Happy NEW Year, Guys!

During Susan's BLAHgy Christmas blackout she left her folks' Christmas card on the table for at least two weeks and when she finally opened it a little piece of paper with some numbers and a signature fell out.

A few days later Acme Sweatshop held their fancy holiday party which involved a lot of top shelf liquor. By the end of the evening Susan had lost her eyeglasses.
They were gone.
As if they never existed.

Susan likes to live on the edge and not keep a back up pair. So, twelve hours later she had an eye exam and a $474.95 pair of eyeglasses ordered.

Susan's ability to see things clearly again has been made possible by a Christmas card grant from her mommy and daddy.

On Saturday afternoon Susan dribbled a Skinny Peppermint Mocha down the front of her white corduroy jacket and spent the rest of the weekend scrubbing it out. She's happy to report that the stains are undetectable but she learned a valuable lesson; never order anything with the word skinny in it.

The husband informed Susan that she left the stove on.
'I forget which way to turn the knob' she told him.
He assured her the stove wasn't on for long then added, 'That's what landed my mother in the nursing home, you know.'

Susan is RESIGNED

The holiday cat has been out of the bag for a few weeks already. Fake greenery and red bows were suspended from the ceiling of her local department store well before Thanksgiving, chopped down trees are for sale in formerly vacant lots and seasonal music has been heard coming out of car radios.
Susan already duked it out with the daughter over the tree, and lost.
Susan is resigned to Christmas.

Oh, and good riddance NaBloPoMo.

Susan HATES

Susan's sick of NaBloPoMo.

She's sick of trying to poop a BLAHg post out of her head after 11:30 every night. She can't wait for December first.

Susan hates everything right now.

HAPPY Thanksgiving!

Susan CHEATS

Susan missed the deadline for this post by forty minutes because she was making a cranberry orange cheesecake and watching 30 Rock, but she's still going to back date it because she's a NaBloPoMo cheater.

Susan HATES

Susan hates when the weather f*cks around with her parents' travel arrangements and keeps them from getting to NY for Thanksgiving.
Susan's going to console herself by eating their dessert on Thursday.

Susan HATES

Susan just saw the word mushrooms reduced to 'shrooms and was instantly filled with rage.

Sunday morning all of Susan's frustrations with her children let loose as she loudly and demonstratively admonished them for being the lazy, passive aggressive pricks that she raised them to be. Afterward she felt a better but it still didn't keep her from stomping around the house and starting in on the husband.

She got herself to relax by rolling some Asian meatballs.

The previous evening, Susan's little corner of the universe was reintroduced to winter temperatures complete with snow, not much, but still snow. After Susan's righteous hysterics, the daughter headed out to her figure drawing class in a little denim jacket and sockless feet tucked into her shoes but was blown back inside by a blast of arctic winds.

Susan's son, the high school wrestler, was dispatched out of her sight to clean the subterranean living space so that G-mama and Pippity Pop (the Old Folks) could sleep down there on Tuesday night.

After the meatballs, Susan prepped Slow Cooker Experiment Number Three  and dumped the mess into the slow cooker for the next eight hours.

With the yelling out of the way Susan settled in and spent the entire day in her PJs, it was very relaxing for her.

Food verdict: The slow cooker experiment lacked complexity, but Susan's stubborn so she's going to work on it. The family was split on the Asian meatballs but Susan didn't like them so that's that.

Today's BLAHg post was pinched from the awesome
Nick Holmes.

Susan HATES

Susan's hairdresser, the one with the fig tree, had the audacity to be unavailable with when Susan's hair was in dire need of attention.

At a previous appointment Susan was sent home with two bottles of color and a bottle of peroxide so that she could do things herself, she tucked them away for a gray day.

Fast forward to right now.

Susan measured out the pungent chemicals using a shot glass and mixed them with a toothbrush. She didn't have gloves to protect her hands, so she used plastic bags from the supermarket.
She applied the color to her distinguished Mitt Romney temples and waited ten minutes then did the rest of her head. Thirty minutes later she said three Our Fathers in the shower, washed the color out and then checked the results in the mirror.

The color was perfect, she heaved a sigh of relief.

Until she took a closer look, Susan's temples were most definitely still gray. Not as gray as before her DIY dye job, but gray enough that she had to do them over.
Argggh.

Susan HATES

Susan's second slow cooker experiment was crowned a failure when she managed to make stew.
The daughter remarked that Slow Cooker Experiment Number Two tasted like vinegar.

OMG, how Susan hates vinegar stew.

Susan HATES

Susan hates when she has twelve minutes left till midnight and hasn't even begun to create the magic that is her daily obligatory BLAHg post.
After that she must put together the ingredients necessary for the slow cooker experiment she plans to feed her family Thursday night.
Susan hates slipping in just under the wire.

Susan HATES

Susan has the misfortune of being exposed to the Katie Couric show most weekday afternoons.
Ugh, that poised, solicitous, fake b*tch puts on some dreadful show.
Susan hates the Katie Couric show.

Susan Doesn't HATE Anything Today

As previously disclosed, Susan is on the hunt to find three slow cooker meals which fit her simple criteria;

that they not make her gag.

She is happy to report that she's had her first success with a smoked sausage cassoulet.
While it was bubbling away on her counter she was positive she'd hate it.
Positive.
She was stunned when it revealed itself to be all smoky deliciousness.
There is no hate in Susan's universe today!

Susan HATES

After work on Friday Susan went immediately to the liquor store. They didn't have her favorite bottle of sangria, so she considered purchasing a box of sangria. A number of reputable people with whom she's acquainted have used boxed wine with no ill effect. She read the panel and discovered that her box of sangria would last six weeks.
She bought it.
Once home she stashed her box of sangria in the fridge and went on with her life.

Saturday night Susan felt like cooking so she set the laptop on the counter and pulled up this recipe. She poured herself a glass of boxed sangria, put on a pot of water, sauteed onion & garlic, cubed 5 cups of acorn squash, chopped five cups of kale, and knocked her glass sending the sangria up in the air and all over the kitchen.

Susan hates when she douses her crappy laptop with sticky liquor.

Susan HATES

Susan hates FB.
She hates when people tell her they're FB friends with people they don't actually spend time with.
Susan hates when her little sister sez Look what I posted on FB and then shoves the screen in front of her face.
Susan hates all the fake bullsh*t people use to draw attention to themselves on FB.
The retardedly unnecessary LOL doesn't even get capitalized anymore, it's just lol.
And, OMG the exclamation points!!!!!!!!!
Susan hates FB.

Susan HATES

Susan hates being unispired when she's committed to BLAHg every day this month.
Can this be her post? Twenty words?
She apologizes for being light on the hate today.

Susan HATES

Susan hates when the underwire in her brassiere breaks free from the confines of its fabric prison and pokes her in the armpit. She enacts the flawed plan of pushing it back in place until she eventually pulls it out completely. Once gone she wonders why the underwire was even necessary. She doesn't have a Rosalind Russell physique, just little B-cups and they certainly don't require much to hold them in place.

Susan managed quite happily for a week or so without the underwire in her left cup until she got poked by the right cup. Based on her previous success she pulled out the remaining underwire and immediately figured out why it was necessary.

Without the structure underwire provides, Susan's brassiere is like a flaccid sack into which she throws two oranges.

Susan HATES

Susan hates when she is sitting at a table in traffic court conferring with the town prosecutor about the questionable validity of her parking ticket and the husband interjects.

She watches the town prosecutor's face start to twist, which it wasn't doing while Susan was speaking, and admonishes the husband in front of everyone to 'Stop talking!' A few moments later she is forced to offer a follow-up reminder in the form of, 'OMG, I told you to stop talking!'

Sidebar: Susan's fine was reduced from $100 to $15.

Susan HATES

It makes Susan uncomfortable when she hears grown ups say Yummy. She'd like the yummy-sayers to reconsider if that's the way they wish to portray themselves vocabularily.

What's wrong with Tasty? 

Or even Mmmm, this is good.

Scrumptious should never be an option, it's a ridiculous word and just as weak as yummy. Nom-nom too. No more nom-nom please.

Susan said please.

Susan HATES

Susan's stove runs on propane and there's really no way to know when it's going to run out beyond having a general idea of how long the tanks last. But, if she doesn't pay attention to the last delivery she'll find herself in the middle of making dinner and the fuel craps out.

Ugh, Susan hates when the propane runs out on the weekend.

Susan asked her sister to borrow back the slow cooker that nobody uses because nobody likes stewy meats with soft vegetables all swimming together in a murky ooze.
But she doesn't care anymore, even though she'll have propane on Monday, she's determined to figure out three meals that she can make in that damned thing that taste good.

Susan HATES

Susan hates being unable to move around with the painless flexibility that she enjoyed in previous decades. This was particularly evident after assisting her friend Sharon to hump a four hundred pound piece of office equipment to her storage unit. Susan bends with her knees, not with her back, just like her old man has been advising her to do since she was eighteen. Back then she ignored him, but now she embraces his wisdom because she's a worn out middle-ager.
Oh, and on Day Ten Susan gave in and turned on the heat.

Susan HATES Saying Goodbye for Good

Susan HATES

Susan hates shaving her legs.
She does it because she's civilized, but regularly modifies how often and how far up she goes.
In cold weather she drops down to once a month.
And the once a month is optional.

Susan HATES

Susan hates stick figure family decals, especially Disney families with the emasculated, mouse ears and shorts wearing dad. Why do women want to promote their men in this way? Unless the intent is to ridicule them, then Susan completely understands although she still doesn't endorse it.

Susan HATES

Susan spent last night making multiple pairs of angel wings out of twelve gauge wire and tulle. They're good looking angel wings and pretty easy to do, but Susan's sick of them.
Susan hates angel wings now.

Susan HATES

Susan hates a cold house but every fall she sees how far she can get into the season without turning on the heat. Most years she can make it through October and halfway into November if she's lucky.

Last evening was COLD. It was definitely time to turn on the heat but Susan was steadfast. Muttering, she put on a long sweater, buttoned it all the way up to her nose then pulled up the hood. The husband passed by, heard her complaining and threw his jacket on top of her.

Susan HATES

Susan hates to see Daylight Saving time go and take with it the last precious hour of sunshine.
Susan's neighborhood was dark at 5:30 pm last night.
DARK at 5:30 pm.
She thinks this is bullsh*t.

Susan HATES

Susan hates that she can't keep cilantro fresh for more than a day. OMG, she hates that so much!

She can't stand to waste it so when it's in the house she'll plan all her meals around the damned stuff; salsa, chili, tacos and corn bread then throw the haggard remains into soup stock. She also freezes it sometimes.
All this effort to keep from throwing out something that costs ninety nine cents at the Spanish grocer.

Day three of HATE, Susan bets you can't wait till day four, eh?

Susan HATES

Susan started in about much she hates cute inspired bloggers who are so happy with their cute homes and inspired lifestyles and how they obviously have money or why else would they be so f*cking happy and be able to go places and do stuff. Anyway, Susan thinks she started to sound a little crazy and jealous so she switched topics.

Susan HATES that she can't listen to her favorite radio station online because the IT guy at work told her that it has let viruses into her computer. Why would her radio station even do that when it's all about making Susan happy?

She also HATES that her digital subscription to the NY Times ran out and she read through her remaining ten articles in ten minutes.

Susan HATES

Susan had a brainstorm of an idea for this month's miserable endurance contest called NaBloPoMo, she's going to BLAHg about everything she hates.
Thirty one days of hate will be awesome.

She's starting with these two:

She doesn't even have a good reason why she hates their stupid faces, she just knows that she does.

Susan's husband picked up the crappiest assortment of Halloween candy, and it's not because there was no good candy available, he just likes his candy gummy, sticky, chewy and crappy.

Twizzlers, Tootsie Rolls, Skittles and sticky roll-up Jolly Ranchers. Susan hadn't encountered such an awful line up of sweets since the sesame seed candies flecked with Pall Mall tobacco that lived in the bottom of her Grandmother's purse.

A week ago Susan scored half a bag of York Peppermint Patties from a social worker acquaintance, they're not even in her top ten but she took them because they're made of SUGAR. She keeps them in the wee fridge in her bomb shelter office and eats one every mid-morning then waits for the warm sugar love to envelope her, make everything all sparkly, then depart leaving her happier than she was a minute earlier.

New topic. Susan signed up for November's NaBloPoMo even though she doesn't want to do it, she doesn't have time to do it and definitely doesn't have the brain power to fill one paragraph a day for the month. Come watch her fail, won't you?

I'd shine by the light of the unknown moment

Yesterday Susan was minding her own business when she was handed a bag of fresh caught fish packed in ice. She took possession like a crackhead grabbing a pipe then googled what to do with it. She determined that it was a striped bass; cleaned, devoid of any smell and gorgeous.

She threw it in a hot cast iron pan to crisp it up then flipped it over and served it for dinner with polenta and a salad.

Susan spent a sunny Sunday in Brooklyn, USA with all her cousins, and her cousins' cousins, and a few people she didn't know celebrating at a surprise birthday party.

Here's the birthday boy with his old ball & chain:
Here's some youthful guests spelling out the name of a garden tool:
Here's someone demonstrating how to press the police button:
Seriously though.
Cousin Lisa threw a wonderfully simple and happy party in a little neighborhood joint filled with hugging, flowers, pumpkins, gratitude, fettucine served from a Parmesan wheel, open windows, wine, a duo of well behaved babies, cheesecake and a big bowl of fresh whipped cream.

Cousins Susie and Sue discussed the heartbreak of raising under-communicative boys who eventually move away to college as well as how to position one's head so that a turkey neck is minimized in photographs.

Susan's eldest niece described being lectured on how to lock a door by the person who walked in on her sitting on the toilet.

Afterward, everyone put on their flats and went down to look at the Brooklyn Bridge:

It was a good day.

Susan's daughter casually revealed a shocking detail about herself, something so foreign to Susan that a week later she still can't fully understand it.
Susan's daughter doesn't like the Fall.
Heavens! This is not how she was brought up, Susan wants to be very clear about that.

Of course the kid was peppered with questions, perhaps she was angry about the end of summer and taking it out on the Fall? 
No, she just has no use for it. 
Susan can understand not liking mums, 5 pm darkness or having to answer the door a thousand times on Halloween, but how can she not like the crisp season of hunkering down? How could this alien being created inside Susan's body not have a primal response to the earthy, sweet smell of decay?

To the further bewilderment of her mother the kid admitted that she liked Winter better than Spring. Winter and Summer were her favorites with no particular preference beyond whichever season was current.

To recap;
Fall sucks
Winter is indistinguishable from Summer
Spring was barely mentioned

Susan's faithful bloggy pals may be assuming that Susan's Alien Daughter has become sort of contrarian teenaged assh*le. No, this is not true. She is a delight! 
She likes Sour Skittles and clouds and keeping her room a horrible mess. 
She shares things with her brother even though he never reciprocates. 
She says thank you whenever money is spent on her, even if it's a dollar.
She's not shy about pulling out the pickle face when unhappy.
She's a funny, engaging Autumn averse companion for her mother.

Susan must make the Alien Daughter love the Fall. Last weekend  she was rushed to a pumpkin farm with minimal success. This weekend she'll be exposed to an outdoor fall festival in a little seaside hamlet. Next weekend will be a trip to The Cloisters just because Susan's in the mood to go up there.

Susan is currently accepting suggestions on all facets of child-rearing because she has also learned that her son does not believe in God.

HAPPY Birthday, Wild Bill

It's a BIG one, just like him.

Susan's hairdresser has a fig tree in her yard and guess what? Susan showed up for her appointment and was delighted to find a bowl full of figs waiting for her!

Then by mistake she got her hair dyed something other than its usual shade of red.

Susan first became aware of that possibility while her head was in the sink and heard the hairdresser remark in a slightly worried tone Oh, that's dark. 

Susan would categorize it as intense.

Honestly, as long as it's not gray she doesn't care.

She brought the figs home and was forced to turn them into jam to keep the daughter from eating them all.

Susan took a sick day yesterday.
She stayed in bed late, ate a toasted bagel saturated with butter for breakfast, didn't shower, restrung some necklaces, brought her autumn wardrobe up from downstairs, took the dog for a long walk and baked a Bisquick dessert. She also moved her fig tree all around the living room.
Over the weekend Susan had the potted fig tree brought indoors where it doesn't fit anywhere. It's not one of those upright trees, it's more lateral, like an octopus. Every few days she drags it to a different location then calls the daughter in see what she thinks. Currently, it's back in the first spot she put it. She'll move it around again this weekend.

Susan's mother has requested that she put up a new post so that she can stop reading about Susan's ninetieth anniversary. Susan would love to make her mother happy but she's hampered by having no time to BLAHg and by being boring.
And, now she had a head cold.
It's not a terrible head cold, she just can't breathe or taste anything.

She was still able to breathe and taste Saturday night when her girl cousins all made their annual pilgrimage to City Island and Susan ate a black and blue tuna steak. Sunday afternoon she smacked her lips and clapped her hands with delight over a poblano corn chowder. Sunday night's hot toddy was the last thing she tasted before her senses started shutting down.

Hot toddys are very old school, have you had one? It's a shot of whiskey poured into a cup of hot tea with lemon, only Susan substituted Lemon Zinger for actual lemon. They're pretty good.

Anyway, that's the Monday morning report; Susan has a cold.

Oh, and here's a photo of Susan making a yukky face on Saturday night:

Susan and the husband celebrated their ninetieth anniversary...wait, ninetieth? It only feels like ninety, it's actually nineteen years.
Susan and the husband celebrated their nineteenth anniversary by going food shopping.
She was in the mood for soup so she bought some carrots, two pounds of butter, sweet potatoes, peaches and a bunch of other stuff keeping within her budget.
Tre romantic!

Susan made a peach pie on Saturday morning then she and the daughter ate it for breakfast.
Pie for breakfast is f*cking awesome!
This wasn't one of those lattice topped, egg washed things, Susan's pie was sliced peaches over a simple crust the edges of which were flopped back over the fruit leaving most of it exposed. The recipe was cut from her local paper three years ago and waited until this magical day to come to life.

Susan would be spending another Saturday in the house due to you know why; one car shared by two people with three jobs. She cleaned the kitchen, baked the pie, made a double batch of chili adding cubed sweet potatoes & cinnamon then cleaned her fridge and found she already had two bunches of carrots. One was questionable so she threw it out and was back down to two. She also discovered that mint infused simple syrup does not last indefinitely. Yuk.

Susan's topics are reduced to food when she has nothing interesting to BLAHg about, but you knew that already, and perhaps you've even forgiven her.

Susan spent a lovely Saturday trapped in her house.
In an effort to reduce their expenses she and the husband have been a one car family for well over a year.
Even though it's been a successful experiment, it's been miserably inconvenient. Susan's husband is self employed (don't get her started on that) and the reliability of his schedule isn't guaranteed.
Judge Judy: he gets the car.

Susan spent part of the morning with her formerly absent brother in law. His absence was precipitated by a job offer eight hours away after two years of unemployment. When his job ceased to exist this spring he moved back home. He's kept himself occupied most recently by putting his mom on speakerphone and recreating her recipes. Yesterday he received the best news an unemployed brother in law could get; orientation for his new job starts Monday.
He left Susan a year's worth of Cooking Light magazines from which she tore out two quick dinner recipes, a breakfast, three appetizers, two soups, and a stuffing with fennel, sausage and caramelized apple. The magazines go next to the magazine recycling bin at Susan's library, one of her fave neighborhood stops.

In the afternoon Susan did some standard houseworky things and made pasta with anchovies, garlic, chilies and kale. She doesn't like capers although she'll try them every ten years or so just to make sure. She'll be leaving them out from now on.

During the week she made the most divine tomato sauce with onion and butter which required almost no effort. Really, you dump the ingredients in a pot & turn it off 45 minutes later. She had another dinner time hit with skillet lasagna when she replaced mushrooms with sausage. Susan never really paid attention to sausage until maybe the last two years, but the genie's outta the bottle now. She's also about ten pounds fatter.

Susan hates to talk on the phone. OMG, making a call is even worse, she puts it off until it becomes a problem. Of course she makes an exception for the Old Folks because it's lame not to call your parents but she makes them wait two weeks too.

Recently Susan was with the husband when he told her to call the kids, she was all Ugh, can't I just talk to them when I see them?

Last night Susan broke down, dialed the phone and talked to her father. They talked about a bunch of stuff like they always do and he told her about this movie playing tonight @ 8pm on TCM.

Today will be a solemn day of remembrance for Susan and by 8 o'clock she's gonna be in the mood to make some pumpkin seed candy then sit down and watch a funny black & white movie recommended by her father. She hopes that she likes it better than his previous recommendation, which she didn't like at all.

Not at all.

Susan spent a lovely late summer Sunday on the deck with her dog and the Sunday papers including the sections she's been hoarding since July. At three o'clock guests started appearing in the backyard of the neighbor behind Susan filling the air with party sounds like hummus, ...she was in jail,... and who's wine is this? 

Susan's property is wide but not very deep, so the backyard neighbors are practically on top of each other but that isn't an issue because no one treads on the privacy of the other. A few years back when Susan's son embedded his lacrosse ball into the siding of this neighbor's house, the neighbor requested in a most congenial way that it be fixed & the husband went over and did just that.

The hostess provided introductions and a quick who-knows-who. Susan liked eavesdropping on the party, she even got up to make herself some hummus and a cocktail in order to better pretend she was a part of it.
Someone was laughing the way Susan does when she drinks.
Someone else was very keen on determining which of the appetizers was hot.
Another had brought their kid.
Susan got a little jealous when she heard 'Everything is from the farm' and 'I used the Riesling to marinate the shrimp'

The afternoon became very breezy, periodically beaning Susan's deck with an acorn.  Lucy the pitbull had been disassembling the woodpile for weeks and now there were two foot logs all over the yard. The sun inched west illuminating a series of silvery spider webs and the purpley-pink sedum that Susan had transplanted to the dead space of a tree trunk was in full bloom, autumn was coming.

Soon there were too many guests for Susan to follow specific conversations, they melded into one happy murmur punctuated by laughter, the kid crying and the fantastically delicious smell of food being barbecued.

Susan had her own stuff to do so she packed up and went inside.

Susan is going through an austere economic period.

She's been freezing pesto like an obsessed crazy person in preparation for a Laura Ingalls winter.

The daughter accompanied her to the dollar store to purchase two more ice cube trays and a box of ZipLoc gallon freezer bags. Susan had four dollars and told the daughter she'd dedicated twenty five percent of her holdings toward candy.

At the register the lady in front of them was unloading a full cart onto the conveyor belt. The daughter made her pickle face at the prospect of waiting five more minutes to check out. The lady let them go ahead.

Susan's total came to $4.34.
She couldn't find her fourth dollar.
Where did her fourth dollar go?

Susan put back one of her ice cube trays and reduced her total to $3.26
Susan is a grown woman with a budget of $3.26

It's already been established that Susan got paid on Friday. Four days later she and the husband had twenty three dollars between them to go food shopping. That was it, there was no Pull out your charge card or Let's go tomorrow when we have more money. They had eight singles, a five, a ten, and some change.
Susan made her choices then handed over $22.21

Susan and the husband purchased their house nine years ago and have paid for it a month at a time. Along the way they've done some stuff, nothing grand, mostly just to make it function better. Of course now it's worth less than their mortgage, but just about everyone they know can say the same thing.

Currently their driveway is collapsing. Two years ago the husband re-routed the rainwater coming from the downspout to avoid having it drain onto his neighbor's yard. Instead he diverted it down the driveway into the street washing away the sandy infrastructure supporting the cement.

Susan came home from work and contemplated the front of her house. She knew that somebody could probably make it look good if they spent some money and knew what they were doing. She fantasized about what one of those TV shows that fix up the front of people's houses would do.

Wait, that's a great idea.

She'll break her personal rule about appearing on TV and apply for a makeover from HGTV. She could be just as boring as any of those lame TV moms, fake bickering with the host and ending her sentences with an uncomfortable laugh.

Her dream of getting a TV show to fix up her driveway was short lived, HGTV is currently not looking for anyone in Susan's circumstance but encouraged her to check back often.

Editor's Note:
Susan purchased five types of dairy, two starches and a canned item. 

Friday was Susan's payday, it started with a pedicure and ended with a rack of ribs.
Susan's social circle has failing eyesight, when no one was able to see the menu the husband stepped in to read it out loud. After dinner, one member tore open a Wet Nap and attempted to pour it into his coffee.

Earlier in the week Susan was faced with a bare cupboard, so she took home some of the basil from the garden at Acme Sweatshop and made pesto. Susan had never fed her family pesto before, but five minutes worth of work turned her into a hero. She's going to fill her freezer with the stuff. Pesto is besto.

Susan has seen The Godfather a thousand times, and every scene is her favorite, but she really loves the ones with Robert DeNiro and old New York; the dirt, immigrants, tenements, carts of fruit, fires in trash cans, crying babies and saints being paraded down the street.

Susan loves when the young Vito Corleone stalk the pompous Don Fannuci over the rooftops then waits for him in the shadow of a doorway with a towel wrapped around the gun. BOOM! Skinny Vito shoots the fat don in the heart, then in the face. But, that's not enough so he shoves the gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger then uses his foot to knock him over.

After that Vito is like King Sh*t around the neighborhood, vendors give him bags of oranges 'my gift', they say, old ladies come to him with their problems and the rest fall all over themselves to stay on his good side.

Susan never passes The Godfather on TV without stopping to watch it even if she had other things to do.

Susan walked all 1.4 miles of the High Line and then some. The husband remarked on the number of men he saw holding hands or kissing and she reminded him that he was in their neighborhood, and wasn't it nice to see people enjoying each other's company? 

After the lengthy meandering walk, Susan walked some more up and down the streets of Chelsea. She hit as many galleries as she could in the hour before they closed and managed to cram in some Keith Haring & Andy Warhol, pretty mosaic butterflies covered in diamond dust by Damian Hirst, crying Marilyn Monroes by Russell Young, cheeky silkscreens by Charming Baker and something that looked like a butcher's diagram of cuts of meat by Jean Michel Basquiat. Susan also saw things by artists she didn't recognize which inspired the most amount of conversation between herself and the husband.

Susan is also a big fan of street art.

After a bland dinner of under-whelming food prepared by the husband, Susan was craving salt. She rummaged around until she came up with a bag of dark chocolate chips and decided that she would settle for sugar. Susan doesn't usually keep sweets on hand and this was a pretty nice score so she dropped onto the couch with her booty to watch Hoarders.

Susan looked forward to spending her Friday night in front of the TV with a bag of chocolate chips. In the interest of self restraint she ate the chocolate chips one by one. This worked until she transitioned to eating them by the hand full. Very shortly thereafter Susan didn't feel well. In fact, it was a surprisingly quick turnabout.

How did such a great idea turn into such a bad idea?

She started belching chocolate, and flatulating something much more foul, neither of which provided provided relief from feeling like she was getting ready to vomit.

Oh my, she thought.

The husband cracked her open a bottle of seltzer, poured the magical fizzy remedy into a red Solo cup filled with ice and made her drink. More belching and flatulating transpired, but Susan began to feel better and gastrointestinal disaster was averted.

Susan wishes everyone a great weekend.

Susan's potted fig tree now has five figs.
Five!
Every day Susan excitedly completes a visual inspection, and using the fingers on her hand takes a quick count. Once that's done she spends a few moments admiring her five beautiful figs before moving on to fantasizing about harvesting the figs, about putting them on a pretty plate and bringing them to a party. 

Possible fantasy conversation;

What are these, dates?
No, they're figs.
Figs? Where did you get them?
From my tree.
Your tree? Do you live in Israel?
No, down the block.
You're so lucky to have a fig tree. 
I know!

Or, her fantasy could become more complex, involving food preparation;

She could be hosting the party, wearing her vintage Indian tunic and some dangly jewelry. In her fantasy she would chop the figs, toss them with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar and the teeniest pinch of black truffle salt then let them sit while she toasted some baguette slices. She would top the toasts with the figs, some cracked black pepper and fresh goat cheese made from the goats in her yard. 

Her yard of fig trees. 

Here's the stuff Susan's dreams are made of:

Susan keeps a pair of leather slippers embroidered with gold thread under her desk at Acme Sweatshop. They're very simply constructed and minimally durable, but perfect for when her feet hurt. Susan was wearing her work slippers when she walked into a room being prepared for carpeting. The realization that the floor had a layer of adhesive was immediate. A split second.

One of the workmen sprang into action removing much of the sticky, tacky, smelly glue but it wasn't good enough. As Susan walked down the hall her slippers stuck to the floor and she heard at least one person guffaw.

Susan's solution was to lay down two sheets of copy paper and step on them. She walked with her flapping copy paper slippers over to get a pair of scissors and following the outline of the sole she cut away the excess.

Good as new and back to work.

For the last two weeks Susan has been too hot to BLAHg. And too lazy. It's exhausting arranging words in a clever order.
She's also spent that time fighting with the husband and being disgusted with her children because they're lazy.
Just like her.

Some things that happened during her Lazy Heatwave BLAHging Blackout were:

• Susan saw a sign in a store window that read; All My Blessings Call Me Mother
• One of Susan's blessings turned fifteen
• Susan has a new fave used bookstore
• Susan's other blessing presented her with Kanye's new record, and even though she likes some of the music she can't listen to the words. Click here and refer to just about any song
• Susan's fig tree has two figs!
• She spent a Sunday reorganizing her pantry-slash-laundry room
• She bought some cheeky postcards in NYC
• Susan had a conversation at a traffic light with a guy driving a '74 Gremlin

The heat index inside Susan's house is OPPRESSIVE.
Heaven help the person who leaves the ice tray barren, doesn't make a new pitcher of iced tea or refill the Brita carafe for they will be on a collision course with a hot b*tch. And not the sexy kind.

She narrowly avoided a full on freak out yesterday when she couldn't find the paddle attachment to her ice cream maker.

In hot weather the house is kept dark, fans are turned on and Susan shuts down limiting her movements solely to declaring how hot it is. She dons her hot weather wardrobe which is any number of loose fitting dresses or skirts, often wearing the same thing from Friday night through to Monday morning then changing back into it after work. Currently, it's a layered cotton skirt that her daughter urged her not to buy from a church thrift shop.

When she can't cool off she'll jump into the pool. She risks triggering a little claustrophobia but she can generally use the highly focused powers of her mind to overcome it.

Susan is awesome.

Swing-A-Way

What's an awesome summer without a vintage ice crusher for Susan's cocktails? 

Susan and her Aunt Eileen spent a Saturday going to yard sales. Upon first sight Aunt Eileen said I'm going to buy this for you and then bargained it down to less than ten dollars.

Susan's Swing-A-Way ice crusher's got a pretty gnarly grindy blade thing under the hood, Susan thought she heard a cube scream as she shoved it down there and cranked it into little frozen pebbles for her alcoholist pleasure.

Awesome.

Susan celebrated her independence from a fully functioning laptop by dropping it onto the floor and breaking the hinge. Now she can't close it. 
She also broke the left shift key.
Other than that, it's just as aggravating as it ever was. 

Susan's fig tree is potted and in her front yard sucking up as much sun as is available on the shady property.

Two Friday nights ago Susan celebrated the first day of her awesome summer by having dinner on the water. Susan drank a cocktail served in a bucket and there was music appropriate for line dancing supporting a healthy cougar scene; plenty of sparkles, cleavage and cowboy hats. 

Awesome.

Last Friday night Susan took her family to see Jaws on the deck of the aircraft carrier Intrepid. 
While driving through NYC Susan took note of an attractive girl in a purple dress. Susan watched as the girl walked, her purple dress being hiked up higher and higher until her entire left buttock was exposed. No panties. Afterwards they spent a warm, breezy night on the mighty Hudson River with the Empire State Building all lit up in rainbow colors behind them. Even the demonstratively controlled teenage wrestler said Oooh upon the sight of it.

Editor's note: Susan would like to wish everyone an enjoyable Independence Day and reiterate that FREEDOM IS NOT FREE. 

Susan uses old tree stumps in her yard as side tables and additional seating. Until recently they were all situated around the fire pit, but then they fell apart. 
They totally disintegrated. 
Since their sad demise Susan has been on the hunt for new stumps. She needs them to be a particular height and width but most of all, they must be level. 

She told Wild Bill, a bonifide tree guy, and he assured her that he'd throw some world class stumps into the back of a truck and bring them over. Unfortunately, he returned to Dueling Banjos, NC before he could accomplish this mission, leaving Susan bereft of stumps.

For months, any time she saw a pile of tree stumps she'd assess their size and shape but always found them lacking. 

Passing by her next door neighbor's house Susan's heart stopped. 
Stumps!
An entire row of perfectly dissected stumps were set out at the curb. She, the husband and daughter rolled the four best ones home. They were heavy bast*rds and required quite an effort just to make the short trip to Susan's house. Once there it was impossible to get them over the curb. She left them in the street and waited for her son, the wrestler to get out of the shower.

The wrestler said that he would do it tomorrow, which is his response to almost everything he's asked to do. Susan insisted he roll her stumps into the backyard. The wrestler went outside and like an angry gorilla with super strength he picked them up one by one and heaved them over the fence into the yard. 
When he caught Susan's stunned look, he almost smiled, but opted to maintain his angry teenage demeanor instead.
As it should be.

Susan's stumps are awesome.

Susan loves figs.

Susan never even thought of figs until a few years ago when she took her kids to the most horriblest place in the world and made the acquaintance of her husband's elderly auntie, Rose.

Aunt Rose brought over a plate of green figs plucked from a tree in her yard, they were soft, sweet and shaped like tear drops. Susan had never seen figs shaped like tear drops, only like Fig Newtons.
She ate them all.

A few years later Susan read this article about the abundance of fig trees in Brooklyn. Fig trees in Brooklyn! Susan and Brooklyn live on different parts of the same island, if Brooklyn can grow fig trees then why can't Susan?

Susan filed that thought away & continued to seek out the expensively succulent fruit in the supermarket.

Two weeks ago the Old Folks came up to sleep in Susan's basement for ten days. While on a recon mission to the supermarket Susan found a gigantic flat of gorgeous figs and tossed her old man's Ensure overboard to make room for them. Once home no one showed the same interest in them as Susan did, and based on their limited shelf life Susan feared the plump little cherubs would turn into moldy old hags before they could be eaten.
She researched ways to use the figs; baked into tarts, roasted with cheese, sliced in salad, grilled and drizzled with balsamic or made into a simple jam.

The jam won.

Susan loves to spread jam on things or mix it into brownies, oatmeal, homemade thick yogurt and smoothies. She doesn't can, but she makes easy fruit butters which keep in the fridge for at least a season.

On Sunday Susan and the husband were headed to warehouse style membership club to redeem a 90 day trial offer and purchase a very specific list of items. Along the side of the road Susan saw a handmade sign that read FIG TREES. One U-turn later Susan & the husband were in a hidden thicket getting the low down from a Greek lady on how they must plant, prune & baby their two year old tree. 

Susan is going to keep her fig tree in a pot for at least the first year so that she can bring it inside for the winter. 

The awesome summer has begun.

Susan forgot mention that she thought she saw a prostitute a week or so back.

She was driving to work when she took notice of a tall black girl with a Bettie Page coiffure. Generally black girls and that particular hair style do not go together, but scratch the fact she was black if you feel it's not relevant.

Bettie was heavily tattooed (isn't everyone?) with super tight pants and she wore her cut off t-shirt to resemble more of a tube top. Her hand was down her shirt adjusting her right boob. Susan was waiting for her to pull it out on the street and was relieved when she didn't. Instead she went on to fiddle with her clothing and swing her hair around in a manner indicating that she was very comfortable drawing attention to herself.

Susan admired her confidence and fantasized that Bettie was headed to her x-ray technician class where she'd change into her scrubs, flirt with the boys and be all smart.

Who doesn't love an awesome crazy Buddha on Monday?
Nobody, that's who.

Susan's not even sure this is Buddha, but she's positive it's Monday.

Susan had a birthday last week.

Way back in 1960, her mother smoked while Susan was in utero, 'everyone did'.
Afterwards Susan was born the old fashioned way; her mother was anesthetized into unconsciousness and her father stayed in the waiting room.
Susan shares her birthday with Cole Porter, Happy Rockefeller and Johnny Depp. 

For this year's birthday Susan made fig jam (fresh figs, lime juice, sugar). She also juiced a watermelon, added vodka, lime juice, mint-infused simple syrup and ice. 

During periods of Susan's absence that assh*ole Anonymous leaves all sorts of stupid comments which don't even have anything to do with anything. 

Does Anonymous even read? 
Susan doesn't think so.

Anonymous probably needs a lot of attention, and Susan finds those types to be a drag to hang out with.

Needy Anonymous better f*cking stop leaving comments on Susan's BLAHg or the sh*t's gonna go down.

Susan heard an advertisement for some forgotten product or service in which the announcer suggested she and her family 'have an awesome summer!'

This made her mad.

As if all she had to do was withdraw the imaginary money from the non existent bank account and fund her awesome summer. She berated the husband about the unlikelihood of having an awesome summer.

As a courtesy, he allowed Susan to brainstorm ideas guided by her many restrictions. She doesn't like the heat, she can't swim, she doesn't like cruises or amusement parks or physical activities like skiing or biking or anything insane like hang gliding or white water rafting, whatever that is.

Susan likes to lay around and do nothing on vacation. In fact, a perfect vacation might be spent sitting in the shade with a book while being left alone. Unfortunately, her family finds this boring.

She developed a plan to have an awesome summer, something that two increasingly disengaged teenagers and an easily bored husband would enjoy. Exciting, modern, urban and within her budget.

Susan's awesome summer will be broken down into a series of day trips to the greatest city in the world. 

This allows her to feel less like a frustrated b*tch about having zero vacation plans.

Thus far Susan has only two invitations for the whole of the summer and she used one up on Saturday night, as a result she required a four hour nap on Sunday.

The party had signature cocktails, flowers in the toilet and everything served was prepared by the hostess. Later, Susan and the husband got lost trying to drive out of the maze like neighborhood filled with giant houses. 

To be fair, Susan also gets lost driving out of her own maze like neighborhood filled with teeny houses.

The weekend was hot. Susan's not accustomed to hot and her body didn't know what to do, so it slowed down making her more lethargic than usual. That's essentially like not moving. Over three days all she did was take showers and sleep except for Saturday night when she added drinking liquor and socializing.

She needs Monday so things can get back to normal.

HAPPY June first, guys. Susan would like to congratulate everyone for making it through half the year. The second half is the preferred half, at least up till Xmas. What does the first half have anyway? Desolate January & February? Useless March? April and May are good, but June through November are better.

As you can see, Susan's working on a comeback, she just has to get out of her bad mood first. 

Wish her luck, won't you?

Ed note: Any resemblance to the last line of Meg's post is purely coincidental. And awesome!

Happy Mothers Day!

Susan wants to be the first to say how much she hated Gatsby.
Ugh.
The outfits and music were good, but after a while even that bored her because she hated the movie so much.
Here's a short but comprehensive list of everything she hated; 

• all the characters 
• and all the actors particularly Tobey Maguire

Who will stand with Susan and admit that they hated Gatsby too?

Susan had an exciting weekend which started out on with a pre-dawn phone call getting her out of bed and headed to work on her day OFF. Susan is a very mature person so she forced herself not to act all hysterical just because she got four hours sleep and her Saturday plans were f*cked up.

Those plans included hosting a home jewelry party later that evening. She did her best to entice her friends and family to attend what was essentially a business function by tarting it up with a Cinco de Mayo theme. Just for hosting she would get a very pretty and overpriced necklace for free. So easy! 

She felt kind of funny inviting people to an expensive costume jewelry party, but she went ahead and made bright tissue paper flowers and fantasized about laughing with her guests over margaritas, mango salsa, empanadas and spicy Mexican brownies.

Once Susan got home she put on mariachi music and lit her collection of Mexican candles; San Ramon, Nuestra Senorada de Altagracia and Nuestra Senora del Perpetuo Socorro then Little Sister came over and they made the empanadas. 

The amount of guests expected was small, but Susan had no fear, it would be an intimate group. Unfortunately, as the afternoon progressed each of the attendees texted their regrets until no one was left.

A hostess' nightmare realized; she threw a party and no one came.

An alternate plan was put into action. Susan, little Sister and the husband set up chairs around the fire pit and enjoyed the first outdoor fire of the season then went inside and watched Fawlty Towers till it was time for bed. 

At approximately 2am Susan was awakened by the husband running a shower for their drunk, under age son  who was vomiting in the living room. This is the first time they had encountered their son in that condition so Susan took down his baby book from a shelf in the closet to notate the milestone.  

The son locked the bathroom door, as is his habit, and got into the shower. At some point he stopped responding when his father called to him which necessitated the door being bashed in.

Sidebar: The key rests atop the door jamb. 

The son was taking a cold shower while lying in the tub. Eventually everyone made it into their beds and Susan went back to sleep.

Sunday morning Susan awoke with a POUNDING headache. BAM. BAM. BAM. BAM.  With no pain relievers in the house she took hold of the kitchen counter and tried not to pass out as she waited for the coffee to brew. 
Coffee, the magic elixir. 
Half way through her cup she was able to unclench her fists.

Sunday was super-duper. Susan learned a little more about her son's evening, including that he lied about where he was going, got drunk in the home of a classmate whose parents were onsite & then walked home through a dark, sidewalk-less neighborhood where getting run over is a very real possibility.

Susan went to the drug store bought a big bottle of Advil and an even bigger bottle of multivitamins specified for women over 50.

Excellent.

For the first time in months Susan;

• Finally saw buds on the trees in her neighborhood
• Opened her windows 
• Gave her toes a pedicure
• Went to yard sales
• Wore flip flops off premises
• Turned the outdoor spigot on
• Moved around the deck furniture

She is filled with hope that spring may actually have arrived

Susan LOVES cleaning the bathroom, she saves this treat for Saturday mornings, unless she was previously inspired to do so on Thursday night because someone made it smell like urine.

Let's talk about that.

It's been Susan's experience that people with penises pee on the floor. They probably start out pointing at the toilet, but the urine doesn't end up there. She's not quite sure what goes on to divert the stream, but at the very least they should clean up after themselves.

Saturday mornings find Susan on her hands and knees, her face inches away from a place not meant for faces, breaking her elderly back just so she doesn't have to lie in bed and smell urine.

You didn't know that Susan lived in a pig stye with farm animals, did you?
Well, her secret's out and she hopes you won't think less of her.

Hooray, it's a new work week!
Isn't that amazing!
A. May. Zing!

Who wants to hear about the delicious dinner Susan made when she got home from work?
Everybody does!
Well, hold on to your horses because she's going to tell you all about it.
Susan opened a box of cereal, dumped it in a bowl and poured milk over it.
Just like that.
Dinner!
OMG, and it was amazing!

Who wants to hear all about the totally awesome love story that Susan has with her amazing husband?
They're soul mates you know.
Well, he used to be married to somebody else and now he's married to her.
And she totally loves to listen to every word he says because he's awesome!

Her kids are awesome too because she made them in her own body using love and sperm!
It's an awesome combination.
She's so blessed!
She loves the word blessed because it's so amazing.

Susan loves EVERYTHING!
Don't you?

Susan fell down yesterday.

DOWN.

She hit a wet patch and the next thing she knew the floor was coming toward her face in slow motion.

Susan prefers to spend most of her time upright, or at least seated, so she was kind of stunned to find herself on the floor in front of an audience. Her enforced respite didn't last long, before she had a chance to yell OMG, what are you doing? her co-worker was picking her up in his arms. It took him two tries, because you're heavier than you look he explained.

Susan didn't seem to be any worse for wear and was tremendously relieved to see that nothing bad happened to her beautiful vintage pants, the lined ones with a wide cuff. Unfortunately, by the end of the day it was revealed that the heel of her much beloved shoe had been compromised.

Arghhh!