From My Orbit

I am so late on this, I apologize. Needless to say, I have been making a report back to the home planet, and showing it and its exotic ways (like black eyed peas for New Year) to the Astronaut.
LW#1: She really wants a job there? She will have to find a way to get it. Although it may have been kind of gnarly of you to keep this job application all top secret, the idea that she is saying SHE thinks YOU would HATE IT at that place is pretty weird posturing on her part.


If she were smart she would look at you as a means to her preferred end, job skills alignment/needs or not. You know, as her mole/source for employment there in the event you make the cut at all. But it sounds like she's not really that smart. I mean, really.


My only advice for you is to look at this job on its own merits and your own plans for the future and let her recuperate from her own mistakes. Just because she's jealous doesn't mean you need to walk all carefully around her, or even go after her. Her timing is off, and she is going to have to do more to get what she wants than hoping for a particular opening for her in the place she thinks she wants to work.


LW#2: As long as you're not a little too constant in mentioning your mother (you know, like, friend to waiter: "I think I'd like a Coke." You: "Mom loved Coca-cola."), then just remember that other people don't know how to address loss in general, much less the specific, tragic loss of a mother at a young age.


Maybe you can interrupt their silence with, "Sorry if that's awkward. I'm doing okay."


LW#3: Ah, the open adoption and the myriad social awkwardnesses opened up by incorporating yet one more branch of an extended family into your own.


Well, I think both you and your wife have valid points. It's perfectly natural for her to want her child to be her child. It is perfectly natural to accept a gift to benefit him from someone that you kind of sort of had some kind of contact with, and that you know cares about his welfare.


There is a huge gulf between "worm their way in" and "take away," and you seem to be blind to it. So first, put those eyelids up. How much privacy do you and your wife want in the way you are raising your son? How much do you want him to be part of *your* family, ie not having more grandparents than your and your wife's parents? How does she feel? (Sometimes, I'm sure you'll be surprised to learn, people don't even like their own parents telling them what to do to properly raise a kid.)


At this point, there's no telling what, exactly, the biogrand was hoping for (could have been a farewell gift), but it sounds like this is a boundary you and your wife will have to set and maintain. As a unit. That you aren't really aware of the whole family dynamic — of the biomom, the biograndmom, etc. — and what their expectations of their relationships with the baby and you and your wife, says to me that you may not be in a very good position to decide what to do with the gifts in a sensitive way. (Apologies if you post to the Fray, I haven't seen anything there yet and I know I'm totes late.)


Anyway, this sounds less like a letter for the internet lady and more like a nice, long talk with your wife, and then with the biograndmother.


LW#4: Okay, that first sentence was confusing. I was all, "Your teen is dating a man your age???? DOUBLE YOO TEE EFF??"


So all your needs are being filled except this one? And it has moved you to write to the internet lady? Really?


Either come back with the real problem that is nagging at you or be grateful for what you have. If this lack of flowers is the hill upon which you want to die, I think that is a problem the Fray would be happy to help you understand their point of view with.