DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: I have been having nightmares about what it will be like when I see my ex when I get back to college later in August.

We had a good thing, until we didn’t, and when we split up two weeks before the end of the spring term. It was an extremely bad breakup and he made it clear he would not be happy to see me with another guy.

One of the biggest reasons we broke up was because he was so jealous. If I even just mentioned another guy, like someone in one of my study groups, or someone from an old class I happened to run into on or off campus, he would start to grill me about the guy and ask if I liked him or something.

It got bad enough that I withdrew from the summer session classes I had enrolled in because I felt like I had to put some distance between the two of us for a few weeks. He has a campus job and was going to be there all summer, so I would have had little to no chance of avoiding him. It isn’t that big a campus.

I know he would not try to do anything to physically hurt me, but he can be cruel, and he has a lot of friends who I’m sure he has told all about how “horribly” I treated him. (Like I say, it’s a small campus!)

I don’t want to hide from him, so how do I handle being back in the same place as my ex and his friends? --- WORRIED ABOUT RETURNING TO SCHOOL

DEAR WORRIED ABOUT RETURNING TO SCHOOL: You mentioned that your ex has a lot of friends. Hopefully you’ve made a few of your own at school, and it may be wise to let them know you could use a little moral and practical support in establishing buffers between yourself and the people you worry about encountering.

Just for a bit, it could be both helpful and advisable to not go alone to hangouts you’ve shared with your ex, at least until the awkwardness of getting through the first encounters with him and his crowd declines. That should naturally happen as you both move on in your respective lives.

DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: My husband has a charcoal grill, a gas grill, and a Traeger, so we do a lot of outdoor cooking all year round, one of the best things about living in Southern California.

My husband is always finding new preps and recipes for the meals he cooks, especially on the Traeger. To save money by buying bigger cuts of meat and cutting them down and freezing them, last year we bought a 3.5 cubic ft. deep freezer. It is now completely packed, and instead of working through what we already have, my husband told me he has started pricing 25 or 30 cubic ft. freezer models.

We can barely fit the small one we have in the kitchen, and he said not to worry because we could put the big one in the spare bedroom, since nobody much uses it. That way, we would have two deep freezers and save a lot of money on meat.

I shut him down first because it’s an expense we do not have to make because we could just go through what we already have, and second because those big freezers just gross me out. I think about those tv shows, movies, and true crime stories where someone cuts a murder victim up and stuffs them in a freezer. Not to mention we would use a third of the space in our spare room, which does get used when his family and my family come to visit.

My husband said that even with having the cuts of meat we have in the smaller freezer, we could get an even bigger, better variety of meat if we had a bigger freezer.

I see a serious flaw in my husband’s thinking here, don’t you? --- NO MORE FROZEN MEAT

DEAR NO MORE FROZEN MEAT: When I was a kid, my parents had one of those giant freezers in the basement. I, like you, found it a bit creepy.

I also remember my parents discovering food way at the bottom of it years after they’d purchased, frozen, and forgotten what they’d picked up with the good intention of buying large to save over time.

I agree with you completely that it’d be a less expensive strategy in the long run to work through what you already have on hand and then restock when appropriate.

Otherwise, your husband may find his more extensive purchases are liable to fall victim to the “out of sight, out of mind” rule my parents experienced. It’s easy enough to have happen.

DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: My nephew works at our local hospital’s thrift store.

I think it’s fantastic local individuals and organizations donate things to the store that supports our community directly, which is what the hospital’s shop does both in re-giving some things and selling others to help fund the volunteer program services at the hospital itself.

I was talking to my nephew on the phone and he was telling me about some of the things people donate. Most of it is still useful and ready to be put on the sales floor or given to those in the community in need. Sadly, some of the donations are in less than good condition, or just plain inappropriate.

Here are a few of the things he told me came in while he is at work: baby clothing with poop and puke, live ammunition, a box with a dried out mouse body mixed in, sex toys, expired food, opened toiletries, sheets and clothes with tears and stains in them. That’s just what he thought of from the top of his head.

I don’t usually donate items I can sell at a yard sale or at our annual church bazaar, but it made me think about the kinds of people who dump their trash at thrift stores rather than in the bin. Why don’t people use a little thinking before they “donate” their stuff? --- GROSSED OUT

DEAR GROSSED OUT: While there may be malice in what a handful of people consider a joke at the expense of those working at the thrift store, I’m guessing many of the less savory donations likely come from people handling estates, downsizing, or moving, and the donors are either overwhelmed and simply don’t bother to go through what they’re getting rid of, or they’re not willing or able to make the necessary efforts of cleaning up what gets dropped off.

The upside is that at least the majority of what’s being brought into where your nephew works is making its way back into the community to be of use to someone new, while the retail sales benefit both the hospital and offset the cost of running the store.