:27am · Like

Maggie Not to mention she wishes you weren't married to her son.

Yesterday at 1:29pm via mobile · Like

I will write to her again. I will continue to put "Digger" as my return address. Maybe I should write, "Return to sender" on the letters addressed to "Gold Drunk." Except that is my legal name. Rats.

In which presents come and we wonder if they could be from -- Satan?

Primo's birthday approaches.

You all know how fraught gift-giving events are with Sly and Doris.

I would rather get nothing at all than get something crummy for which I need to fake gratitude.

Primo is in a tougher position, as Sly and Doris are his parents and will bug him for feedback. Did he like it, did he like it?

I never talk to them, so I just have to write a brief, courteous thank-you note.

Primo's birthday.

Here's what my mom will do: She will send us a check for $100 so we can go out for a nice dinner.

Which we will happily use, as we have a hard time spending that much of our money on a meal. But gift money? That's OK.

We would love another $100 check. There are always concerts and plays and nice dinners that seem too splurgy with our own money but are tailor-made for gift money.

Today, three large envelopes - 11x17" - came in the mail.

Primo waited until I got home from work to open them.

He opened envelope number 1. Slit the letter opener carefully along the edge. Slid out the contents.

An 11x17" photo of a sea turtle.

You guys, I could not make this stuff up if I tried.

An 11x17" photo of a sea turtle. And a certificate of adoption. And a 2013 calendar.

Just what he's always wanted.

He opened the second envelope.

Slid out the contents.

An 11x17" photo of a wolf. And a certificate of adoption. And a 2013 calendar.

But wait there's more.

He opened the third envelope.

An 11x17" photo of a panther. And a certificate of adoption. And a 2013 calendar.

Primo is a new father.

"Why can't your parents just send normal gifts?" I asked. "Why can't they just send a check? Or something you want?"

"We don't know that it's from them," he answered.

"It could be from my mom," I suggested.

Primo rolled his eyes. "Your mom sends us cash. Your sister sends weird stuff, but it's weird stuff she thinks we'll like, like that sampler pack from the bacon place.*"

"Oh right," I said. "It's not like she was trying to impose her beliefs on us. It's not like she sent it to vegetarians."


* It included eight kinds of bacon salt, so we are good on salt for the rest of our lives or at least until we are both on AARP.

In which Doris sends Primo a drunken email because she is ticked off that I have not responded to her letter

Doris sent me a letter and I guess I didn't hop to it quickly enough. Here's the email she sent Primo:

I am at a total loss on why you haven't responded to my query about my letter to Goldy. I guess I flunked, and, if so, don't ask me to try again.  I dumped the longer response with multiple explanations and disappointments in our relationship to her.  I decided to use the carrot and discard the sticks.  I guess it didn't work. Primo, your workload and other obligations can't possibly explain not sending me a one or two sentence answer. Love,  Mom

1. Aren't you dying to know what the stick would have looked like? If the letter she did send was the carrot, then the stick must have been something else!

2. Primo is Bad! He doesn't drop everything to answer Doris!

3. No passive aggressiveness in this note.

Primo answered. He was far nicer than I thought Doris deserved and far nicer than his mood would have indicated. When he got her email, he stomped downstairs and stormed into the bedroom. He was furious at her. I was too.

"If is was so important," he seethed, "why didn't she pick up the phone and call me?"

"Because you are supposed to call them," I said. They never call Primo. Never. Part of it is they don't have long distance on their regular phone, but they do have a cellphone. They almost never use the cellphone, though. Maybe because they can't find it in all the junk in their house.

But if they don't want to use their minutes, they could call Primo with the cellphone and ask him to call them back. We do have long distance on our phone.

They probably can't afford long distance because of all the money they spend on booze.

Mom,

I am sorry about my lack of response to your e-mail.

You wrote:

> Primo, your workload and other obligations can't possibly explain not sending me a one or two sentence answer.

Yes, my workload and other obligations certainly can explain why I haven't responded.  I am busier in my job than I have been for at least four or five years.  It seems that most of the people I work with and most of the customers I work with have asked for help within the last 2-3 weeks.  I am exhausted.  I never sleep enough.  I'm still trying to be politically active; I went to political events or neighborhood meetings every evening this week from Monday through Thursday.  Today is the first day that I've not gone anywhere.

I really don't understand why you get so upset because of a simple lack of response to an e-mail.  I receive dozens of e-mails every day in my personal account (most of them political), and messages quickly get "buried" if I don't get to them within a few hours.  I guess we have very different ideas about how important e-mail is.  My average response time to personal e-mail is measured in days, not hours.  If you want to ask me a question and get an answer right away, you can always call.  If I can't answer the phone, I will call back.  Until/unless I become significantly less busy (or decide that I don't care at all about politics any more), your expectation when sending me an e-mail during the week -- specifically, one which doesn't explicitly define something as "urgent" or mention something like a serious health problem -- should be that I will probably respond during the weekend.

Your letter did arrive this week, and Goldy mentioned that it was "very nice."  I meant to write a one- or two-sentence response to your e-mail from Wednesday.  I thought about it yesterday and then today, but I remained very busy with work and didn't get around to it.  I also dared to take a little bit of a break today to pay attention to the NCAA tournament.

I will call you tomorrow.

Love,
Primo

In which I get a response back from Doris

The letter from Doris arrived. Below are selected quotations and my commentary. A week after she sent the letter, she sent me a gardening catalogue and a National Geographic magazine.

No. I do not know why she did that.

I think we need to start anew after I offer our read on how the tensions began. You should tell us your recollections.

Right. Because my telling them all the reasons I don't like them would be soooo productive. They would understand everything, agree, and apologize. Then they would change their behavior.

The most significant factor in our initial qualms was reading your blog. We were probably too quick to form judgments before we even met you.

You think? (PS It wasn't this blog.)

I know from Primo that you were very upset about our negative advice to him about marrying you-your likes, politics, and religious views seemed so divergent from his. Plus we know that Primo was often an easy mark. His marriage to Isabel (which we STRONGLY opposed) turned out to be what we had feared...

No apology for telling him not to marry me. No "we were wrong." Just "we know you were upset."

Sly, of course, wouldn't listen to advice on not marrying his first wife. He was but 19 and Melinda was 23...She even bought the engagement ring! It took me a long time to build a relationship with some of Sly's relatives and the initiative was all mine.

That is, screw you. I had to suck up to them so by God, you'll do it to me.

We would be happy to thaw the ice that has separated us and develop a friendlier relationship. We doubt that we could ever agree on what seem to be some of your world-views.

Well, I demand that everyone share my opinion on things, so I guess this is not going to work.

When we were together, you always appeared chilly, guarded, and rather judgmental. 

Maybe because they were trash-talking everyone else in the family?

We don't know if you found us welcoming open, rigid, or just old fogies. 

How about mean, vicious, drunk?

We've always felt that you were worried about Primo having responsibilities to us in our dotage. 

That is correct. My concern is that they have failed to act and Primo will be stuck with doing everything. So far, my concerns have been valid.

In which I send a letter to Sly and Doris

OK. Here's the note I mailed to Sly and Doris. I did not send them an email because

1. I wanted it to take longer for them to respond because I really truly do not want to deal with this and
2. I know how they like to forward emails to everyone and BCC everyone on everything. I don't need everyone else to be in my business. Except for you guys, of course.

Dear Sly and Doris,

It really bothers me that we have such a horrible relationship. I had always envisioned being close to my husband's family. This is not how I wanted things to work out. I don't want to be estranged from my husband's parents. It's a loss for me and it's hard on Primo - he's caught in the middle and it causes him a lot of pain.

I don't know how we got off on the wrong foot. I wish we hadn't. I am truly sorry for anything I might have done to cause this rift. 

The three of us have something in common: we love Primo and we want him to be happy. What can I do to repair our relationship?

Goldy

This letter is completely true. It does bother me. I do wish I had a better relationship with my in-laws. What I did not say but what of course you guys all know is that I want in-laws who are nice, reasonable people. I don't want nasty drunks. They are the problem here, I think, not me. I have always gotten along with my boyfriends' families. Sly and Doris are the first ones to hate me. They hated Isabel, Primo's first wife. And they're the first ones I have disliked. So who's the X here?

I wrote this to get them off Primo's back. If I have to write a letter twice a month to them to get them to stop complaining to Primo about me, that's fine. I'll do it.

In which Primo commits to raising $1,000 for a judicial candidate but then can't

Primo still wants to be in politics. He wants to quit his job and get a political job, which he cannot do until I get a job that pays more than the job I had, which is going to be easier said than done.

For him to get a job in politics, he has to become a networker. He has a great network of engineers if he ever wants another engineering job, but he doesn't even want the engineering job he has, much less another one.

Which stinks for me, because it's hard to find people to do what he does and the pricing reflects that. Politics, on the other hand, has very low barriers to entry. (Obviously.) And when there is a high supply of potential employees and a low supply of jobs, economics works and the prices for labor are low.

Which is why I need to get a different job.

Back to his networking. Networking for politics means volunteering on other campaigns. It means helping candidates raise money.

Primo decided he didn't want to do doors for this guy who's running for judge. Let's call the guy Benito. Not his name and I'll probably forget it by my next post and I'll call him something else, but it doesn't really matter. Benito is not essential to the plot.

So he agreed to raise $1,000 for Benito's campaign.

He agreed to this six weeks before the election.

Then he started calling people to donate.

And realized that almost everyone who had donated to his campaign was a friend or family member who couldn't care less if Benito were elected.

Which meant he didn't have people to call to donate.

It's all a pyramid scheme, really, and it works only if the fundraiser is willing to twist arms and use his connections for the benefit of someone else.

He raised $75 from a local friend who had also donated to Primo's campaign. Only $925 to go.

Then he found out he had to go on a business trip for a week. He spent the weekend preparing for the trip rather than fundraising.

He also spent the weekend worrying that he wasn't going to be able to raise the money.

On Wednesday, he called me. He was worried that he wasn't going to have time to raise the money. "I might have to come back here next week," he said.

He was upset that he had made a commitment that he wasn't going to be able to meet.

I got a $100 bonus at work that day. I also found out that I got a raise that, after taxes, was going to yield us the princely sum of another $900 for the year.

I sighed. I hated that he was worrying. There aren't many problems that you can make go away with money. Not that I don't want to have money, but a lot of the big problems, at least in our life, have nothing to do with money. They have to do with Sly and Doris and there is not enough money in the world to make that problem go away.

Our furnace broke and had to be replaced. That's a money problem.

Isabel needs some money to pay her 2012 income taxes. That's a money problem. Isabel has terminal cancer. Not a money problem.

Primo is unhappy in his job. Not a money problem.

The muscles in my face are starting to sag and I am showing my age. Not a money problem.

We are very fortunate that we have the money to solve the existing money problems in our life.

"We can give the $1,000," I said. "But you have to keep my name out of it because I do not support your candidate."

Primo was silent.

"I mean it. We can afford this. If it takes $1,000 for this to go away, let's just do it. It's one less thing to worry about."

Primo sighed. "I never should have agreed to do this," he said.

"Nope," I answered. "It was a really dumb idea."

"I'll never do it again," he promised.

"You'd better not," I said. "There is only one get out of jail free card on this."

When he returned from the trip, there were only two weeks to the election.

I sighed, thinking of how I would rather have used that money. Shoes. Paying down the mortgage. A new purse. (Not the used Bottega Veneta I saw on eBay for $27,000. It wasn't even pretty. As one friend said, "They should throw in a car for that price.")

Help Isabel with her taxes. Give it to the homeless shelter. Give it to the hospice where my dad died.

There are a lot of things we could have done. But I had suggested it and Primo was relieved and all I want is peace in my house.

A few days after he returned, Primo talked to the chair of the Polka Dot party, the one whom he had told he would raise the money. I heard him upstairs on the phone, but it wasn't his Sly and Doris voice (strained, unhappy) or his Sam voice (happy, light). It was a voice I don't know.

Turns out it was his political/huge relief voice.

He came downstairs. "I told [whatever his name is] that I hadn't had a chance to raise the money  but that we were prepared to donate it ourselves."

Deep sigh from me. Bye bye money.

He continued. "He says that we don't need to do that."

I sat up straight. My eyes opened wide.

"But maybe we shoul-"

"No! No! If he's not going to hold you to it, I vote no! This is great news!"

Primo was doubtful. "But I said-"

I shook my head. "Nope. We're done. We are out of the fundraising business. We can give the money to Isabel for her taxes. I'd rather help her than Benito any day. This is great news."

It wasn't too hard to talk Primo into agreeing. And now we close the fundraising chapter of our lives. Good riddance.