Barefoot

Susan never walks in her bare feet. Ever. Anywhere.
If she sleepwalks in the middle of the night she puts something on her feet first.

Susan can't tolerate stepping on the dog hair, crumbs & sticky bits of she doesn't even want to think about what that carpet her uncarpeted floors.
Just thinking about it now makes her all cold and shivery.

In her youth she ran barefoot like everyone else, she even attended a wedding in her bare feet, she was nineteen of course. She got splinters from the boardwalk, stepped on glass, in dogsh*t and on a slug, which required an unusual amount of scrubbing off.

Susan's very protective of her feet, they require a lot of maintenance just to stay in working condition. The summer is particularly brutal, if she doesn't keep to a daily lubrication schedule her feet will quickly transform into a miserable mess. It generally takes two full days to recover from one afternoon spent at the beach.
She's never even had a proper pedicure. She's given herself plenty but has only fantasized about having someone else do it for her. She came close to a pedicure a few years ago, but it didn't work out.

Common is the sound of her screaming 'Stay off my FEET!'
Dogs step on them. Her medium sized children drive shopping carts into the back of them. Susan even managed to scrape all the skin off her big toe a few years back when she was teaching her daughter to ride a bike.
It bled and bled and bled then took the entire summer to heal.

Susan loves shoes, all sorts of shoes.
She's got many in-store tests they must go through before she brings them home. However, she thinks nothing of handing off a pair of brand new beautiful shoes if they don't make the cut. Just ask the husband's daughter,
the one who shares a size 10 foot.

Susan knows some folks who are going through dark times. Not to denigrate divorce or foreclosure, but they're not dark enough. Imagine being chased off a cliff by monsters and you're in the ballpark.

Currently Susan's wrestling with being broke. But who isn't.
It's like having a boil on her butt, a throbbing, angry, miserable boil. But it's temporary. She's still free to enjoy the simple pleasures that each day brings, like the breeze thru a window, the smell of coffee brewing or the sound of the dog drinking from the toilet because the kids have neglected to fill the water bowl.

Susan is lucky because she's got a family who needs her.
The husband needed her to assist in picking him up off the driveway yesterday after he tripped over a bicycle.
The emotional, pre-menstrual daughter has needed her every night to make a space in bed when she comes in crying. The son just needs her to keep on buying food.

Susan doesn't know what the future holds she just knows what she has right now. She hopes when it's time for her to go over the cliff she'll do it the best way she knows how.

Hands Off Susan's Breakfast!

Susan practically stabbed her son through the hand with a fork as he tried to snatch from her plate a piece of English muffin saturated with egg yolk.
Susan doesn't share her food ever. She doesn't care if you're one of those Biafran babies with distended bellies from her childhood. Get away from her plate NOW.
Susan has to eat at regular intervals or her symptoms will be many and her decompensation swift.
Aging hasn't helped either.

Susan's bottom right desk drawer at work is filled with oatmeal packets and Luna Bars, her upper right drawer has hard candy & dark chocolate covered espresso beans. Susan carries emergency sugar packets in her bag which she once downed with such a crazed ferocity she scared her children. Sugar packets are her big needle filled with adrenaline.

Susan knows what everyone is thinking,
go to a doctor!
She went to an internist earlier this decade and his diagnosis was 'Maybe you're just hungry'. Maybe she is.

In the meantime, Susan's able to manage her symptoms by eating properly and regularly. So, as long as she's not living outside a society with supermarkets she'll be fine. She's not forgetting the little candy bar thing she kicked earlier this season, that was due more to accessibility than actual addiction.
But, she doesn't take the little candy bar thing lightly,
no she doesn't. She understands the warm, happy sugar high and how it applies to her. She once heard an interview with Eric Clapton, the epic heroin addict and guitar player, identify his first addiction as sugar.
Can Susan have an Amen?

The Cupboard Is Bare

Susan was between paychecks last week so she didn't go food shopping. There was still plenty of paper towels and laundry soap but every day found less and less to eat.
Susan has an emergency meal for such a situation;
linguine and clam sauce. The sauce is totally from a can, but it's quick to prepare and everyone likes it. If she plunges a head of broccoli into the boiling pasta water, chops it up then artfully places it on top of the sauce she could serve it to company.

She put the water on the stove to boil, retrieved the clam sauce from the shelf but when she reached for the linguine she found there was only half a box left. No way was half a box of linguine going to feed four people, two of whom don't know when to stop eating. The only other macaroni available was mezzo ditale which Susan uses in her pasta e fagioli because it's the same size as the beans.

The husband told Susan to break the linguine in half so that it will seem like more, Susan knew it didn't make sense but complied because she wanted to believe.
She went to open the clam sauce but couldn't locate the can opener. When she inquired as to where it might be the husband said 'Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you.'
The can opener was no mas.
This of course started a ruckus over how the f*ck is she supposed to know anything if nobody tells her and why wasn't it put on the f*cking shopping list?
The shopping list is a constant complaint of Susan's.
At least once a week someone makes Susan scream about something that needs to be replaced but that's not on the list. She'll scream as much as she has to because logic dictates that when people get tired of being screamed at they'll figure out what to do to make it stop.

In the meantime, except for the husband's plan to try busting open the can with a knife, there was still nothing available for dinner.

Susan had onions, so she began sauteing some in a pan. Susan had garlic. Wait, no. Susan didn't have garlic anymore.
Susan had very garlicky salsa that her little sister brought over last weekend when she came three hours late for dinner. Susan also had a roasted eggplant and tomato dish from the same time period sitting in a tupperware in the back of the fridge.
Everything got sauteed with the onions then poured over the linguine and eaten with alot of Parmesan cheese.
It was great, even one of the kids agreed.

An Eleven Year Old With A Cell Phone

Susan's very minor daughter has a cell phone.
Susan refused for more than a year to be baited into any sort of premature cell phone related conversations. Unfortunately, when it became time to change from one disappointing wireless plan to another Susan let the husband talk her into doing something she didn't want to do. He has a much more lenient policy toward giving unnecessary nonsense to children and was able to influence Susan when she was tired.

The daughter accumulated extra charges the very first month because texting every minute of every day adds up.

She also got into the habit of calling Susan at work to find out when she would be leaving. Susan doesn't normally keep her cell phone handy, so the daughter would just call and call and call until Susan noticed the 15 missed calls and called her back.

Another call would usually follow a half hour later to make sure that Susan was en route. Once again, if Susan didn't answer because the phone was lying in the bottom of her bag, the daughter would call and call and call. Then she'd call using someone else's phone.

Susan hates taking calls in the car. Since she doesn't have air conditioning she rides with all the windows down and it makes quite a racket. Rolling the windows up to take a phone call will trigger a total f*cking heat-stroked meltdown.

The other day Susan had already handled the when are you leaving? and are you on your way? phone calls when the phone rang with the where are you? call.
Susan tried to explain that it didn't make any difference where she was because it had already been established that she was on her way home. The conversation lasted until Susan walked through the front door, cell phone in her ear and met the daughter in the livingroom, cell phone in her ear.

22 Things Susan Likes About The Husband

Susan's husband had a birthday the other day, and even though it ended in a zero Susan didn't feel compelled to do anything about it other than make him coffee in the morning and submit to a personal request later on.

Susan isn't much for ceremony, she doesn't require it for herself and she doesn't provide it for others. She's not running out to spend four dollars on a card at the store, so don't wait for one. And, if you've told her more than every single time that you don't like the gift she's chosen for you, she's not giving you any more.

But, after so many years manacled together in wedded bliss, and even though she's got to force him to sit down and read her BLAHg, he still makes her happy.
Here's some reasons why;

• He makes fantastic meatballs
• Describing the birth of his son he said 'I never knew how exhausting it was to yell at someone for four hours'
• He sings
• He is very adept at winning arguments, but takes it easy on Susan
• He runs around in the yard with the kids
• He can be counted on to complete any disagreeable task
• He tells funny stories from his youth about neighborhood brawling
• He apologizes by saying 'I've decided to forgive you'
• He cracks Susan's toes
• He doesn't build himself up by making others feel small
• If he doesn't know something, he knows a guy who knows
• He ingores Susan when she gets all TWISTED and acts like a baby
• He doesn't worry about things he can't control
• He makes Susan's coffee exactly the way she likes it
• He can Lindy
• He liked the same moody 1975 album that Susan did
• He thinks Susan is funny
• He ordered a bushel of clams and didn't know what to do with them so he called up his friend George for suggestions & ended up making fantastic garlicy, steamed clams for Susan's birthday
• He's impressive with a yo-yo
• He sez that being mad at Susan is like being mad at a puppy
• He turns Susan's compost heap every week
• He raised two smart, independent, caring & wonderful girls before he was married to Susan that have always been terrific big sisters.

Let's Learn About Susan's Folks

Susan's parents were married fifty years ago the other day. In lieu of a big party, or a card, or even a timely phone call of acknowledgement Susan is going to redeem herself by writing something nice about them.

Susan's parents created a very stable home environment. Some might say rigid, but Susan's not sayin' nuthin'. Even though a portion of Susan's decisions are based solely on doing the opposite of what her parents would have done, they created a sturdy framework for Susan to live her life.

Susan's parents didn't care if their children got mad at them and proved this by saying NO! as often as they wanted. Thanks to this Susan doesn't take any crap from her own kids.

Susan's parents like to read, so does Susan. Susan's old man used to buy so many books that her mother made him build a little room to keep them in. Unfortunately, it didn't keep her from yelling every time he brought home more.

Susan's old man fixed airplanes for a living. This meant he also fixed cars and bathroom sinks and whatever else was on the list in the kitchen. Susan doesn't actually fix things but she married a man who does.

Susan's mother sews, crochets, hangs wallpaper and has put the colors turquoise and orange together. Susan is very artsy fartsy herself.

Susan's old man has been a practitioner of Transcendental Meditation for thirty years. Susan took after her mother and relieves her stress by using filthy words.

Susan's old man had panic attacks. Susan had panic attacks!
Susan's mother likes blue cheese. OMG, Susan adores blue cheese!

Susan's parents like church.
This is where Susan and her parents part company.

Happy Anniversary, folks.

Summer Vacation Thus Far

Except for the barbecuey smell, Susan has barely noticed summer speeding by. She has yet to accumulate vacation time in her new career as a sweatshop seamstress and the combination of cool weather & being broke have conspired to make sure that she does nothing.

Susan's children do slightly more than nothing.

For the first month of summer Susan's son had a non-paying gig as a camp counselor at the local intermediate school. His former English teacher assisted him by writing a wonderful letter of recommendation, one which Susan keeps folded up in her pocket and takes out to read whenever she wants to brain him.
The second month of his summer has been spent either as a guest at various friends' homes or lying on his bed playing Call Of Duty 4 until he's requested at the supper table.

Susan's daughter is dropped off before work at Uncle Erik's Summer Program where she hangs with her cousins to swim, play video games, watch TV and eat chicken salad.
Susan's house guest was nice enough to take Susan's daughter and a companion to the mall one day and then reported back to Susan everything that the girls talked about.
The library & local branch of a formerly thriving video rental corporation have all played their part in keeping the daughter occupied.

Susan's summertime recreation has consisted of drinking sangria after dinner or anytime she's not required to do anything remotely responsible. The end.

Is It Hot Or Is It Susan?

Susan decompensates when she's hot.
Absolutely everything in Susan's universe falls into an angry pit of fire. The same breakdown occurs when she's hungry. She'll fling f*cking sh*ts and motherf*ckers quicker than a regular person might say I feel hot.

Susan wasn't always this way, but pregnancy and a surprisingly early menopause took their toll.

All in all, Susan's made friends with her menopause. It's enabled her to trade in the tiresome maintenance of birth control for the simplicity of sex, although she's noticed the tiniest little bit of a diminished libido. Luckily, Susan's like an old lawnmower and the husband doesn't mind yanking the cord over & over until he gets her running.

The bloody, crampy misery of her menstrual cycle is also gone, leaving in its place some hot flashes.
Pretty Chinatown fans are all she needs to cool herself off but if she can't get to one fast enough, watch out.
The contents of her bag will be dumped, with extreme prejudice, into the middle of whatever she's doing.

The standard three days of heightened emotions? Goodbye. But Susan welcomed a sort of reactive hysteria which is disbursed over the course of an entire month. Hardly noticeable, just ask the husband.

Scary Snacks

Susan has been enjoying the company of a house guest for the last few days. Her house guest often drives across the country by herself, but this trip took along the smallest of her dogs for company. Susan's elderly, deaf, flatulent dog is not in the habit of sharing domestic space with another of her kind, yet has done relatively well. Susan would not classify them as friends, but neither are they combatants.

Susan's house guest also travels with snacks, which are then incorporated into Susan's diet. Currently there are Chips Ahoy Peanut Butter Chunky cookies in the cabinet and Reese's Peanut Butter cups in the fridge, two boxes of donuts & a crumb cake having already been eaten by the occupants of Susan's house. Susan is unaccustomed to being in such close contact with so many scary snacks, she'll eat them in other people's homes but she doesn't keep them at hers.

Last night Susan's house guest took everyone out for ice cream then made a crack indicating there might be something wrong with Susan for opting out. Susan will admit that there was an underlying hysteria in her voice when she rolled herself up into a ball and repeated 'No, no, no, no, no' in the middle of Carvel. But, except for the lack of a 'thank you', Susan doesn't think her behavior was all that unusual. For her.

Susan thinks nothing of baking biscotti at 11 o'clock at night or blueberry-lemon bread or glazed anisette cookies or a simple cake with halved plums dropped into the batter. She's comfortable having these in her house and has a plan in place to keep from eating them all at once. She has no such strategy for the Chips Ahoy.