Susan's elderly car is making a funny noise. Sort of like a whistle, if that whistle was screaming while it wheezed.
Screams and wheezes don't even go together, but that's what it sounds like.

Nothing bad can happen to this car.

You may recall that Susan & the husband shared one car for almost two years. This translated to Susan being driven to work & then picked up from work EVERY DAY for TWO YEARS.

It took her more than six months just to pound into the husband's thick skull that she required silence during her morning commute; there was to be no commentary or stories about the old neighborhood or business conversations on the phone, in which he engaged unceasingly anyway.

Even now that he's gone, Susan never thinks Oh, if only I could have one of those miserable drives to work with him again...

Anyway, after a pretty lengthy search Susan saw an ad for her elderly car and dispatched the husband to check it out in person. On a bitter snowy day two years ago they brought it home and Susan regained her independence. This car was the result of her blood and pain. Well, not really, but it was made possible by a combined effort, and she still feels linked to the husband through it.

Nothing bad can happen to this car.

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 is so sick of people talking to her.
Talking and talking and talking. Talking over songs on the  radio. Talking while Susan is reading. Talking while Susan is meditating on the beauty of absolute silence.

Honestly, Susan doesn't care about your dog or the old neighborhood or Obama or who that guy is over there or anything that involves words coming out of your mouth.

Normally Susan loves to talk. I mean, she really friggin' LOVES it. But lately she's had her fill. Right up to the rim. She avoids conversations, even eye contact, particularly with the husband.

She has been sharing one car with him for almost a year. Her car. One car two people. Now the only time she's truly alone is in the shower.
The husband ruins the sanctity of her morning commute by talking through it. He has also revealed a few tremendously annoying habits which she has grown to HATE.

Twenty two years of living together has been no match for a year in the car.

Susan went to the mall and came home with a car with no steering wheel.

It's been probably close to thirty years since Susan had a car broken in to, so she was overdue for a robbery. Luckily, they didn't take the air freshener or the stuff in her trunk, but they took the husband's wallet because he likes to leave it in the car even though she's told him a billion times that it's a stupid place to leave his wallet. 

Now he knows.

Mercifully, Susan & the husband had a little bit of money and were able to afford the expenses related to having somebody f*ck up their car. Unfortunately, that money was earmarked for other things.

The next day, three days before Xmas, they went out and got a tree. 
A very well priced tree too, Susan thinks it's the cheapest one they ever bought. The husband & daughter took care of dragging it into the house, installing it in the livingroom & decorating it without any help from Grinchy Susie.

As it should be.

Ed. note: Photographic credit & a lift home are courtesy of little sister.