Susan hates to answer the door.
Once it's opened, that's it, she's stuck with whoever's standing there; drunk neighbors, political pollsters, teenagers selling magazines, costumed children seeking candy. She hates all of it.

This is not to be confused with the Drop In. Susan loves the Drop In. Please, drop in anytime. She hates to hear Oh, I was going to drop in but I didn't. Please, drop in!
Call ahead, don't call ahead, whatever.
Although, she wouldn't mind if you gave her ten minutes notice to clean the toilet.

Susan's not going to mention NaBloPoMo. Maybe she'll do it, maybe she won't. It'll be exciting to find out what she decides.

OMG, did anyone catch this horrible thing that Dawn made the other day?

Here's Wild Bill holding his birthday gift from Susan's son.

Wild Bill is big on flags and history and politics and is in the habit of opining at great length on each*. He carries a copy of The Constitution to keep him occupied when he has some free time and has been known to liberate a flag when incorrectly displayed.

Wild Bill enthusiastically educated Susan's children on the history of this particular flag; the Gadsen flag.

It was named for Colonel Christopher Gadsen who was involved with the first mission of the Navy in 1775. Accompanied by the Marines, the Navy was established to grab incoming British ships carrying war supplies to their troops in the colonies. The Marines carried yellow drums on which a coiled rattlesnake with thirteen rattles and the motto Don't Tread On Me were painted. Afterwards, Gadsen made up some flags and gave them away to a bunch of important people.

The first reference to the rattlesnake was made in a satirical commentary by that smart and funny guy, Ben Franklin twenty five years earlier. Four years later he used a picture of a snake cut into eight sections, representing the colonies, with the message Join or Die; the original political cartoon.

Wild Bill, fun and informative.

Footnote:
*A habit he picked up from his old man

Susan liked these illuminated peace signs that she saw in the window of a store in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. They were very primitive in their construction, just light bulbs held within a cardboard form, but they pulled Susan up the block with their inviting glow.

Can you believe that Susan's teeth still hurt? Not as much as a week ago when she slept in her clothes for two days, but enough to still require ibuprofen. Right now she's making her jaw ache by fiddling with the remaining stitches and when she opens her mouth wide enough she can feel where the BIG needle went in.

While she's on the topic she'd like to thank everyone who took her dental procedure seriously and made nice comments so she'd feel better. Same with the blog photo recommendations.

Y'all rock!

Susan and her daughter took a road trip to Ohio this past weekend. They were invited by Susan's little sister to accompany her on the eight hour drive she has to make in order to visit her husband.

He's not in jail, the current economy just dictates that in order to be employed he has to live and work two states away from his family.

Ohio is so pretty! They saw trees in full autumn splendor and rocks and waterfalls and beautifully rusted machinery in apple orchards and rolling hills with ribbons of fog and tons of dead things on the side of the road.

Susan took pictures of her trip and has been f*cking around for the last two hours trying to post them instead of sleeping because
it's already tomorrow and she's tired!

She can't get them to appear in the order of her preference and she knows that there is some simple solution but she doesn't know what it is right now!

Before she left, Susan's hardrive selfishly killed itself as well as all her pictures and music. This has nothing to do with her current problem, but she's very frustrated and just wanted to mention it.

One side of Susan's face is still swollen and a little black & blue. She's been using her tongue to play with the disintegrating stitches in her mouth but has been able to downshift from vicodin to ibuprofen for the pain.

Wild Bill came out to spend the afternoon which forced Susan to take a shower and change her clothes, something she hadn't done in 36 hours.
His daughter met them for lunch at a local hippie cafe, Susan ate the carrot ginger soup. Afterwards they walked a few doors down to the used book store where Wild Bill purchased forty pounds of books on WWII for nineteen dollars.

Their little sister came over for dinner and Susan ate some real food; soft chicken breast on top of salad greens with cranberries and goat cheese.
Again with the goat cheese.
She spent the rest of the evening farting.

Vicodin and farina.
Amoxicillin and yogurt.
Ice and a kitchen towel.

The pain in Susan's mouth woke her up during the night and she found herself spending a portion of that time in the company of the Hollywood Housewives.
All nice ladies.

The smell of coffee got her out of bed in the morning. It was her son's coffee, he's fourteen and he drinks coffee now.
Did you know that? Well, he does.

Susan made herself a small pot of coffee and a bowl of farina. While she waited for each to cool down she applied a towel filled with ice to her face and turned on her birthday laptop. Only it wouldn't turn on. Ultimately it was ascertained by Taufiq J of HP that the hardrive was defective and he's sending Susan another one. Ugh.
For the next few days she'll have to fight her way onto the old laptop, or she could avoid the line and sit down at the regular computer.
At least she has options, could you imagine if she were totally offline? It's too upsetting for her to even think about.

She baked a wonderfully soft batch of carrot applesauce muffins which she was able to eat without chewing.
And took a nap.

Susan hadn't notice that June's Bye Bye Pie was left off Sharing Is Caring. She doesn't understand how this omission eluded her for almost two weeks because she looks forward to checking in with June every day.
Or every other day.
Or as often as her schedule will allow.
Susan would apologize to June but it's apparent that June doesn't know Susan exists and wouldn't know what Susan was talking about.

Well, June gets alot of commenters so it's probably easy to overlook Susan even though she leaves June comments about how much she likes her hair everytime she gets it cut.

Or maybe June purposely overlooks Susan because there is never anything worthy of her commentary. Susan doesn't comment on every post she reads either, and she reads everyone on Sharing Is Caring. Anyway.

Susan's enjoying her mid-morning BLAHging in her pajamas, next she's making chili with sweet potatoes and later she's going to the health food store for more vanilla beans to make her own vanilla extract.
Then to the dentist.

Susan is taking a three day vacation from Acme Sweatshop during which she'll get some teeth pulled, go to the library, read, bake stuff, stay up late, listen to music, watch old movies, play with her dog, make curry and hopefully finish up an art project.

She put a boring Sunday to good use by making Deb's roasted eggplant soup because she had all the ingredients, including the goat cheese. Susan loves goat cheese and will argue that it enhances everything that it rubs up against.
She made a serving's worth of quick croutons & had a lovely lunch alongside her friend the laptop, of whose companionship she never tires.

Susan asked her daughter to rate her as a mother using the standard one to ten scale; one being awful and ten being wonderful.

An hour earlier Susan made her daughter cry when she yelled; 'You go out and work fifty hours a week, not make enough money, come home, and I'll b*tch at you the way you b*tch at me.' Anyway, what do you think Susan's number was? You're going to be surprised.

Susan was awarded an 8.5!

The daughter thought Susan would be upset that she didn't get a 10 but Susan is a realistic person with imperfections and knew she couldn't possibly score a 10. She inquired of the daughter what she might have to do for a 10 & it was recommended that she eliminate some yelling.

The daughter's gonna have to be happy with an 8.5 mom.

Alright, Susan tried to slide Batman by instead of thinking up something to BLAHg about. What, you've never done that?

She continues not to have anything to say unless you want to hear how she's having three teeth pulled next week. Or maybe it's two pulled and one grinded down. Grinded? Whatever.

She wore an outfit today that she didn't like, is that interesting?
This isn't going to get any better.

Susan used to drive a minivan.
She was totally taken by surprise the first time she ever drove a minivan because she immediately fell in LOVE with the minivan.
Immediately.
In LOVE.
She doesn't even remember what she thought of minivans prior to falling in LOVE with one because the LOVE was so transformative that it completely obliterated all previous abstract thoughts and feelings about minivans.
There was only LOVE.

She filled her minivan with small children and their stuff. Then with girlfriends, their small children and their stuff. Then everyone drove somewhere together laughing and talking and being very comfortable.

Susan no longer requires the seating and space of a minivan and drives something reliably utilitarian that looks like every other car in the parking lot. She has a favorite bumper sticker advertising a local bookstore which she has been happy to slap on a number of her cars. She also has a least favorite sticker that makes her wonder about the person who chose it.

Always on a minivan.
Rear window, driver's side.
You know which one it is.
The cartoon lineup of the van owner's family and pets.

It starts out with the emascalating figure of a husband in shorts and mouse ears, then the bland mother in shorts & mouse ears and so forth.
Susan wonders what woman sees her husband as a sexless one dimensional line drawing and if she sees herself that way too.

Susan was clearing out some of the unattended blogs over at Sharing Is Caring and managed to remove everyone.
Jerk.
She's put a bunch back but needs all her bloggy pals to take a look & let her know who's missing. Everyone who leaves a comment gets included, today and always.

Susan and the husband were invited to watch a movie at Cousin Lisa's on Saturday night. Susan planned to make olive tapenade because she knows how much Cousin Lisa loves it. Sometimes Cousin Lisa loves the olive tapenade so much she eats it till she's sick. Anyway, after spending the afternoon in the thrift store with her little sister Susan didn't leave herself enough time to remove the pits from a pound of olives so she considered her options based on what she had in her fridge.

There were two beautiful mangoes and a big fragrant bunch of cilantro into which she could make a spicy sweet salsa. Unfortunately, the mangoes revealed themselves to be unripe little bastards and there was no way they could be the base for something anyone would want to eat.
That's ok because Susan had a third option.

She always has the ingredients in her cupboard for Layered Bean Dip. Amost everything comes out of a can & then gets put into the oven for 20 minutes.
It's fantastic.

Susan started putting the dip together.
When Susan climbed up on a chair to reach one of the multiple jars of salsa she keeps expressly for this purpose, she found none.

She came down off the chair screaming like a crazy b*tch. There was no f*cking way that every last jar of salsa was gone because she has lectured everyone in her household to the point of madness on how they must
PUT THINGS ON THE SHOPPING LIST
when they eat the last of it.

Susan knows that her son likes the salsa. She's had seperate conversations, explaining in detail that the salsa is stored along with all the other Layered Bean Dip ingredients so that they are always available when she needs them and she doesn't mind if he eats the salsa as long as he ALWAYS ASK HER if he wants to eat the last jar.

So, to recap, there is a long standing rule that Susan's family;

• UTILIZE THE SHOPPING LIST which is always hanging in plain view on the cupboard door
• and a secondary, salsa-specific rule that she be forewarned if there is only one jar left and that she must grant permission for that last jar to be eaten.

Susan's screaming was long, loud, hysterical and punctuated with balled up fists and spitting.