1.16.2022

Susan knows that she hasn't written a post a day like she told you she would. 

Her earnest attempts to write a post a day have shown her that she can't really write a post a day. There are a few factors working against her, the big one is inspiration. Susan's topics can best be described as personal nonsense, they don't come from the newspaper, (whoa, newspaper?) or pop culture (why is her TikTok filled with traffic fatalities and ghosts) and she doesn't respond to well intentioned prompts. In fact, if you want to see how fast Susan won't do something, give her a well intentioned prompt.

Susan also just had her mother in the house for a week which kinda cramped her style. Even though her mother is no longer a demanding person, the limitations of her capabilities create the demand to be within close range to her almost every moment of every day. Susan finds this exhausting...and demanding

Susan can only tolerate being the back-up caretaker, advancing to the front lines when her Little Sister & husband manage to escape for a few days. This trip Susan also had their two dogs in her house, no big deal except the more elderly of the two pooped inside three times, each closer to becoming diarrhea. Managing the poop was relatively easy because Susan has this well priced and fantastically effective little green carpet cleaning machine which she heartily recommends if you're in a similar fix. Susan had to go to Little Sister's house each day to feed the cats (complicated) and take care of the chickens (surprisingly uncomplicated). Again, no big deal, she just had to time it to one of her mother's naps or encounter an old lady standing at the front door when she returned late. 

Whenever it's Susan's job to take care of her mother, she makes it as comfortable as possible and the two fall into an established pattern. Susan stocks the kind of food her mother likes, especially goodies, lest her kitchen be completely ransacked, even the freezer. Upon finishing her carton of milk on a previous caretaking weekend she drank the half & half. (Back then Susan texted her sister She drank my f*cking half & half!) Susan also chooses nightly movies they can watch together, the criteria being something her mother can understand and Susan can tolerate.

Susan spent the week working remotely while her mother napped the daylight hours away. After work Susan made dinner and her mother closed all available curtains so that no one could see inside. Then after dinner they watched their movie, including a new entrant into Susan's personal assessment of the worst movies in the world, Grumpy Old Men. She's glad Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon are dead, they deserve to be after wasting Susan's time with that un-watchable sh*t.

On the last day, Susan was making a pot of meatballs to bring to Little Sister's house along with her mother and the dogs. She had made it through the week, the end was in sight! Susan was opening four cans of plum tomatoes when her crappy-replacement-for-a-previous-workhorse-of-a-can-opener started giving her the usual problem. As it traveled its way around the lid of the can it got hung up on the paper label and Susan was really getting tired of this sh*t. 

She hit critical mass on can #3.  

A stream of the foulest of foul words came out of Susan's mouth and didn't stop. She was only able to work her way through half of those last two lids so she beat and beat and BEAT THEM with the can opener. With every blow juice and plum tomato carcass pieces flew everywhere, yet she continued beating them and cursing while being very careful not to get her fingers near the sharp edges, years ago she learned that lesson on a can of black beans.

She beat and cursed and beat and cursed until the last bit of plum tomato was out of the can and on her walls. While this was going on her mother came out to investigate, and upon seeing Susan completely enraged and 90% out of control, she stood there and watched. Susan wanted to scream at her too, but she didn't. Instead she rinsed the cans out, put them in the recycling container, wiped the tomato off of her stove, counter, walls, cabinets, microwave and herself, then made the sauce. Later she threw out the can opener and  ordered an electric one from Jeff Bezos.