My flatmate, B, has been unemployed and desperately
looking for a job for what seems like forever. He has
recently applied for a job and is extremely excited by
it. I, on the other hand, have a job but am looking
for a change of scenery, and whilst searching on the
net stumbled across a job vacancy that looks very much
like the one he has applied for. But I want that job!
It’s perfect for me.

But it’s a little more complicated than that. I met B
during my last year at uni, and he’s the one who got
me my present job (he was already an employee, they
needed people on short notice). Shortly after I
arrived, B was phased out — this had nothing to do
with my employment, and everything to do with him
being politically naïve at the office. Since he lost
his job, he’s done nothing. He’s living off of
benefits, laying around our flat all the time and
getting gradually more depressed. It’s pointless to
talk to him about the fact that he only applies for
his “dream jobs,” and thus has been out of work for
almost a year, so I don’t bother. But it’s not as if
my current position was a perfect job to start with —
I just happen to still have it, and he’s still
unemployed.

This job I’ve found sounds incredible, and I
desperately want to try for it. However, B is also a
dear friend and I don’t want to tread on his toes.
It’s unlikely either of us will get it with so much
competition everywhere, but I’d like to apply and see
what happens. Should I go behind his back and deal
with any potentially ugly consequences later?

Thanks for your help,
Rhubarb Pie

My husband has a stepbrother, let’s call him “Hopeless Romantic,” who is married to a woman we will call Bitchy Wife and has two absolutely adorable boys. Up until about three years ago they lived in New York (we live in the west). Then HR decides that it would be a good idea to move out here to be closer to family, so my husband’s parents pony up the money to get them here.

About a week later, BW decides that everyone is mean to her and she just can’t stand it. I would like to mention that my husband’s parents are some of the nicest people you will ever meet. So she takes the kids and heads back to New York. A few months later they decide to try this again, and The Parents once more pay for them to get out here. Once more BW can’t handle it, takes the kids, and leaves. This happens a several more times over the course of the next year.

This takes us to about a year and a half ago. HR and BW are back in New York. BW is living it up, doing drugs, sleeping around, and basically doing whatever she pleases. Meanwhile their poor boys are absolutely miserable. They have started wetting the bed, crying in school, and banging their heads against the wall. One even stopped talking. Then BW finds out she is pregnant, possibly by another man.

Fast forward to three months ago. BW has the baby, and they do a paternity test. It’s not HR’s, and he, understandably, wants nothing to do with it. So they give the baby up for adoption, which is possibly the only good choice this woman has ever made.

At this point HR realizes that the kids were happier out here, and frankly so was he. Plans are made to once more move out west. He also starts the divorce process (paid for by The Parents) from BW, and gets custody of the kids so she can’t flip out and take them again. About a month and a half ago, The Parents are able to get enough money together to rent a U-Haul to get everything here, and we pitch in to help him buy a car (which later breaks down, and The Parents buy him a $4000 car to replace it). They arrive, and life is grand. Except almost immediately BW starts complaining about how I hate her and she feels so unwelcome. So she decides to visit some long-lost relatives in another state.

The next three weeks were wonderful. The kids seemed really happy and excited to be back, HR seemed really happy, and everything was just going really well. Then BW suddenly came back and it all went downhill from there. You see, I have an online journal. The day after HR and family arrived, I was in a very bad mood. So I ranted in my journal and called his wife stupid and a twit. Not nice, but not terrible. Having vented, I completely forgot all about the entry. A month later when BW comes back from vacation she starts reading through HR’s online diary, which links to mine. She reads the entry and freaks out and writes a nasty comment in my journal about how I should mind my own business and what she does is between them and I don’t even know her and with that attitude I never will. I reply back and basically say hey, it’s my journal, I can write whatever the hell I want, and it was written on a bad day along with a bunch of other scathing comments towards other friends, so nothing personal.

Around this time we learned that they are no longer getting divorced and actually want marriage counseling, which they had the gall to ask The Parents to pay for after everything they have already done (they are also paying for his rent because he hasn’t bothered to get a job yet), and knowing that they don’t really want HR and BW together. A few days later, HR IMs me to say that BW wants me to apologize for the comment I made about her, and she would be just so happy if only I would do that. I don’t feel I did anything wrong, so I don’t apologize. After this there is a big drop in communication between HR and us (my husband and I) but we are still on relatively good terms. Then out of the blue, this morning I receive an IM from him asking me to inform my husband that he would be unable to make it to a game that we had planned for this weekend, because he has respect for his wife and he can’t spend eight-plus hours with someone who won’t apologize to her, because to do this would not show respect. Or some such crap. He then immediately logged off.

So he has basically given the metaphorical finger to the entire family, even after everything we have done to support him financially and emotionally (even if we disagree with his choices). And he is making me feel like it’s my fault that he can’t be friends with us, even though he is the one that needs to grow a spine and stand up to his wife. Of course everyone here is too close to the situation to be objective, so I need some outside help. What should I do?

This woman is abusive, controlling, and manipulative and is using the only negative thing she can find about this family to drive a wedge between him and us. I feel prideful and stupid for not apologizing when it could possibly make things better between us, but at the same time I can’t help but feel that this would just be playing in to her hands, to put her in control and put me exactly where she wants me.

We don’t want to alienate him because we honestly care about him, both as a family member and a friend. And it isn’t really an option to beat the living hell out of him until he sees what an ass he is being. We are tired of dealing with all of this woman’s crap just to be friends with an otherwise great guy. How can we show him that we care when he won’t even talk to us?

Weary in the West

My situation is this: I have a close friend whom I have known for about five years. We met at a new mothers’ group when our oldest daughters, now five, were babies. We live on opposite sides of the United States now, but we have stayed in touch by email almost every day. In addition her in-laws live nearby, so when she and her family come to visit we are able to get together.

During their visit this summer we took a trip to the beach, together with her husband’s family. My daughter has a life-threatening allergy to peanuts, of which my friend is well aware. While we were at the beach, a bag of trail mix (basically peanuts and M&Ms) came out, and the in-laws began eating it. My friend had told me about the trail mix before we got to the beach, and I was planning to keep an eye on it and make sure that no one who ate it came in contact with my daughter. (Short lesson on peanut allergies, so that you don’t think I am a complete loon. A miniscule amount of peanut protein can cause a serious reaction, and an anaphylactic reaction can progress very quickly to death. A Boston lawyer died last year in a parking garage on the way to get his Epipen, after he unknowingly ate something that contained peanuts at a firm function.) My friend ate a handful of the trail mix, much to my shock since I thought she understood how serious exposure can be. When she started to help my daughter into the boat for the trip back (we had reached the beach by boat, and so were in a fairly inaccessible place, making the situation more nerve-wracking than it would have otherwise been), I asked her not to touch my daughter because she had eaten the peanuts. I won’t go into all the details, but I later emailed her to explain why I had acted the way I did, emailed again when she didn’t respond, and got an email back from her that didn’t make me feel totally warm and fuzzy. I composed an email back to her, but then thought it might be a bit aggressive, and decided to get a second opinion.

However, that’s not the situation for which I need your advice. For that, I turned to a peanut allergy support board that I frequent. I copied my two emails, her response, and my proposed response. I copied the text rather than try to explain what each email said, because let’s face it, I would have (consciously or unconsciously) tried to make myself into the good guy and her into the bad guy. And, in fact, most of the posters responding thought that her response was quite nice in most ways, and that my response to it would inflame things and that I shouldn’t send it. I agreed with them, and rewrote the email to drastically dial it down.

Imagine my surprise when her response to that email contained copies of my postings, and made clear that she was not happy that I had posted her email on the board. To my knowledge she had never visited the board before, so it came totally out of left field. I also need to say that I never said anything bad about my friend, other than the fact that I didn’t think her response showed that she really understood the seriousness of what she had done, and my main point of discussion was that I was feeling sad that the friendship had probably changed because of what had happened.

So my question is, was it wrong to post her email on the message board? I ask because one of the things I am most upset about is that she has refused to apologize for eating peanuts around my daughter, and says that she did nothing “wrong.” (Hey! Right there is an example of what I wanted to ask about quotation marks: does the period go inside or outside the quotations? I know other punctuation goes inside if you are quoting dialog, but I’m not sure when the quotation marks are not being used for dialog purposes. And I did not plan that.) So, since I am hung up on apologies, if it was wrong to copy her email on the support board, I guess I need to step up and apologize to her. I also realize that I am asking for advice about a situation that arose because I asked for advice, so I may be making a bad situation worse, but I figure you have a better grasp of the netiquette of the situation than anyone else I could ask.

Thanks for your help,
Not a friend of peanuts, not sure if I am still a friend of hers

I’m a first-time cat mom; the Slinky has been with me for about 18 months
now. The vet thinks she’s somewhere between two and two and a half years
old. (I adopted her from a rescue society.)

My apartment complex recently left a
request pinned to my door (and everyone else’s) to keep pets locked up for
the entire week, since they would be painting the outside doors, and our
doors would be open while the paint dried. Since my door opens onto a
grassy area adjoining a four-lane road, for her safety I did so. Given that
I have a huge bathroom, I left the Slinky in there with her litter box,
food, water, treats, toys, a blanket, and the sweatsuit I sleep in.

I came
home to a bloody line underneath the bathroom door and bloody little
footprints all over the bathroom. She spent so long scrabbling underneath
the door that she wore the pads off of her toes. We’ve been keeping them
clean, putting antibiotic goo on them when she falls asleep in my lap so
that it stays on for a couple hours, and they seem to be healing fine. We
also switched her litter for shredded newspaper on the advice of a friend so
that she wouldn’t get grit in the raw wounds.

Here’s the question. We’re
moving this Friday, and I called to check with the new apartment if such
requests were ever made. Yes, they are. Do you have any advice for me
about confining her in the future? And she hates being in her carrier with
the door closed, by the way. She’s all good with the door open, but once you close
it…

Thanks,
Guilty Mom of Sore-Toes

Help me, as I’ve finally reached my breaking point.

Is it “nonfiction,” or “non-fiction”?

I edit in a field that deals quite a bit with copy
from publishing houses, and no one seems to know which
one is right. In the copy I receive, I get both on a
regular basis. I change them all to “nonfiction,” and no
one complains, but I get “non-fiction” so often, it’s
starting to make me think there’s something I don’t
know. Shouldn’t representatives from publishing
houses, writing copy to advertise their companies,
know which one is correct?

Another one that comes up in my job often: When
referring to topics in the humanities and sciences,
aren’t they all lowercase, except for languages and
names of school classes? So it’s “history,” “English,”
“geology,” “Spanish,” and “Psychology 101.” Not “Literature.”
Am I right? It seems the publishing house reps don’t
always know this one, either.

Thanks for the reassurance.

Why couldn’t they call it “unfiction”?