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!