Susan has been concerned with her stupid memory lately, it's not uncommon to lose her train of thought, forget that she just pulled a can of black beans off the shelf two seconds earlier, not recognize new people the second time she sees them, and misplace common vocabulary words. Luckily she can still rewind a bit to pick up where she left off, eventually remember the new people and sometimes even figure out which word she was fishing for.

Susan conducted some casual research and took this test from the Alzheimer's Association website to determine if her symptoms were normal, and she's happy to report that they are.

Thus far.

If the day comes when she forgets what to do with her knife and fork, then she's got a problem larger than being unable to cut a big piece of food into smaller pieces.

Susan mentioned this to her daughter, who offered the suggestion that it's probably no coincidence that her memory problems ramped up after... not saying the words 'after daddy died' just saying 'after....' and allowing the silence to finish her thought.

Susan had previously come to that conclusion on her own but she still enjoys getting paranoid about everything.

Moments later, Susan picked up her phone from the kitchen counter when she inadvertently hit the New York Times app and this front page article came up on her screen:

Fraying At The Seams

Like all New York Times articles it went on forever, but she kept reading, and thought that she would save it to encourage her when she gets Alzheimer's. As she read, she thought about a promise the husband repeated throughout their marriage 'I'll stay with you till you don't recognize me.' usually followed by a kiss or a grab or just a smile. To her, it meant exactly the opposite, and was a playful affirmation of his commitment.

She imagined the husband's happy voice and saw his lovely face in her memory, then began to cry. It was a good cry with flowing streaks of tears and a low rumble of sustained misery. If the kids weren't in the house she would have opted to howl, but that was not a direction she could take right then. Plus, she had things to do and needed to get moving.

The crying continued for like an hour; down the hall, in her room, on the toilet and then in the shower. After she finally knocked it off she looked like sh*t, an appearance always tries to avoid. Susan did her best to arrange the way she looked & headed out the door to enjoy her weekend.

Susan had dinner with her work pals, here's a sampling of what was discussed:

• How delicious the ceviche was
• Construction of a jailhouse tampon (strictly for emergencies)
• How an airport alarm was set off by the infrastructure of a brassiere 
• Can red and white wine be consumed in one sitting without ill effect
• Children, including but not limited to feeding them, carpooling them & the wildcard aspect of soft-footed ones during parental alone time
• Scallops and beet puree, a story of friendship
• The effective use of vegetable oil for post menopausal dryness 
• A happily anticipated work trip to Fire Island
• Jolly Ranchers as a marital aid
• Celebrity infatuations (Susan chose Benicio Del Toro)
• And finally, who was going to drive who home

She knows that this is a recurring topic but most every day Susan sees a word that she hates. They're always on social media which is her own fault for exposing her delicate self to the written expressions of ordinary folk who can't spell, punctuate, or sound smart, but let's not allow this to impede her from enumerating the words that make her blood boil.

Her top five will always be;

• BLESSED: Don't confuse receiving a Pandora bracelet with being blessed unless you're the Virgin Mary 
• MAGICAL: Very few things are actually magical. In fact, nothing is.
• WANDERLUST: Why would a reputable person even want to be associated with this word?
• JOURNEY: Ugh, enough with the journey of every little thing
• AMAZING: Susan guarantees not to be amazed

Now, let's talk about ants.
Susan's house hosts ants every spring, always in her kitchen and often in her bathroom. They're nothing special, just standard small black ants for which she mixes together a diabolical smoothie of honey & Borax. It requires a few days to take effect so she passes the time by encouraging them to have their fill and keeping absolutely nothing impregnable out in the open.
Sometimes Susan will set her Rebecca Minkoff acid yellow structured mini tote down on the kitchen counter only to find an ant crawling across its surface the following day while she's at work. Sometimes she even transports an ant on her person to a second location.
If you are squeamish about getting ant cooties from Susan's house, don't come over.

Third and last topic.
You guys all know that if you click on any word(s) that are a different color you'll go on an amazing magical journey to another website, right? Did you click on Rebecca Minkoff above? Did you click on  How Doctors Die two Twistedsusans ago? If not, get crackin' and keep your eyes peeled in the future.

Driving to work, Susan saw someone who resembled her husband. The closer she got the less he looked like her husband but it was too late, the seed was planted. She let go of all mental controls and allowed herself to remember, if only for an instant, what it was like to see the husband walking the earth again. She let her brain carry her back to that simple, ordinary, wonderful impossibility.

Susan is aware in her every conscious moment that the husband is gone. Even when she's engaged in things that have her total attention, she's aware. Even when she's reading or laughing or cursing a four minute traffic light with no turn arrow, she's aware.

The husband has been absent from her life for 488 days. That doesn't even seem so long, right? How about a year, four months and three days? Seventy weeks?
She accepts her current state without complaint although sometimes she likes to remind people Hey, I have a dead husband over here. She almost always regrets doing so, but it's a testament that she can't always keep everything held together.

There's a freedom to having a dead husband, Susan can do what she wants with only her children to consider, and they don't require much onsite interaction any more. She is available to accept any invitation offered no matter how drop of the hat it may be. She also observes the freedom to stay in all weekend, not answer the phone and not shower.

There's nothing worse than an old whiny bore, so Susan's gonna stop right here lest she turns into one. Check back tomorrow and she'll report on how the ants are back in her kitchen.