Dear Abby?

The other day my daughter remarked plaintively, “I miss your blog.” I almost gave in and told her about this one—she does indeed have me wrapped around her little finger—but I resisted the impulse. I had to remind myself why I shut down the original one and went into the Blogger Protection Program. When I want to read her blog, I am always careful to log in under my old user name so it appears to be coming from my original blog.

With this blog, I can express my reality, free from my children’s editing or now ex-daughter-in-law’s censorship. I can say what I like without fear of hurting someone’s feelings or being accused of “misremembering” events.

What I gained in freedom I lost in readership. Before, my blog was read more widely because of the crowd I was running with. I envy my daughter’s long list of commenters. If I told you her address, though, she could find me using the Stat Counter tracking program. She’s not searching for me or anything, this blog would just show up in the “coming from” section. Here is where she can be found, though: forthelongrun dot blogspot dot com.

If I told her about this blog, she would of course mention it to her friends who may or may not read it, but her brothers and aunt and uncle would also find it, and I’d be back where I started, worried about censorship.

Here is an example I something I want to say that I would not want them to know about:

Grandson Max’s dad Shane lives with us. He’s been back in our house for over a year and is likely to stay another year until his alimony commitments have been met. He might be able to afford his own place once that is done. His current girlfriend gave me a DVD for Christmas: a bootleg copy of “I Am Legend”, a movie I planned to see or rent at some point. I put off watching it, and she asked me if I’d seen it yet, and I had to say no and then I finally dropped it into the DVD player.

I wasn’t that comfortable with the idea of a bootleg DVD anyway, and wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but after a few moments it was clear that someone had sat in the movie theater and simply videotaped the entire film and burned it to a DVD. You could see the people in front of him moving around---it was just so strange. I stopped it after a minute or so. The whole idea just made me queasy. The guy stole the movie. I don’t want anything to do with stolen property.

Do I say anything to Shane or his girlfriend? How can I say anything without appearing judgmental or disapproving or ungrateful? I’d like to prevent any more stolen movies from showing up at my house, but how do I do that without damaging our relationship to her or her relationship to Shane? What do I say the next time she asks about it?