The Candidate's Wife: Primo's campaign kickoff

Wow. Wow. Wow.

He might actually win.

OK. Maybe that's bold.

But dozens of people came to Primo's campaign launch and he gave a really good speech - he has come so far from the days when he clutched the side of the lectern at church, swayed side to side, and never lifted his eyes.

He didn't talk about policy details - he told a story about how the American dream seems to have gone away and how he, a product of that dream, wants to bring it back.

He then spent some time - maybe a wee little bit too much - talking about policy, but he wrapped it up and people were excited and they gave money and we might have raised over $1,000, which is a Big Deal to a small-time candidate.

For me, the best part was how many people showed up because Primo has helped them over the years. That's nice.

The Candidate's Wife: They ask Primo about marijuana

Primo was on a radio show today. I watched the live stream, which had video of the studio.

1. The host thanked Primo for being on time and I wanted to yell, "That's not something that usually happens!"

2. The host asked Primo, "Yes or no - one word - do you support the legalization of and the taxing of marijuana in this state?"

I am yelling at the screen, "ONE WORD, PRIMO! ONE WORD!"

But - Primo does not do one-word answers. :) Bless his heart.

However, he finally did that pivot thing I have been telling him about - use the question to talk about what you want to talk about.

He said yes, he does support legalizing marijuana because of the tax revenues it would generate and because of the problems with mass incarceration.

I agree with him on both points, but I wish, if he were going to talk a lot that he also would have expressed the view that as long as a person is not hurting anyone else, who cares if he does drugs?

The Candidate's Wife: In other news, there was frost in hell

Primo: Guess who was on my email list from my first campaign six years ago?

Me: Who?

Primo: Guess!

Me: I don't know!

Primo: Ted!

Me: Ted who?

Primo: Ted my brother!

Me: Oh man.

Primo: He gave me money! Fifty dollars!

Me: Good.

Primo: I think it's time to bury the hatchet.

Me: Are you nuts?

Primo: That's a meaningful gesture!

Me: No. A meaningful gesture is an apology for being a jerk.

Primo: He's a Drunk. This is about as meaningful as someone related to my dad can get.

The Candidate's Wife: My friend Amanda, who is lovely, volunteers to help with Primo's campaign

Amanda (via messenger): You can tell your honey that he has an unreliable campaign lackey; that I intend to volunteer how/whenever. But I will need the campaign pitch, stance, and script to learn. I am excited to help despite living one block south of (the district).

Me: Great! I will tell Primo. Primo, listen.

Primo: It's a little more than a block.

Me: It doesn't matter.

Primo: The district ends on Oak Avenue and she is --

Me: She's either in the district or she's not. That's all that matters.

Primo: It's useful for me to explain exactly where the district ends.

Me: No, it's not.

Amanda: Tell the engineer that the north boundary of my apartment complex ends on W Pine Drive... which is ONE UNINTERRUPTED BLOCK from Oak Ave. So

Wow. She totally gets him.

The Candidate's Wife: Making pie for America, or, What's my favorite cookie recipe?

This is a non-partisan rant.

I don't think spouses are relevant to politics. That is, I don't think they should be. Who cares what the spouse - and let's be honest, we are talking about wives here because even though women are half the population, we are under-represented in the political realms of power - wait - in the realms of power everywhere - who cares what the wives think?

I do not care.

I don't care what the husbands think, either, although it's so rarely a husband. So, so rarely.

Why don't more women run for office?

I don't know. Running for office is a pain in the neck for anyone, but it seems like women are criticized for things that men are not. Do they talk about men's hair and clothes? I don't think so.

And nobody asks the men what cookies they like to bake.

Notice to the media:

1. I don't care what the spouse's political opinions are because I am not voting for the spouse

2. Unless the spouse has a Magic Cookie recipe that will make my ass look like I am a 17 year old Playboy model and will clean my house while I sleep, I don't care about the cookies.

I get so tired of this criticism of the spouses. Leave them out of it. Quit talking about their hair, their arms, what they eat, what they don't eat, what they say, what they don't say. Leave them out of it.

Fortunately, nobody at all cares about the wife at the level of office Primo is running for. Actually, I think the wife comes into the picture only at the presidential and maybe the gubernatorial level. I'm not seeing either president or governor in Primo's future - even if he is elected, he cares about crafting policy, not about being an executive. And if there were some strange future where he would be on either of those paths - a strange strange future indeed, maybe the world would have changed by that point to where voters (or readers of the tabloids and the gossip columns) don't care about The Wife.

Can you even imagine? I hate having my photo taken. I hate having to be in public. I hate having to be On. I would be such a bad First Lady. You would never see me and I wouldn't care about decorating and I would be pissed that I would not be able to spend all day binge watching The Great British Baking Show or Foyle's War or Department Q.

First Ladies probably have to take a shower every day. And not wear gym clothes three days straight. They probably have to put on makeup and comb their hair.

I would hate it. HATE IT!

But the thing, I think, that I would hate the most would be being reduced to an accessory and asked stupid questions like, "What's your favorite cookie recipe?" No wonder Hilary boiled in rage at that question. It was so dismissive. It was dismissive of everything she had accomplished as a human being and it reduced her to being an appendage who existed to do nothing more than support Bill.

And the thing is, I actually like to bake! I love to bake! I love to bake even though sometimes, I am not very good at it.

Witness the photo above.

I thought, I don't need to use weights for blind baking this crust! I blind bake tart crusts all the time without weights.

Guess what?

Press-in tart crusts are different from rolled-out pie crusts.

Which is why you get the above.

I can bake very ugly pie crusts.

How do you think that would go over in an interview with Ladies Home Journal? "Hi! My husband Primo is running for office and this is my pie!"

The Candidate's Wife: The Wild and Crazy Saturday Night of a Politician and His Wife

So, so glamorous.

This is us.

Together.

This is togetherness.

This is our Saturday night.

Primo, the cats, and me, and our magazines and books.

Is this wrong?

The Candidate's Wife: The sad life of fundraiser food

You know how the movies present Las Vegas as so, so glamorous, full of beautiful, well dressed people?

But then when you go there - not really because you want to (you got an A in probability and statistics in grad school, so you know that gambling works for you only if you can count cards, which you are not smart enough to do) but because you are driving to California and your friend will be in Las Vegas and invites you to spend a night with her and you want to see her - you discover that Las Vegas does not consist of crowds of people who all look like movie stars but crowds of people who look like - and this is no disrespect to bingo or church potlucks, but - the folks you see at bingo or the church potluck or a Friday night fish fry or a PTA meeting.

That is, they are all very very ordinary looking people and ordinary people are not glamorous.

My sweet, baking, cooking, sewing, pantyhose-repairing, church lady, feeding the neighbors, gardening, canning, and sort of frumpy sheepshead shark Granma J. I loved her so much.

I am an ordinary person. I am not glamorous. Ever. My claim to fame at a church potluck is I can cook. (I am kind of competitive about it.)

But I am a frumpy middle-aged Midwestern lady and I look like it. Not glamorous. I don't have glamorous genes, coming from a long line of frumpy Midwestern ladies.

My wonderful, loving, sassy, National Enquirer buying, sort of frumpy with her double-knit polyester pants and the plastic covers on her sofa Grandma Sylvia. I loved her so much.

Before Primo got involved in politics, if I ever thought about politics and fundraisers, I suppose I thought about them as elegant, glamorous events, not unlike the fundraiser for the symphony or something that I attended when I was working in Miami and the person in charge of investor relations at work had a ten thousand-dollar table and asked if I wanted four tickets (for free) because he just didn't feel like doing all the work to fill it.

That was an elegant fundraiser. People wore evening gowns and suits. I bought a long dress. (At consignment.) The food was divine - there were sushi stations and caviar stations and waiters offering fancy little canapes and drinks and that was just the appetizers. I can't remember what the main meal was, maybe because I ate so much of the appetizers. The dessert was some fancy chocolate construction that impressed the heck out of me and tasted delicious.

That was my idea of a fundraiser.

Then I started going to political fundraisers with Primo. (Like - very occasionally. If I thought I would see people I like there. Not because I wanted to hear political speeches. People! NOBODY WANTS A SPEECH! KEEP IT SHORT!)

And the food was OK at some of them. There is one guy who has barbecues in his back yard - he hires chefs who know what they are doing. BBQ, beans, corn on the cob, coleslaw, cobbler. It's pretty good.

But mostly, the food is Costco food trays.

Wait.

Let me re-state that.

If you are lucky, the food is Costco food trays.

Sometimes, it's not as fancy as Costco.

As in, there is absolutely nothing glamorous about political fundraisers, not even the food.

In Primo's first campaign, we had a fundraiser at our house. I decided I was not going to feed people Costco food trays - that I would make really good food. (Ah, we were so naive then)

And I did.

I made (if I can remember) Ro-tel dip, tortilla, Memphis onion dip, hummus - what else? Probably not much sweet stuff - people don't eat sweet things so much when they are drinking beer or wine.

It took me days.

We raised enough money to almost pay for the wine.

Not that we had bought wine just for the event - this was wine Primo had brought from California and was part of the collection in the basement. But at some point, Primo had bought that wine.

So yeah - we turned wine into some money but not very much.

Everyone loved the food - said it was the best fundraiser food they had eaten.

And - we raised not very much money.

So my new motto is, "No cooking for fundraisers, especially fundraisers for someone else and fundraisers that are being held in my house on a worknight when all I want to do is watch the rest of the Great British Baking Show and then go to bed."

For this fundraiser, everything except the Memphis onion dip was bought.

Including the baby carrots I picked up on my way home from work the day of the fundraiser because Primo messaged me in a panic after realizing that he did not have non-pita food for the hummus.

(I would have had the table laid out the weekend before, with sticky notes of which food would go where, which would mean I would have known a long time ago that I didn't have the carrots, but that is not how Primo rolls.)

(But I was going to the store anyhow because it was $1.99 milk day and we needed milk and the store is on my way home.)

(And I found a bag of candy corn for what I thought was only a quarter but turned out to be $1.25 which was still fine because I am one of those weirdos who loves candy corn.)

(Although only in very small doses.)

We had the food you see in the photo. But - people didn't finish it. As in, there were a ton of carrots left over.

What on earth does a person do with almost two pounds of baby carrots? Especially when a person and the other person are about to go out of town for a long weekend and upon return from that long weekend, one of the persons has a medical procedure (part of an annual physical) scheduled that requires she not eat a lot of bulky foods? Baby carrots go bad pretty quickly because they are wet.

So today was all about making baby carrot and ginger soup.

At least the fundraiser wasn't a total loss - there is soup.

The end.

The Candidate's Wife: The email list

Primo: What do you think about the email I sent out this morning?

Me: What email?

Primo: About my campaign launch event!

Me: I didn't get one.

Primo: What? Aren't you on my list?

Me: I guess not.

Primo: I need to add you.

Me: No! I do not want to be on your list! I don't want to get your emails!

Primo: But I want you to get them!

Me: I live with you. That's enough.

Primo: But - you need to be on the list.

Me: Nope.

Primo: I just added you.

Me: No!

Primo: I clicked, "This person gave me permission to email them."

Me: I didn't! I didn't give you permission!

Primo: It says, "them."

Me: That's wrong!

The Candidate's Wife: What do we really need that is the hardest thing to ask for?

Wonderful woman who is helping with Primo's campaign: What can I do to help with Primo's campaign launch event?

Me: Invite people who will give him money.

Primo: Hey!

Woman: Yeah, that's what it comes down to, isn't it? You have to have money to run a campaign.

Me: Yep. We are sure not spending our own money this time.

The Candidate's Wife: (The People Have Spoken)

I heard you guys. We are going with "The Candidate's Wife." I really do want Primo to win - I think he would be good and conscientious and Not Corrupt -

Here is one of the big differences between Primo and me:

1. He is surprised anytime a politician is discovered to be corrupt. (He was quite upset over the Donna Brazile revelations recently that the Clintons pretty much owned the Democratic party in the last election.)

2. I am surprised anytime a politician is not corrupt.

Primo is not corrupt. He is not dishonest. He is not running for ego reasons. He does think he knows what is the right thing to do, even when he is wrong, but this is not about HEY I AM PRIMO LOOK AT ME!!!

This is about his trying to effect positive change in the world.

(We don't have children and are both pretty much failures in our careers, so this is his last gasp, he thinks.)

He had a fundraiser for another candidate at our house the other day. He told me that I would not have to do anything at all to prepare for it or clean up after and that I did not even need to be in the house when it happened.

I tried - trust me, I tried - to find someone to hang out with away from the house that evening, but man, my friend circle is small.

I came home at 4:30 - the event started at 5:30 - and the house was clean and he had the food. He had moved the chairs away from the dining room table and had set up a card table by the front door for name tags and envelopes.

In case you have never been to a political house party, the way it works is as soon as you walk in the door, you are expected to give money. Someone working on the campaign is sitting there and will hand you a contribution envelope. (I don't know if this is state or federal for the US, but at least where we live, if you donate money, you have to give your name, your address, and your employer.)

Primo had all this stuff set up but he hadn't put the food out and hadn't taken a shower, so I told him to get ready while I baked the amazing Memphis Onion Dip That Always Wins Book Club and put out the rest of the food.

I used dishes. That is, I put the store bought hummus in a white bowl, swirled it around, and poured some olive oil on it. I put the chips in a bowl. I made it look nice.

Primo said, "Oh! I would have left the hummus in the container!"

Then he said, "I love you. Thank you for helping. You know how to make things look nice."

Which was nice to hear.

People started showing up at 5:15.

And then the torture started.

Not because people were not nice - they were. They were lovely and gracious and thanked me for having them in our home and they said nice things about our house and they didn't spill red wine (or white wine) anywhere and they were perfect guests.

But.

They were there.

In my house.

And I couldn't escape.

I suppose I could have, but it would have been kind of rude, I think, to disappear downstairs to watch TV.

OH! DID I MENTION I WAS 15 MINUTES AWAY FROM FINDING OUT WHO HAD WON THE GREAT BRITISH BAKING SHOW SEASON TWO?

YES!!!!

Let's add this up:

1. LOVELY PEOPLE. This is not about the personalities or actions of the guests at all.
2. But. I had been at work all day. The second I got home, I started preparing for guests. Forty five minutes after I got home, people started to arrive.
3. And they stayed until 8:30.
4. Which is four straight hours of being engaged one way or another.
5. While I was dying to get downstairs to watch the rest of season 2 of The Great British Baking Show.
6. And then finish the book, "He Said/She Said," which has a killer twist ending.

Do you feel my pain? Do you understand why I was ready to explode?

And this was with nice people! Imagine how awful it would have been with people who weren't even nice.

Oh man. I want Primo to win. I want him to win without having to campaign or have me be involved in any way whatsoever.

The Candidate's Wife: We have a fight about Primo running for office and I feel really guilty and mean

When we were in California last month, Primo met his former co-workers for lunch.

And it was made clear that he would be welcome back.

Even though he has not worked as an engineer for three years, which is like three centuries in engineer years.

He could have his old job back at his old pay.

Not to get too personal (talking about money is tacky, I have heard, although I am a big fan of sharing salary information because the more information you have, the more power you have, and I will totally tell anyone who asks what I make), but having a Silicon Valley salary while living in the Midwest is not a bad deal.

I like having money.

I have not had money and I have had some money and I like having money a lot better.

Primo thinks my family was poor. I disagree.

My family was not poor as in the kind of poor where you worry about if you are going to eat today. But we were not the kind not poor as Primo's family - where they went on Away Vacations and ate at restaurants.

Nobody I knew ate at restaurants or went on big Away Vacations. This whole thing of going to Disneyland on spring break? I didn't know anyone as a kid who did that. On spring break, you just didn't go to school.

But my family was the kind of not poor where there was not extra money and where there sure wasn't money to pay for college. Thing is, everyone else I knew was in the same situation. It wasn't until I got to college that I met people whose parents had the money to pay their tuition and were doing so. And had the money to buy cars for their children. And had the money (this was the rich kids) to take their kids to Europe for vacation.

Since I got out of college and have been able, for the most part, to make pretty decent money, I have been not poor. But I have also never gotten to be a spendthrift. I remember what it was like not to have money and I don't want to run out of it. I want to have it in the bank.

Primo's parents paid for his college. (Even though his dad refused to pay for Ted's college, saying that Ted could attend the school where Sly taught for free.) They gave him spending money. He worked during college, but for beer money, not for books.

I don't begrudge that of him. I would like that for everyone.

But - he has a far more casual attitude toward money than I do. In his world, money has always been there. Not in mine.

So we had this fight because I told him that although I want him to win this election - and I do, I hate that he is running and I hate the impact that a campaign has on our lives and I hate that he's not working and earning money BECAUSE WHAT HAPPENS IF WE RUN OUT OF MONEY BEFORE WE DIE?

That's what I worry about.

Even though when I do the numbers, I know that barring disaster (and as long as we maintain a modest level of spending, which is not hard for me because I am really tight with cash), we will be OK.

But - not working when you could be? Not making money when you could be? That seems so irresponsible to me.

He told me I was giving him mixed signals - that I was supporting him and then not supporting him in this campaign.

I told him that I am not supporting his running - that I am putting up with it, which is a totally different thing.

He disagreed and went off into Splitting Hairs Town in Engineer World, where he wanted to debate the meaning of "support" and I said stop being a pedant the point is I am not happy about this but I am not going to divorce you over it.

Yet.

And then we fought some more and I told him why does he care what I say about his running because he's going to do it whether I like it or not and then he said that he does care what I think and I said If I tell you not to run, would you not run? and then we both got really mad at each other and stomped away.

Then he reminded me that he had inherited (actually, he said, "we" had inherited, which is technically incorrect, as I believe that in divorce cases in most states, inheritances are not considered joint property) a lot of money from Sly and I pointed out that Sly had never intended that to happen and he asked why was that even relevant and I didn't say out loud but thought, "Your dad was a jerk and he did everything he could to disinherit you and I want you to remember what a jerk he was."

But I didn't say that. No matter how much of a jerk Sly was, he was Primo's father and children love their parents almost no matter what and I shouldn't take that away from Primo. It's not like Sly was a molester. He was a total and complete selfish, narcissistic jerk, but he did not molest his own children, which I know is a pretty low bar and I am being kind of nasty. But Sly was Primo's dad and he wants to remember him well because everyone wants parents who love them and treat them well and if inheriting Sly's IRA, despite Sly's very clear wishes in his will, takes some of the sting out of Sly's being such a jerk, then I should not take that away from Primo.

See what I mean about feeling guilty and mean? I am being mean and I need to knock it off.

Man, I'm cranky. I hate politics. I hate campaigns. I don't even like togetherness, so when I say one of the drawbacks of a campaign is that I never see Primo, you know it has to be pretty bad.

Other drawbacks are things like he thinks we should cancel our vacation, which I refuse to let happen, so then he spends the entire vacation working on the campaign, which makes it not a vacation as far as I am concerned.

I feel guilty for being mean. I need to stop being mean.

In which we visit Primo's lovely stepdaughters and they refer to me as "Granma Goldie" to their kids and I feel so, so honored

I know there are people who don't want the title of "Grandma" because it makes them feel old.

But - that title, given freely, can be one of the greatest things in the world.

My friend K is lovely. She came into my life when she married my friend L from grad school. Even if they split, I would still maintain my friendship with her because I love her and she is a great friend.

Her father died last year. He had been married to K's stepmother for 30 years. The stepmother had insisted that K's children address her as "Grandma." (It was not K's idea, but she was always pleasant to her stepmother because she was K's father's wife.)

Got that?

1. Thirty years

2. Insisted on being called "Grandma"

3. K's father died last year.

How many times has stepmom talked to K since? How many times has she returned K's calls/emails/texts?

Not. Once.

Not one single time.

K is friends with her stepsiblings and they don't know what the deal is with their mom. They think it's odd, too. 

I ask, Who wouldn't want to be friends with K? She is fabulous!

So that kind of thing can happen with blended families. 

I met Primo after he had already split from his first wife. I met him years after that happened. I had nothing to do with the breakup of his marriage, but I was still worried about what his stepdaughters might think of me. I have tried to let them set the tone for our relationship. We flew them here for our wedding and Primo visits them anytime he is in California and I have visited them with him when I have gone as well.

We saw them last month when we were there. The stepdaughters are married to wonderful men. Between the two couples, they have four small children.

And each of the adults referred to me as "Granma Goldie" - a title I have never asked them to use because it's not my place to suggest such a thing - when talking to the children.

I don't think they could have given me a higher honor. Do you?

In which I get to see a fellow blogger again - you should read her blog

I meant to tell you - Primo and I went to California last month to see our bonus daughters and their families. I got to meet Lisa at Privilege for a cup of coffee. I met her a few years ago on another trip. She is as lovely, gracious, and intelligent in person as she is in writing. I love her blog - she is a wonderful, insightful writer with such an elegant writing style.

In which the quirk that I thought was all about Primo being an engineer is probably more because he was raised by abusive narcissists

This thread in my favorite blog, Ask A Manager, explains everything about Primo, who will not take "yes" as an answer nor will he give it as an answer. He always wants to explain why, even though I tell him I don't care - all I want is a yes or a no when I ask him something like, "Would you like me to make a chocolate cake?"

The Last Campaign: I suggest that Primo ask for contributions for a fundraiser where people don't actually have to attend

Me: Listen to this. This is brilliant. The L.A. county library had a fundraiser where you paid $100 and then stayed home to read a book. You should do that!

Primo: Why?

Me: Because people would give money not to have to eat Costco food tray food and not to have to listen to political speeches!

Primo: People like political speeches!

Me: No, they don't.

Primo: They like my political speeches.

Me: Oh honey. No. No, they don't. Nobody likes listening to political speeches. Nobody.