From this seat she listens to the birds singing, the leaves whispering with the summertime breeze, helicopters ferrying folks out to the Hamptons and her children declaring that there's no food in the house. Most recently this is where she pedicured herself, had an 84 minute conversation with her parents then figured out how to get a picture from her phone over to her laptop.
All important undertakings.
Susan calculated that today is her 46th day of unemployment. Running the household minus her former paycheck has guaranteed a sour temperament from the housebound daughter. So, Susan took her out to two local towns with main streets. Susan loves towns with main streets! Please notice how she ended that sentence with an exclamation point to emphasize how serious she is.
The first town they visited is where Susan attends her Department of Labor workshops. At first glance it seemed promising, but other than a coffee house with ample seating & an adorable but overpriced natural food store, there was not much to hold the girls' interest so they took a pretty drive along a secondary road to the next town, which is also home to a wonderful famous person.
The second town had a tight little main street filled with gently worn clapboard facades. The girls went in to a tiny, fragrant & friendly health food store where Susan chatted up the owner and spent an extravagant $7.29 on a box of lemon, ginger and mankuna honey tea along with a bar of African Black Soap chosen by the daughter. They went around the corner to an even teenier little ice cream parlor & candy shop where Susan observed a seventy-ish woman walk over from the beauty parlor still adorned with the protective cape and head filled with hair dye. The woman handed over a small package of chocolate covered graham crackers to the teenage cashier as repayment for a two dollar debt loaned earlier in the day. She said the crackers were a favorite when she was a girl. Turning to leave she pulled out a banana, held it up to hear ear like a telephone and instructed I told you never to call me when I was in the ice cream parlor then walked out the door.
Susan would kill for that sort of neighbor at home.
Their final stop was to the United Methodist thrift shop a little farther down the block. This is a fave of Susan's because she always manages to dig deep enough to unearth something neat. Her most magically inspired purchase was probably fifteen years earlier when Aunt Eileen sent Susan out to locate a ceramic coffee filter holder for her friend Linda. You sit it on a coffee cup, fit it with a paper filter, fill it with ground coffee & pour boiling water over it for a single cup of fresh coffee. Susan said she would keep her eyes peeled for such a thing and then found it that same week at the UM thrift shop. For a quarter.
Susan ended the day by almost throwing up in public. She may delve more deeply into that later, but not now.
