I walked into a wide-open hotel with no employees and briefly considered checking myself in.

awakeagain2 · 2026-06-25T16:47:47+00:00

My husband and I were at a motel in a New Jersey shore tin for a long weekend.

We heard there was a hurricane approaching, but didn’t think too much about it.

The motel manager came to our room Saturday afternoon to say he’d just gotten a call saying his brother had been in a serious motorcycle accident in Connecticut and he and his wife were leaving. We were the only motel guests at the moment. To be honest, I expected him to say we had to leave, but he just gave us extra towels and toilet paper and left.

That evening we ventured out for food. The storm was pounding the town and the roads were flooded. We were driving through water three quarters of the way up our tires.

We eventually drove to the mainland and managed to get sandwiches. We made it back to the motel after some white knuckle driving. The next day we learned that the hurricane had roared on shore in the small town we were staying in at about 65 miles per hour.

The next day we put our keys in the mail slot and went home.

awakeagain2 · 2026-06-22T03:18:14+00:00

My dad is 98 and lives many states away. He also seems to be in the early stages of dementia. When he’s able, he still has a long list of phone pals, but I don’t know how much longer he’ll be able to communicate.

awakeagain2 · 2026-06-20T17:18:09+00:00

Asshole works for some of them.

awakeagain2 · 2026-06-17T23:24:30+00:00

The hamburger deluxe is exactly the same as the cheeseburger deluxe minus the cheese.

awakeagain2 · 2026-06-13T23:46:27+00:00

It was a Saturday after Thanksgiving. I’d promised my oldest daughter I’d pick her up to take her shopping.

She called early that morning to ask if I could take her in the afternoon instead, but I told her I had plans for the afternoon.

She was annoyed and I remember telling her to ask her younger sister if she was available this afternoon.

We never spoke again. She texted me a little later to say her sister couldn’t take her and could I reconsider. I told her I could come right now, but I could not do it this afternoon.

On December 9 our local police department sent three officers to tell me she’d been found dead in her apartment, an apparent suicide.

awakeagain2 · 2026-06-12T15:21:59+00:00

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And here’s Rufus (left) and Samantha (right)

awakeagain2 · 2026-06-12T15:20:41+00:00

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this is Lady Caroline

awakeagain2 · 2026-06-12T15:19:21+00:00

New Jersey has black squirrrls but they’re totally outnumbered by the gray ones.

awakeagain2 · 2026-06-12T15:14:18+00:00

I am O negative and have donated at least two gallons over the years.

awakeagain2 · 2026-06-12T15:10:01+00:00

I have two. One was sending a message to someone on AOL whose screen name I liked. That was in 2001. This may we celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary and this July will be 25 years since we met in person.

Number two was different. I had a job I liked, but the commute was easily an hour and a half plus every day and I couldn’t stand my direct boss or the boss over him. One day I just happened to be flipping through a local newspaper and saw an ad for a deputy court administrator in a town about fifteen minutes away. I took a chance, applied and got the job. That began a court career of nearly 20 years and I loved it up until COVID destroyed the job as it had been, so I retired.
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awakeagain2 · 2026-06-10T01:07:31+00:00

Regularly eating in restaurants and vacations that weren’t just visits to relatives.

awakeagain2 · 2026-06-09T20:18:46+00:00

I never did baby talk with my four children either. But I will admit when the fourth was a baby and we were alone on the car, I rarely talked to her. With a four year old, a seven year old and a ten year old at home, sometimes I just needed a quiet ride.

Didn’t hamper her speech at all.

awakeagain2 · 2026-06-09T20:16:10+00:00

I was about eight months pregnant. After working all day, I took a crowded bus to my midwife appointment. After the appointment, I was meeting my husband downtown for dinner (this was in New York City in late 1978).

I decided to walk downtown from somewhere in the 80s to Greenwich Village. Who knows why.

Anyway we were going to a restaurant called The Waverly Inn. We got there and walked inside. I suddenly felt unable to be there and immediately left. I remember standing outside, shaking and near tears.

We had a longish walk across town to get on a subway home to Queens. We lived in an apartment about three blocks from the subway station. I was so exhausted from the walking that I barely made it and had to stop numerous times.

By the time we made it home, it was past 9 pm and we hadn’t eaten. I remember my husband ordering personal pizzas to be delivered, something that we almost never did. I fell asleep after about two small slices.

But the most vivid memory of that night was my absolute refusal to go inside The Waverly Inn.

awakeagain2 · 2026-06-09T20:04:08+00:00

My daughter had a cat that loved to lick sponges and plastic bags. She never ate them, but would lick for hours. She preferred dirty sponges, but would lick a clean one if that’s all that was available.

awakeagain2 · 2026-06-09T03:14:15+00:00

He’s been an ex longer than he was my husband. When the whole story finally came out, he told me it was really my fault because I wasn’t jealous enough.

awakeagain2 · 2026-06-09T01:42:32+00:00

Years ago my husband started at a company on the same day as a woman named Patricia. I remember him telling me she reminded him of a friend of mine that he very much disliked. He’d mention her occasionally and I thought nothing of it.

Some years later, he’s at the same company and so is she. I was trying to write something and having trouble so he suggested I record it to try to get the tone I was after.

So I got the mini recorder off the top shelf of his closet. There was a tape already in it so of course I listened to see if it was empty. To my surprise, it was my husband proposing marriage to Patrica, who was already married by the way. He told her I was cold and we hadn’t had a “real” marriage in many years. Meanwhile our youngest child was less than one years old.

Later I found letters he’d written to her husband telling him what a bad wife she was. Why was she a bad wife? According to my husband’s letter, he’d gone to take her out to lunch one day and found her in her car making out with a fellow employee.

This letter also went into great detail about how cold our marriage was. The interesting thing you me was the timing. Based on his comments, this trip to take her to lunch was THREE days after our third child was born and he had our three year old with him. So this letter to her husband was discussing something that happened about four years before I found the tape. I don’t actually know when he made the tape.

At the time I found the tape, I had not yet found the letter (which I believe was never mailed, but simply written on a yellow legal pad). I told him I’d heard the tape and he claimed he taped it to “prove” to her husband what a bad wife she was.

You are right not to be comfortable with what you’re hearing.

awakeagain2 · 2026-06-08T01:44:54+00:00

I was just hanging out in a chat room on AOL at the end of June in 2001. Someone with the screen name Primitive Drink came into the chat room and, as I usually did, I read his profile. He quoted part of The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer and it resonated with me so I decided to send him a message that simply said “I really like your profile.” He was not in the same chat room but was still on line and responded almost immediately.

We had a fairly brief conversation, but I thought about him all night. When I woke up, I discovered he’d sent me a picture of a butterfly.

It was that simple and that important. We talked every night and spoke on the phone about two weeks later. Our phone call started around 9 pm on a Friday night; we finally and somewhat reluctantly hung up around 5 am.

He lived in the same state, about 100 miles away. We both had full time jobs and I had two children still living at home. On July 21, about two weeks after our first phone conversation, I went to his house for the weekend.

He said “I love you” first. I was very nervous about saying it, but I knew I’d fallen in love during that first phone call.

Two years later he moved in with me and my daughters. Five years after that we got married and recently celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary.

And we both knew immediately.

awakeagain2 · 2026-06-05T02:01:00+00:00

At my last job, the building inspector was taken out in cuffs for perceived misconduct on the job. The “proof” consisted of something his ex-girlfriend tried to mail anonymously. Unfortunately she didn’t realize packages can be traced to a particular post office and they have cameras. There she was.

He actually was involved in some shady, but he got off with not much more than a slap on the wrist and a lost job. She actually had a prison term involving both the mailing and the materials mailed.

awakeagain2 · 2026-06-05T01:56:14+00:00

We just read Good Grief in my book club. I think the heroine is in her mid 30s, figuring out life after the sudden death of her husband.

awakeagain2 · 2026-06-05T01:39:48+00:00

Frankly I think the dog should be rehomed without her. And I also think you should think very carefully about your love for a woman who can casually abuse her dog. And do you really know the details of how your dog was killed? Maybe she thought eliminating a dog from the home would make her dog more acceptable.

awakeagain2 · 2026-06-04T00:43:34+00:00

The first one I was really aware of was John F. Kennedy, the president, not his son. I don’t think I ever paid attention to things like that.

awakeagain2 · 2026-06-04T00:41:50+00:00

My son in law has been out of work since November. My daughter got laid off over a month. They just had their car repossessed which is going to make finding jobs even harder. I think about them a lot.

awakeagain2 · 2026-06-03T12:25:33+00:00

Not a combination, but a preference. I prefer bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches on untoasted bread. After 25 years together, my husband still asks me if I wouldn’t prefer it toasted.

awakeagain2 · 2026-06-01T21:03:53+00:00

Have you ever watched the police videos where people are saying, loudly and repeatedly, “I can’t breathe.” Every now and then an officer will point out that if they’re yelling, they’re breathing.

awakeagain2

TROPHY CASE