Susan is very HAPPY to say goodbye to NaBloPoMo!
Thirty posts in thirty days all constructed between 11pm and 1am have taken their toll on Susan's beauty sleep. Now that this grueling task is behind her she's going to attempt quality over quantity, catch up on reading everyone else's blogs and focus on hating Xmas.

Kisses everyone!

On their last night in town the old folks funded a Chinese takeout banquet for all available family members, and one guest.

After dinner Susan busted out the little 20 Questions ball and amazed everyone with its magical guessing powers. She asked her father to think of a word and the little 20 Questions ball set to work asking questions for which the answer could be either YES, NO, SOMETIMES or UNKNOWN. Susan's father thought of seaplane and the little 20 Questions ball came up with robot.
Stumped!

This prompted Susan's father to tell his favorite seaplane story;
Back before they were married and Susan was on hand to illuminate their universe, Susan's father piloted her mother around in a seaplane. After he landed the seaplane it had to come out of the water which was done by pulling it up to land on a set of rails. As this occurred the pilot had to be in the plane but the passenger could not be. On one occassion a large, handsome man assisted Susan's father by carrying Susan's mother from the plane, through the water, up to dry land.

Upon hearing the story Susan's mother smiled broadly and added; His name was Steve, he wasn't big, but he was well built, blonde and tan. He carried me a couple of times.

Susan slept till 10:45 am on Sunday morning. She hadn't slept that late since that magical time before she had kids, back when she regularly slept off hangovers.

A few days earlier Susan's mother had admired a necklace Susan was wearing,
it was one of those five dollar Murano glass necklaces that they sell in the mall.
After breakfast Susan's mother drove her two daughters & one granddaughter in her rental car over to the mall so everyone could buy five dollar necklaces. Susan's daughter didn't want one but she put herself in charge of picking one out for her brother's girlfriend.

Sidebar: Susan met her son's girlfriend over the weekend. Assessment; Adorable and confident and tall.

Other than purchasing her son's girlfriend's necklace, Susan had no additional money for shopping and wouldn't allow anyone to purchase anything more expensive than a coffee & mini cinnabon, after which they went home.

Susan's family was enjoying cranberry cheesecake after dinner when Susan's father asked, Did I ever tell you my favorite cranberry story?

Susan didn't have a favorite cranberry story of her own so she was intrigued.

Many years ago, back before Susan's mom stopped letting Susan's dad do anything fun, he used to fly. There was a private airfield in Cape Cod that ended in a cranberry bog. If he landed when the field was flooded he'd have to wear his rubbers.

That's not really a story, Pop.

Yes, it is.

No, it's more like a description.

Okay.

Susan only has seventeen minutes with which to throw together her mandatory BLAHg post.

Did everyone have a good Thanksgiving?

Susan was disheartened to find that 68% of women who responded to an online survey were anticipating holiday drama and fights.

Who are theses women?

Susan's family takes a break from fighting while at the Thanksgiving table then they start up again on the ride home.

People are crazy.

HAPPY Thanksgiving to all Susan's bloggy pals.
She'll be at her Aunt Eileen & Uncle Joe's today eating, drinking & yukking it up with all her cousins.
Enjoy, everyone!

Susan's old dog has been dead one year.
She can hardly believe it's been that long since she was gassed out of a room by extreme flatulence.

Susan gets all misty thinking about how she'd watch the old dog eat too fast, throw up, then eat the vomit.

It seems like only yesterday that she stepped in dog pee every damned day, and that sometimes the pee seeped through the floorboards & dripped onto the basement floor below.

Memories.

Susan woke up this morning and Wild Bill was on the couch, in town to see the old folks. This is how Susan's going to refer to her parents from now on, the old folks.
She's in the habit of using folks to describe people in general & has got to be able to differentiate her folks from regular folks.
The old folks won't like it but this isn't their blog now, is it?

Susan's not a people person in the morning, she barely tolerates her husband and he helps her get out the door with all her stuff and a cup of coffee. This morning there were too many people up and talking.
Too many.
Perhaps later, after she arms herself with a glass of wine, she'll be better able to withstand all the talking.

As it turned out she was correct.

Susan came home to find that the old folks went shopping, Wild Bill prepped the chicken cutlets & boiled the potatoes for mashing, the husband walked in the door with a gallon of sangria & salad, and little sister brought the ginger ale and all the fixin's for apple crisp. Everyone got to work frying, mashing, setting, clearing, peeling, baking, washing and enjoying each other's company.

Susan's been working on her own Xmas list, this is what she's come up with so far:

Love's Fresh Lemon
A nap
The ability to make people disappear
Enthusiasm

Susan would like to invite her bloggy pals to read her tweenly adorable daughter's Xmas list :

Dear Mom,
I added more to my Christmas List, and added links to the things I want.
In order of how much I want them:
1. GHD IV Styler (link)
2. iTunes Giftcard $25
3. Pink with a Splash Fresh & Clean (link)
4. Prismacolor Double-ended Markers 24 pack (You can get it at Michaels and on Amazon)
5. BH Cosmetics 88 Color Matte Eyecolor Palette (link)
From,
The most amazing daughter ever,
Lily.
Yay.

Please be aware that the daughter referred to herself as amazing because of the way her mother feels about that wretched song from last week at the mall.

Instead of reading one of Twisted Susan's BLAHg posts, read Three In The Bed, hers is much better and Susan didn't actually write anything today.

Come look at Susan's current fave blog, she challenges you not to love it.
Go ahead, try.

A cowboy opened the door, tipped his hat and smiled at Susan tonight. She doesn't know what he was doing in her neck of the woods but she loves cowboys now.

Susan's husband continues to bug her about her BLAHging and she continues to ignore him. He's obviously jealous of her talent and all the important things she has to say.

Susan recently purchased three tins of chocolate covered nuts which she's kept hidden behind a bottle of coconut rum. Every day she pops a few of the toffee almonds on the sly but pressed her luck when she took them out to share with the husband. The daughter heard the crunching and came in to investigate. She ate a few then returned the candy to Susan's secret hiding place leaving Susan no other choice but to wait till she was gone and eat the rest.

Lastly, Susan would like to leave you with Foxy Baby Boutique. Tre fabu!

Susan has just about had it with the amount of apostrophes she finds where they don't belong. She's perplexed at the widespread misuse of something that is so elemental in writing. Apostrophes are used to indicate that something belongs to somebody, such as Susan's exasperation. They're also used to help make one word from two words, such as didn't we all learn this in grade school?

I know that Susan went over the apostrophe thing in a previous post and doesn't understand why she is being made to revisit this topic.

There's a particularly sweet and adorable blogger who adds extra apostrophes all the time, which is very unusual because Sweet & Adorable has a substantial readership and someone should have brought it to her attention long ago. If any of Susan's bloggy pals think that she's referring to them, she's not. Although some of her bloggy pals do indeed commit this annoying sin, Susan is positive that Sweet & Adorable is not a reader.

Susan knows she's not perfect with the grammar herself and can tolerate a bit of constructive criticism. She's all about self improvement.

Susan thinks her husband resents her being on the computer all the time.
Well, f*ck him!

Susan's mother would do her ironing on Sunday afternoons during the Million Dollar Movie, she'd have the damp clothes rolled up in a towel and squirt them with water as she went along. She didn't have a fancy spray bottle, she used something closer in design to one of those ketchup bottles you find on picnic tables, cylindrical with a pointy spout. She also dipped her old fashioned fingers into a glass of water and sprinkled the clothes that way.

While her mother ironed Susan watched Trapeze and The Two Mrs. Carrolls and
I Want To Live!

Susan knows people who don't iron but can't understand how they manage to escape that particular chore. Susan likes to wear clothes that require ironing, so she irons.

Instead of having the substantive sex talk with her son Susan made Jessica's pumpkin lasagna. Everyone liked it except Susan's niece, who's a pill about food anyway. Some went for seconds although Susan and her little sister strategized about adding a layer of vegetables or sausage next time.
After dinner Susan reorganized her closet. She needed more space so she took over half of her husband's closet, which she also reorganized. They aren't big closets so it didn't take her very long. She hemmed a few pairs of pants and ironed about five shirts in between loads of laundry. She can't iron too many shirts at one time because they'll get squished in the closet. She tries to arrange her ironed shirts so that they don't touch each other although that's not always practical. Susan went to bed knowing that she was totally prepared to get dressed for any occassion, except something fancy,
and slept soundly.

The Mall

Today's a special day, Susan is going to give you two BLAHg posts!

Susan took the daughter and the girls next door to the mall, each a representative of either 7th, 8th or 10th grade. The girls are mature enough to be unsupervised as long as Susan is no more than half a mall length away. Susan even carried their shopping bags so as to relieve them of the responsibility for not losing them.

It was relaxing for Susan to shop the clearance racks in solitude then rejoin the girls and their chatter. They're nice girls, noisy and happy, the way they should be. Susan saw more than her share of mutated Ugg-like bootie things, very unattractive. She assumes the wearers don't have full length mirrors at home. Perhaps they'll get some for Xmas.

As they were preparing to leave, Susan and the girls walked past a store and saw a pretty girl with an even prettier smile leaning against the front facade engaging the customers. She was wearing little plaid shorties and had a reasonable amount of cleavage exposed. OMG, it was a hooker! Susan walked past a second time to get another look. The hooker was so pretty and relaxed and young! Susan was stunned!
Look at all the exclamation points she's using!

On her second pass Susan came to the uneasy realization that this young lady in glorfied underwear was just an employee of the store using her tits and ass to advertise their wares. A hooker lite.

Susan looked up their website as soon as she got home and saw that she was correct. She sent the company an e-mail congratulating them for their marketing strategy indicating they should take pride in all their important work because we don't have enough half dressed young women standing around in the mall.
Then she wrote a couple of other things.
Knowing they likely wouldn't be interested in Susan's opinion she wrote a second e-mail to mall's property management indicating that until they can guarantee that she wouldn't be encountering a contracted employee of their mall in her underpants Susan would have to abstain from shopping there. And she will. She doesn't need the mall for her shopping.
She doesn't need the mall at all.

Susan's not done.
Please indulge while she backtracks a bit.
Driving home the girls were in control of the radio and were singing along to Just The Way You Are by Bruno Mars. Are you familiar with this song? It's a rather limp and soulless song about a girl who's amazing just because she's beautiful.

Susan doesn't like the word amazing because she never hears it used to describe anything amazing.

Susan asked her girls about why the girl in the song was so amazing. They sang louder. Susan asked them if they felt comfortable being judged soley on how pretty they were, not how smart or funny or caring or honest, just how pretty.
They totally tuned her out and very wickedly sang at the top of their lungs.
When they got home Susan went next door and told on the 8th & 10th grader.

Don't Expect Much

Susan is currently bereft of all inspiration. Her feet hurt. She wasted twenty minutes this morning trying to find the proper necklace for her outfit. Twenty minutes.
Then she got all mad and threw stuff out.
She got her hair cut then went food shopping and bought more goat cheese. She left her notes for the substantive sex talk at work. It's scheduled for the weekend so she'll create an outline from memory.
Her neck gets in the way when she looks down. She wonders why people read a Kindle when they could read a book. She can't even keep up with her pals' blogs.

Susan peed on her sweater.
She got it a number of years ago from one of those clothing stores that sell everything for $10. It's probably lasted so long because it's ninety percent synthetic.
Byproduct of petroleum.
Susan's sweater is nubby and long with a hood that used to have a pom pom until she cut it off. It's used as a bathrobe, as blanket, and as something she actually wears outside the house, but that's rare.

The other morning Susan got up, and since she won't turn the heat on the house was freezing. She put on her petroleum byproduct sweater and went to the potty. While she was sitting there she had time to consider whether she had gotten her sweater completely out of the line of fire. She's had tons of experience wearing the sweater to the toilet so she felt confident that everything was fine. She concluded her business and as she was turning toward the sink she realized that she had miscalculated the ratio of synthetic nubbyness to toilet seat circumference to urine stream trajectory.
She had peed on it.

Susan's husband got mad at her last night, he accused her of being rude and left the room. She was thankful for the break because she was trying to construct her mandatory BLAHg post and he kept talking.
She listened while he had something to say but abandoned him with extreme prejudice as soon as he didn't.
She doesn't like it when he's mad at her because he's usually right about whatever it is and then she's got to apologize.
She doesn't mind apologizing, it's part of being in a mature, functioning relationship, but sometimes the territory is murky. Was she really rude? Wasn't he hyper sensitive?
The next morning she gave the only apology she could honestly support;
I'm sorry that I upset you.
The husband understood that it was watered down. Susan shrugged, It's all I got.

Susan started doing research for the substantive sex talk she has to have with her son.

She started by consulting a coworker with similarly aged boys. The coworker's focus was primarily on disease transmission and pregnancy. Susan thanked her and jotted down some notes.

Next Susan spent some time on the internet and took more notes.

Susan remembered things she's seen in documentaries, conversations with other moms over the years, an episode of Oprah; notes, notes, notes.

She also appreciates all the support from her bloggy pals, she'll be ready by the weekend.

Susan's son has a girlfriend.
She found this out when he posted it on FB. Susan's son is a boy of few words, so she took advantage of his online self disclosure and asked him some simple questions, all of which he answered.

The following day, Susan had a separate conversation with her social worker girlfriend and as a result has to have a substantive sex talk with her son.

Susan told her son that the sex talk was imminent and allowed him to choose which parent he'd prefer to have it with.

Neither.

Susan's in the batter's box. She'll let you know how she does.

Susan and her little sister enjoyed watching Tom Jones dance. Stay with it, he really lets loose halfway through.

Susan was reading this post at Mama's Losin' It and was inspired to participate in Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop. The topic that grabbed her was to look up a favorite childhood actor and tell us where they are now.

Susan was surprised at the speed at which she chose her fave.
It only took a second to bypass Danny Bonaduce even though they he was funny and they shared the same hair.
Then Bobby Sherman, even though she still sings some of his songs.
Then Johnny Quest and Bandit, who were ineligible anyway because they're cartoons.

Susan travelled back to her eleven year old self; back to her 7:30 bedtime, back to getting spanked, Shake & Bake pork chops, riding her bike and stealing quarters from Grace's mom's purse.

Susan chose Pete Duel but she can't tell anybody where he is now because he never made it out of 1971.

Pete Duel was impossibly handsome, charming and on TV every week in Alias Smith and Jones. He had one eye that sort of didn't look in the same direction as the other eye, but Susan liked that slight imperfection. She loved him.

Susan and Grace played a very unsophisticated game using the letters in the AS&J actors' names while they walked to the deli for a bag of BBQ potato chips and a big dill pickle.

During Christmas vacation children all over the land were home from school.
For Susan there were no math tests to fail and no punishments for missing book reports or talking in class. There was only Dark Shadows, Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea, The Mod Squad as well as The Munsters,
I Dream of Jeannie and The Rifleman. Susan loved the Rifleman too.

While Susan watched that week's AS&J the flames of her crush were fanned. The cuteness of Pete Duel was almost unbearable but she knew how to live with her longing. She rearranged the pictures on her corkboard, she made little dolls out of clay attaching their heads to the bodies with toothpicks, she sprayed her Avon perfume and played Everything Is Beautiful by Ray Stevens on her record player.

Susan remembers walking into a lonely depression when she heard that Pete Duel killed himself on New Year's Eve. She didn't call Grace to find out if she heard about it. She didn't tell her parents. She kept to herself. She felt horrible and confused. She felt completely alone.

When Susan went back to school she finally talked to Grace. Grace felt horrible too. Susan remembers the feeling of her sadness being lifted, the same way her sadness is lifted now anytime she shares a burden. Anytime she thinks I'm going to keep this to myself but doesn't, because she needs to talk about it. She doesn't talk to find answers, she talks to feel less alone.

She learned that from Pete Duel.

On Day Six Susan's daughter tracked dog sh*t into the house.

She didn't make it through the entire house, but she went far enough. All on her own the daughter compiled the supplies necessary for the clean up but fell into a confused trance when she realized the enormity of the task.

Her 8.5 mother stepped in, I'll take care of it, and released the daughter from her obligation.

The daughter ran out the front door and into the sunlight.

Day 5 is almost over and Susan has nothing prepared beyond this sentence, but it's all she needs to fulfil her NaBloPoMo requirement.
See you tomorrow.

Susan's niece assisted in the creation of this mixed media piece of art cleverly disguised as a mop head with tissue paper stuck to it. It's currently hanging in a gallery and available for purchase. No kidding.

Susan feels comfortable making fun of it a little because she quite likes much of her niece's art. Much, but not all.

If you're up for some more art

here's one of the niece's friend's blogs

and here's another.

Susan's wonderfully funny friend, GP sent this to Susan with a sticky note attached on which she wrote See, if you lived here we could attend this event together.

GP sends Susan all sorts of fabulous objects, most recently was a box of adjustable buttons with a sticky note;
As seen on TV. Susan threw the buttons away & kept the note. Susan's fave from GP was found in a parkinglot. It's a matchbox, a wee bit crushed, painted dark green with gold sparkly stars, gold sparkly lace and a picture of the Virgin Mary set inside. Susan keeps it on her fireplace so she can see it every day.

Many years ago when Susan was worried about having cancer GP told her quite dismissively, You should live so long to get cancer. During Susan's bout with panic attacks GP was the person Susan called in the middle of the night.

Once or twice a year Susan is lucky enough to have GP as her houseguest, her room is always ready although sometimes other people are sleeping in it.

Did Susan ever give you her recipe for NaBloPoMo Black Bean Brownies?
No? Well, today's your lucky Day Two.

All you need is 1 box BROWNIE MIX and 1 can BLACK BEANS.

Open the can of black beans, drain & rinse the beans. Drain and rinse the can.

Put the beans back into the can, fill the remaining space in the can with water.

Combine the contents of the can with brownie mix & bake as directed on the box.

Susan likes to take an immersion blender & really mess up the beans & the water before she adds it to the dry ingredients, but that's completely optional.

Susan just made these for her Ohio road trip and everyone in the car ate them even though they knew what they were made of.

This time last year Susan's dog was dying.
The dog wasn't popular outside of her immediate family but that didn't seem to bother her. She had an enviable confidence and never sought extraneous approval.

She carried herself with feminine grace even though she wasn't considered classically pretty and most folks referred to her as him.

She made no apologies for her few shortcomings, she had as much right as anyone to lie on the floor and fart.

When she was permanently banished from Susan's bed she didn't waste time whining, she showed her adaptability by jumping into then next available bed down the hall.

Susan really misses warming her feet under that formerly alive dog at the end of her bed.