Dear Don master of Yo-Yo tricks with columnist as toy

I am a yo-yo and dear Don has his finger on my string.

I will start out on my yo-yo journey a little slowly at first to test the pullback tension. Before I can do a loopty-loop, he has snatched me right back to reality. Reality is a state he prefers to live in more than I do.

"We can move to the coast; I’ll write poetry and you can play music. We will work nights, sleep late and take long romantic walks on the beach together," I ponder in a dream-like state.

"That’ll probably be all we can do is walk on the beach," he replies, "because we will be too broke to do anything else."

"Oh we won’t need much money," I counter, still trying to pull him into my fantasy.

"No," he smiles. "We won’t need much, just enough to pay rent, insurance, groceries, utilities, car payments and the like. That shouldn’t take much more than a few thousand a month. How much do you think you can make writing poetry?" he continues.

"Do you have any experience at that? No you don’t, so take off your gypsy clothes and come back down to earth," he demands.

Well, I think, that wasn’t very nice. I might be down but I’m not out.

"Hey sweetie," I purr in my can’t-keep- a- gypsy girl -down voice. "Look at this bed and breakfast for sale in the mountains. We can buy that and spend every day in beautiful surroundings working side by side. We can sell our house, pack up Mom and LuLu and head west. I’ll cook and clean and you can tinker and garden and we will let ol’ LuLu greet our guests. Mom can be our resident ‘sage.’ It will be glorious."

"UUUHHH let me think, okay NO," he spits out nastily. "I’m not spending my sunset years cleaning up after people who could care less that I have to clean up after them. Snap out of it."
Another day, another idea!

"Oh baby," I coo, "what about putting floor-to-ceiling bookcases all along one wall in the den and then replacing the carpet?"

"No way," he yells from his office.

"Well okay then, I didn’t really want to anyway," I lie.

That dang string must be rubbing his finger raw by now. He sure has been jerking me around an awful lot. I’m not getting anywhere fast. I need a different approach.

"Could you come here a minute when you get a chance, love of my life?" I call.

"What’s up?" says that clever Don.

"Well, I was just thinking. Maybe we could take the wood burning stove out and replace it with a big 42" Plasma HD ready television, the kind that hangs on the wall. We could even put in a state-of-the-art home stereo system that has extra speakers going outside. We could probably do all that for what about 5-6 grand, you think?" I’m reeling in fish now!

"Hey that’s a great idea. I haven’t even thought about that.’ (Yeah right.) ‘Those TVs are awesome. We might need to ride somewhere this weekend and check that out. You’re the greatest," he says as he kisses me, those big brown eyes glowing like a monster in the dark.

"Yeah," I respond, "we’ll do that right after we get back from the mountains and the coast!"

He knows he’s been had and looks as much. I ask him politely to take the string off his finger and trade it for my yo-yo. We agree to continue on in our little love nest at Plum Point while watching reality shows on our 20-year-old 25" TV that we have to squint to see.

All the while I’m practicing more yo-yo tricks.

Get the picture?