Remember back when Susan had her vegetable peeler epiphany?

Well, it took three months but Susan purchased herself a new vegetable peeler. She also purchased a bamboo drawer organizer allowing her to throw out the shoebox tops. Um, she means recycle the shoebox tops.

Last week while minding her own business in a store which sells such things, Susan ran across the loveliest l'orange Le Crueset.

Cast iron covered in two coats of enamel. Even at a discount it was as expensive as it was heavy so Susan went home and thought about it.

A few days later Susan introduced the daughter to her future heirloom and made a pot of chili in it.

Just in case you missed it last week:
click HERE.
Even teenaged houseguests drink it.

Susan could not foresee that an impulsive Friday night purchase of a pretty shower curtain would put her behind the toilet Saturday morning scrubbing grout with a toothbrush.

Susan yelled at the husband tonight.

She yelled and yelled and yelled, she yelled so much she foamed at the mouth a bit then she yelled some more. She threw silverware and said f*ck a bunch of times all followed by YOU!

Did everyone enjoy the first day of Spring too?

Susan needs a new cell phone.
She is completely disinterested in having her cell phone do anything other than make a few phone calls and text. And maybe have a good ring tone like the Munster's theme song.

She is not a big fan of talking on the phone in general and definitely doesn't like holding a tiny cell phone up to her ear, it makes her arm hurt.

She likes to text. Her current phone has a rotary dial which is horrible for texting.

She doesn't care about taking pictures with her phone. She is often trapped standing around waiting for someone to scroll through a billion pictures on their phone till they get the one they want to show her. The best one. She doesn't need to be one of those people.

She doesn't want internet access. She can GTS at home.

GTS is a acronym that Susan's formerly recurring houseguest uses, it means Google That Shit. She likes to say GTS because only the houseguest and the husband know what it is.

Now you guys know too.

She doesn't like to have interactions with real people interrupted to look at something funny on You Tube. Even if it's totally f*cking hilarious it can wait till she's home.

The only other thing Susan does with her phone is use it to wake her up sometimes, like if she takes a nap in her car.

Susan is so disinterested in choosing a new phone that she has abdicated that responsibility to her daughter and provided her with the following criteria;
that it have a qwerty keyboard
be EASY to use
and have good consumer reviews

More on this as it develops.

It's been months since Susan spent money on anything other than a bill, or stuffing a wedding envelope, so she and the daughter celebrated the holiday of their heritage in Macy*s and Forever 21.

The first of Susan's goals was to make her daughter happy, which is not difficult because Susan raised her to be happy. The other goal was for Susan to increase her Plan B dress repertoire so she will always have a suitable fancy dress for such occasions when she needs to wear one.

Susan went back & forth into the dressing room with arm fulls of dresses and came out with one worth taking home. On sale even.

As always, Susan encountered other moms shopping with their daughters and took notice of how they attired themselves. There were all manner of horrible hair color on display and she's not talking about crazy teenage hair, she means the moms. Fried yellow hair with black roots seems to be popular as are matronly nips busting through the double layers of brassiere and tee shirt. Mercifully, Susan didn't see much evidence of mom jeans.

Sidebar: There is a wonderful photo on Cousin Lisa's fridge of Susan wearing mom jeans circa 1998.

While searching for the daughter's school sportswear Susan found a rack of stretchy pants, yoga pants to some, all at a nice discount. She grabbed everything in her size and found one pair that fit perfectly. She was all ready to purchase them in duplicate for home lounging when she noticed something a little off.
A snugness in the crotch area.
She readjusted the pants, bent down then stood up but it was still there.

Sadly, Susan left the camel toe stretchy pants on the dressing room rack.

Last stop was Trader Joe's for all the things Susan loves including, but not limited to;
Dark chocolate covered ginger
multiple bags of frozen dumplings, frozen pot stickers and frozen Creamy Polenta with Spinach and Carrots,
multiple jars of Spicy Smoky Peach Salsa,
and two new cheeses to try, Irish cheddar with Porter, and English Cheddar with wholegrain mustard and ale.
She apologizes to her countrymen for mixing the Irish and English in the same cart.

Susan hopes that everyone had a HAPPY Saint Patrick's Day.

Green Orange Julius Smoothie

Susan made this and everyone in the house liked it except for the daughter, but she's a food baby anyway.

Susan was wearing a shiny shirt the other day and noticed that it clung to her middle. She didn't like that.

Damned cookies.

The next morning as she was getting dressed for Acme Sweatshop the husband came over to give her a kiss then pressed in to give her a hug.

You have a tummy he said as if he were a scientist making a discovery.

Susan saw a line of yellow daffodils blooming this morning!

Susan took her spiked coffee and stood on the main street in her town to watch the local St. Paddy's Day parade.

There were bag pipers, cancer survivors, policemen on bicycles, green spray painted dogs, live bands on flatbeds, twirlers, girl scouts, boy scouts, teenagers with britches falling  beneath their bums, Irish dancers, multiple redheaded girls, firemen, zombies, a priest blessing the crowd, award winning cheerleaders, classic cars, youngsters driving tractors, a drunk guy who fell down and couldn't get back up and a town full of people happy to be out in the sun with their families.

Susan ran into her son and two of his friends travelling on their own and observed him to be just as well behaved on the street as he is at home.

While other folks were using their Friday night for recreational pursuits like meeting friends, going to the movies or having sex, Susan was removing the no longer edible food from her fridge.

She found the balance of the white rice from the other night and understood with intense clarity that she must turn it into rice pudding immediately.

The fact that she was tired and it was almost 11pm proved no match against her need to make rice pudding.

The rice was hard, like plastic pellets but she was undeterred.

Her recipe binder was under construction so there was no telling where her rice pudding recipes might be. She googled leftover rice pudding recipe and liked the first one she saw.

This one.

Susan stood at the stove and stirred the milk, rice and sugar with one hand while she rubbed her eyes with the other. She regretted not having any raisins on hand but the kitchen was warm, the vanilla was fragrant and she was completely enjoying watching it all thicken and become creamy until it was the perfect specimen of rice pudding.

She fantasized about eating the whole thing for breakfast.

Anyway, this is now her current fave recipe except that's she going to knock down the sugar to 1/3 cup.

Susan loves to chop up all her leftovers & make a big mess of fried rice. She seasons it with onions, lots of salt & pepper, soy sauce and maybe some other stuff. It's a very availability based composition.

She always includes a few eggs which she scrambles in the pan before she adds the rice.

The other day she forgot the eggs. Drats!

She quickly made some sunny side up, threw them on top, mixed them in and made the the most delicious thing in the universe.

Susan loves egg yolk.

Cousin Veronica's Photo Booth

While getting her family ready for cousin Veronica's wedding over the weekend Susan pitched a hysterical fit when she overhead her son ask his father if he knew where his solitary pair of dress pants were.

What do you mean you don't know where your pants are what the f*ck are you going to wear why didn't you make sure ahead of time they were clean and hung up and where's your father why wasn't he involved in getting this taken care of what's the matter with both of you we have to leave in an hour!

Susan relaxed once the son produced the wrinkled pair of pants from the depths of a drawer and set to work making them wearable. It was determined that he required a new belt so the boys took a quick trip to buy one while Susan took a hot shower.

All spit shined with newly shaved legs and armpits Susan emerged and began gathering the pieces of her outfit. She only had one viable dress because her new purple dress had been worn at the last family wedding and all the others required some manner of tailoring.

Hmmmm. The dress was not in her closet.

She walked down the hall to her son's closet where she keeps her modest clothing overflow stashed.

No dress.

She just wore it in December, she knew it was in the closet.
She checked again.

No dress.

OMG, the dress is in the drycleaner!

Susan has to leave in 35 minutes and her dress is in the drycleaner!

OMG, it's almost 6pm, what time does the drycleaner close?

Sometimes when life is hurtling toward a dismal conclusion and all hope is lost because you're going to have to wear the same purple dress twice in front of everyone, the universe reaches out and gently delivers you across the finish line.

Susan phoned the husband. He knew where the dress was. He had the drycleaning ticket in his wallet. The drycleaner was still in the store even though they normally close at 5:30.

Cousin Veronica got married and everyone had a wonderful time.