Dear Queenie,
My wife and her grown-up daughter from a previous marriage are joined at the hip via telephone. The daughter calls several times a day and they talk and talk about nothing in particular. She even has called when we were on vacation and in the middle of some special vacation activity.
She always calls on my wife’s cell phone, and my wife walks with it in her hand everywhere, even around the house, so she won’t miss a call. Our other children don’t do this.
Queenie, help!—Fed up husband
Dear Fed up,
This is not uncommon between mothers and daughters who are close. As long as your stepdaughter does not call while she is driving a vehicle and your wife does not answer such a call while she is driving, and as long as you do not have to answer the phone, do not make a big thing of this. After all, things would be much worse for your wife if she and her daughter were estranged.
Dear Queenie,
I’m getting ready to go to college and I have several universities to pick from. My first choice offers all the courses I want to take, but my older brother says he would be offended if I go there because it is his school’s biggest rival.
I don’t know whether it is more important to get the education I want or to keep peace in the family.
Queenie, what do you advise?—Undecided
Dear,
I advise you not to let your brother’s pettiness keep you from getting the best education you can.
As for your brother, this advice is directed at him: GROW UP!!! Would you really let a silly school rivalry interfere with your sibling’s future? If so, you deserve whatever hurt feelings you suffer.
Dear Queenie,
After my boyfriend and I had been together for a couple of months I found out he was cheating on me with his ex. I told him I knew about it and he told his ex to get lost and he came to me wanting to set a date to get married.
The problem is he keeps lying to me. He’ll tell me he’s spending the night at home chilling out but then he doesn’t answer his phone. Once I even stopped by to see him, but he wasn’t there. But he keeps talking about us getting married.
Queenie, should I stick it out or dump him?—Baffled
Dear Baffled,
By all means stick it out – if you want to spend your life being lied to and cheated on. It is not likely that your boyfriend will change his ways just because he has taken marriage vows. He already has shown that he will not – cannot – keep his promises.
Dear Queenie,
When I got married my father couldn’t walk me down the aisle because he had to be away on business, something that came up at the last minute that he just had to take care of.
Now my brother is getting married and his fiancée’s father is dead so they have asked Dad to walk her down the aisle.
Queenie, I don’t think this is fair. If he couldn’t give me away how can he do the honours for my brother’s fiancée? Is it even proper for the groom’s father to give away the bride?—Jealous daughter
Dear Jealous,
It is not a matter of “giving away the bride,” it is just a matter of escorting her to the altar. Try to suppress your feelings of jealousy and be happy for your brother and his new wife.
Dear Queenie,
Why on earth do people take pictures of a dead loved one lying in their coffin at the funeral?
Queenie, why would they want to remember a loved one as a corpse?—Nauseated
Dear Nauseated,
I too find this rather gruesome.
I can understand viewing the body as a last opportunity to say “goodbye,” but I do not understand preserving that memory rather than how they were when alive. However, there’s no accounting for some people’s taste.
