I know she’s trying to be helpful, but….

After we separated, I still stayed friends with one of ex’s relatives, Greta.  She’s exactly two months younger than me and we are planning on going away together exactly in between our birthdays to celebrate (or try to forget about) the certain age we’ll be reaching this year.  Just put that in so it’s clear that Greta and I get on really, really well.

Greta is a Facebook fan, as is my daughter.  Daughter posts loads of pictures of the best grandchild in the world on Facebook, but sends me very few of them.  Greta knows this and so every time a new photo is uploaded by daughter, she emails it to me.  This is all brilliant; I am truly grateful and I religiously upload them to Dropbox so I can bore people with them wherever I happen to be.

Daughter is also a drama queen.  She has borderline personality disorder, or she may be bi-polar (the diagnosis does tend to change a bit).  Because of this, she vents her moods and perceived unfairnesses onto Facebook.  Greta has now started copying, pasting and sending me dialogues from my daughter’s Facebook whenever she has a drama – telling me when she has had a falling out with her boyfriend, telling me when she feels all alone and making sure I know when she’s going through a "I hate my evil stepmother" or a "I miss my family" phase.

She never sends me anything good, though (apart from the pictures and she sends them without the accompanying proud mama posts).  Hence I end up worrying about my daughter over things that were probably resolved before I even read about them and even if they weren’t, there’s nothing I can do and nothing I should do.

I don’t want to stop Greta sending me the photos and I’ve tried to say that she needn’t send me all the dramatic stuff, but all that’s changed is that she still sends it but with a note saying something like, "I thought you ought to see this."  She really is only trying to be helpful and keep me in the loop, but she can’t seem to grasp that I don’t want or need to be bombarded with all the Facebook minutiae crap that is just one of the reasons I hate Facebook.

That’s better; I’ve had my grump moment and not upset Greta at all.  Thanks, OD 🙂