Help! My Perfect Neighbor Relationship Is About to Go Up in Smoke.

Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. But mostly, what I think when I see this said is “This sounds like a miserable place to be.” And that’s what I think when I hear the description of your sister’s life. If she won’t purchase childcare, which is what I’d usually prescribe—not so she can have a date night; just so she can go do whatever she needs, even if that’s just sitting on a park bench in silence, reading romance novels—can she purchase help in the home, to give her a bit of space to breathe? It’s hard to say, because I don’t know what you mean when you say “never on good terms,” but it feels like you not being on the invite could happen in any manner of ways. To be clear, we have never deliberately hidden this from her, but she has never expressly asked about it, and there’s no good way to randomly segue into “By the way, your dinner used to be alive.” She avoids eating chicken and turkey, and we’ve realized this might be because they’re called “chicken” and “turkey.” She does eat meats that don’t have the same name as their source animals, such as bacon, steak, and pot roast, but it’s clear from her comments that she doesn’t have a lock on what they’re made of.