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.

Both of Susan's primary doctors recently stopped accepting her medical insurance.

First to go was her PCP, who Susan liked, was right in the neighborhood & always able to squeeze her in. Then, went her gynecologist. Susan loved this guy. Loved! She had been with him before her children existed, through all the changes in her life and all her previous medical insurance. She happily drove an hour to see him because he was wonderful, gentle and easy to talk to. They had great personal chats over the years. During one memorable examination he described her internal lady parts like chocolate cake, moist and velvety. Now he's gone.

Susan set to work finding two new doctors, chose two named Cynthia and made her appointments.

Her new PCP was Dr. Cynthia S, a little powerhouse who was the sole practitioner in the office. She had an underlying bossy tone which Susan responded to.
"When I tell patients to do something, and they don't do it within two weeks, I can get annoyed."
This was fine by Susan, she was fully prepared to obey little Dr. Cynthia S. and left with an order for fasting blood work.

Her new gynecologist was Dr. Cynthia B, part of a large medical practice who offered a wider array of services in addition to the one Susan needed. Dr. Cynthia B was more Susan's size and had a warm efficiency. She didn't take as much time as Susan's former gynecologist, but she didn't rush Susan out the door either. Susan left with an order for a mammogram & bone density scan.

Susan was able to have her bone density scan done right away & returned to the waiting room for maybe twenty minutes until the radiologist could see her. There was a mother & small child sitting in the seat next to her, and the mother was trying to keep the kid from disrupting the other waiting room occupants, but the mother was the real problem. You all know the type. Mothers who speak more for the audience than the object of her attention, who create a false environment of disturbance, who won't shut up. Those moms are a notch away from those who let their kids run rampant without intervention.

Susan has no use for either.

Anyway, once inside, the radiologist told her to lie down on the table, which Susan did.

The scanner was comprised of the table & a scanning arm, sort of like a tree limb, which passes slowly down the length of the patient, to take the xrays. It's not even a five minute process. In fact, here's a picture:

This wasn't the least bit confining or scary for our claustrophobic heroine, yet as soon as she laid her head down she began thinking of every scary thing she could and had a little freak-out panic attack.

First was the scene where Uma Thurman punches her way out of a coffin (feel free to click on the link), then was the NYT video of a tunnel used to smuggle drugs from Mexico to Arizona, (she knew she was going to regret watching that).

Even though the radiologist was keeping Susan company from a short three feet away, she still wanted to pop up on the table, confess she was a claustrophobic and flee. She knew that if she gave in to her fear it would make everything worse. Instead, she used the power of her mind to force happy thoughts.

She envisioned where she would be in ten more minutes, driving to work to see her Work-Best-Friend, Too Much Funny. WBFs don't come any better than Too Much Funny.

Then she thought about the peanut butter & jelly brownies she was going to make for a party she was attending the next day. The whole time her heartbeat was accelerating, but she stuck to the plan Keep thinking happy thoughts! and miraculously the panicky feelings passed.

She got her scan & an order for calcium then walked out the door into a beautiful Friday morning, slightly muggy, the breeze carrying the fragrance of trees and the woods. She couldn't recall ever feeling happier.

The other night Susan wanted to make some black bean brownies so she reached up to where she keeps her well used food processor & the lid fell on her head. Susan is not one to let such things occur without a crazy frustrated reaction, so she picked up the inanimate plastic object & flung it across the kitchen where it bounced around before she threw it a second time while cursing. And, when Susan curses you know the term m*therf*cker is in there somewhere.

She calmed down and dumped the ingredients into the processor's roomy 6 cup bowl; black beans, avocado, coconut oil, sugar, egg and cocoa powder but when she twisted the lid onto the bowl then snapped everything together and turned it on nothing happened. The lid has a little plastic piece which, when everything is locked into place, allows the pulse & chop buttons to work. However, when an insane home baker throws it around in a snit little plastic pieces can sometimes break off rendering the entire machine useless.

Over the next few days Susan tried with zero success to find a replacement lid for her discontinued Euro-Pro Quad Blade processor. Her regrettable behavior had ruined a perfectly good kitchen workhorse which, although handed down eight years earlier from her pal Sharon, still had a lot of life to live. Reluctantly Susan vowed to stop throwing small kitchen appliances in anger and ordered a new one.

While loading groceries into the fridge Susan found a forgotten head of cauliflower way in the back. Susan doesn't have one of those big fridges where everything is up at eye level, she's got the old-school-white-freezer-up-top-type requiring her to bend way down to see what's in there.
Anyway, as she retrieved the cauliflower & backed out of the fridge she banged the top of her head on the bottom of the freezer and went insane.
Insane.
She immediately began beating the Dickens out of the fridge with the cauliflower while cursing
f*ck you m*therf*cking c*ck s*cking f*cker! and spitting all over everything, even herself.
The half dead cauliflower was no match for one crazy assh*le & a fridge so it quickly disintegrated all over the floor where she just left it.
Strangely, Susan was actually mad at the cauliflower but not the fridge.

Susan and her daughter were five minutes into a seventy five minute drive when the daughter said she was thirsty.

What's the matter with you we just left the house if you were thirsty why didn't you bring something to drink I'm not stopping to spend money because you're not smart enough to know that you'll want something to drink on the ride didn't I just ask you to count all the singles in my purse and saw that I only had twenty two dollars you do this all the time I'm really frustrated with you!

After Susan's little tirade she saw that they were directly opposite a ubiquitous convenience store. She considered the heat of the day and how she wanted her daughter to love her and asked You want a Slurpee? The Slurpee idea changed everything for Susan from anger to chilled happiness. They went inside to get their Slurpees when the daughter asked if she could get a sandwich.

OMG we're not even out of the house five minutes you know it's a long drive why didn't you eat before we left I can't spend money on food because you have no imagination to open up the refrigerator and find something to eat this is the last time I am buying you something to eat immediately after we've left the house so I hope you enjoy it I'm not kidding this is the LAST TIME get your sandwich and go up to the register!

Susan was aware that she sounded like a pathetic wretch to everyone within earshot but didn't care, she kept the volume of her voice to a minimum but not her exasperated tone. The total expenditure, although small, was one third of the cash in her wallet, a point she made to the daughter once they were outside. Not wanting to alienate the kid any further Susan engaged her in a normal conversational tone and worked out a Plan of Correction to effectively prepare for a car ride so that her mother would never have to pull out money again.

Susan yelled at the husband tonight.

She yelled and yelled and yelled, she yelled so much she foamed at the mouth a bit then she yelled some more. She threw silverware and said f*ck a bunch of times all followed by YOU!

Did everyone enjoy the first day of Spring too?

Susan's been offline for two weeks, did you miss her?

She can't hear you.

DID YOU MISS HER?

Susan's time away was capped by a total freak out meltdown where she cried at her desk, shrieked at her husband, broke her phone and then forced her children to give her hugs.

Currently, she's depleted.
There's nothing left of her but an empty sack of freckled skin which she tried to fill with wine, but even that didn't help.

However, she was able to snap her phone back together and turn it on.

As Susan left for work this morning she went to hug her son goodbye and ended up throwing stuff and calling him a f*cking *sshole.

OMG, did anyone catch this horrible thing that Dawn made the other day?

Susan and the husband were invited to watch a movie at Cousin Lisa's on Saturday night. Susan planned to make olive tapenade because she knows how much Cousin Lisa loves it. Sometimes Cousin Lisa loves the olive tapenade so much she eats it till she's sick. Anyway, after spending the afternoon in the thrift store with her little sister Susan didn't leave herself enough time to remove the pits from a pound of olives so she considered her options based on what she had in her fridge.

There were two beautiful mangoes and a big fragrant bunch of cilantro into which she could make a spicy sweet salsa. Unfortunately, the mangoes revealed themselves to be unripe little bastards and there was no way they could be the base for something anyone would want to eat.
That's ok because Susan had a third option.

She always has the ingredients in her cupboard for Layered Bean Dip. Amost everything comes out of a can & then gets put into the oven for 20 minutes.
It's fantastic.

Susan started putting the dip together.
When Susan climbed up on a chair to reach one of the multiple jars of salsa she keeps expressly for this purpose, she found none.

She came down off the chair screaming like a crazy b*tch. There was no f*cking way that every last jar of salsa was gone because she has lectured everyone in her household to the point of madness on how they must
PUT THINGS ON THE SHOPPING LIST
when they eat the last of it.

Susan knows that her son likes the salsa. She's had seperate conversations, explaining in detail that the salsa is stored along with all the other Layered Bean Dip ingredients so that they are always available when she needs them and she doesn't mind if he eats the salsa as long as he ALWAYS ASK HER if he wants to eat the last jar.

So, to recap, there is a long standing rule that Susan's family;

• UTILIZE THE SHOPPING LIST which is always hanging in plain view on the cupboard door
• and a secondary, salsa-specific rule that she be forewarned if there is only one jar left and that she must grant permission for that last jar to be eaten.

Susan's screaming was long, loud, hysterical and punctuated with balled up fists and spitting.

Susan wakes up each morning a full on TWISTED b*tch. She puts on her TWISTED b*tch face and stomps around the house making her TWISTED b*tch comments about everything in her line of vision.
Was that light on all night?
Nobody fed the dog again?
How long is that pile of sh*t going to sit on the table?
Is that a wet towel on the floor?

It's the husband's function as her life partner to receive the full force of her anger. Well, not the full force, but certainly a large portion of it. Disclosing every last thought in her head would likely be de-motivational for the relationship. In the same way, she doesn't want to know every opinion the husband holds about her. It's enough that she's got to be in the same room with him during the periods that she can't stand him. Like now.
She particularly can't stand the sound of his voice.

She would love to make a list for her modest fan base of all the things she can't stand about the husband.
OMG, she'd love to! But she won't because everyone in a committed relationship knows what she's up against.
On Wednesday we're plodding along being a supportive spouse and by Thursday morning we've reached our saturation point. Critical mass.
Even someone as special and giving and wonderful as Susan is given to fits of miserable TWISTED spousal hatred.
However, we all know that hatred signifies one still cares.

The last two mornings Susan had a little meltdown as she left the house for work. Neither was created in a vacuum, the husband's mouth was present.
Yesterday's explosion was immediate, and it only took a little nudge. Today's was just as quick and ended with Susan throwing a banana.
In each case the cause of the argument wasn't really significant except for the one where the husband started a conversation then lost interest when it was Susan's turn to talk.
Banana incoming!

When Susan was in her twenties the normal frustrations of life would inspire some pretty immature behavior; she might throw her keys from one side of a restaurant dining room to the other, flip her chair over at work, engage in shoving matches with her sister or chase after cars that cut her off. The last one resulted in a few hairy confrontations including having a man come after her with a two by four and another threaten to take her middle finger from one place and put it in another. Susan has grown into a mature wife and mother who can hardly believe she used to act that way, but she knows that she did because she was there.

She figures that you're all thinking, but didn't she just stick her middle finger up at a guy yesterday? And you're correct, but that's not her normal behavior or wouldn't you have read about it by now?

Susan still loves to yell, scream and throw things but not at strangers, she saves that behavior for her family because she's just civilized that way. She combats the frustrating minutiae of her life by banging furiously at a keyboard cranking out TWISTED Susan posts day after day after day. Her modest fan base is right there with her letting her know she's not alone.

Day fifteen for anyone who's counting.
Susan is.

Tomorrow's Another Day

Susan became completely unhinged while on the phone with the husband the other night. She caught the dog sneaking back upstairs after it had peed on the carpeting. The dog pees all the time and Susan doesn't care because it's on wood and linoleum, but she doesn't need a f*cking carpet cleaning job to take care of when she's not even keeping up with the regular cleaning jobs. Grrrrrr!
Her frustration over the dog compromised the protective barrier she maintains to hold back all the rest of her frustration. Everything exited through her mouth,
over the phone, into the husband's ear.
All her anger, private opinions and general hopelessness that anything in the world will ever work out was now open for discussion, which isn't really what she wanted to do. Luckily, the husband has a deep understanding of his TWISTED Susan and treated her tirade like any other conversation.
She calmed down, waited for him to get home, watched Top Chef and went to sleep.

Hands Off Susan's Breakfast!

Susan practically stabbed her son through the hand with a fork as he tried to snatch from her plate a piece of English muffin saturated with egg yolk.
Susan doesn't share her food ever. She doesn't care if you're one of those Biafran babies with distended bellies from her childhood. Get away from her plate NOW.
Susan has to eat at regular intervals or her symptoms will be many and her decompensation swift.
Aging hasn't helped either.

Susan's bottom right desk drawer at work is filled with oatmeal packets and Luna Bars, her upper right drawer has hard candy & dark chocolate covered espresso beans. Susan carries emergency sugar packets in her bag which she once downed with such a crazed ferocity she scared her children. Sugar packets are her big needle filled with adrenaline.

Susan knows what everyone is thinking,
go to a doctor!
She went to an internist earlier this decade and his diagnosis was 'Maybe you're just hungry'. Maybe she is.

In the meantime, Susan's able to manage her symptoms by eating properly and regularly. So, as long as she's not living outside a society with supermarkets she'll be fine. She's not forgetting the little candy bar thing she kicked earlier this season, that was due more to accessibility than actual addiction.
But, she doesn't take the little candy bar thing lightly,
no she doesn't. She understands the warm, happy sugar high and how it applies to her. She once heard an interview with Eric Clapton, the epic heroin addict and guitar player, identify his first addiction as sugar.
Can Susan have an Amen?

Grrrrrrr !

Susan hates it when she bangs her shin into the hard plastic container in which she stores the elderly, deaf, flatulent dog's food. Particularly when she kicks it out of frustration and knocks everything all over the floor and onto the piles of laundry she's been throwing into the machine all night.
And, why is the husband in the room asking what she's doing as she's flinging dirty clothes and dog food all over the place?
He's obviously there to make her scream at him to
leave her alone and she'll take care of it, a few times,
and bang sh*t before stomping off to drag the wet/dry vac up the stairs from the basement.
She hates all of it, including catching the kids in the crossfire by yelling at them to clean their room
and go to bed
and vacuum the house
and brush their teeth.
The last thing she hates is the sore throat she gets when she's done.

Where's The F*cking Craisins?

Susan bakes to relax. She likes things in loaf pans because then she can take a slice with her for breakfast.
Susan's current favorite things to bake are cranberry orange bread, zucchini carrot bread and banana bread with Chinese 5 spice powder.

Lately she's been in the mood for soda bread,
it's moist & sweet with lots of raisins & caraway seeds. Susan ran out of caraway seeds around St. Patrick's Day for obvious reasons and hasn't been able to pick any up, particularly when they're $3.99 for a few teaspoons. Anyway, she eventually found caraway seeds for a price she could live with and was all set. Except for the flour, she only had whole wheat in the house. She would be making whole wheat soda bread.

Susan keeps a bag of Craisins in her cabinet because she likes the option of throwing them into her baked goods. There's always a bag up there. Sometimes her son finds them, or the husband and then it's not unusual for the entire bag to be eaten in one sitting. Susan has gone f*cking insane often enough when someone eats the last of something & doesn't include it on the shopping list,
it shouldn't be an issue any more. I mean, she's not asking for anything crazy, just write the sh*t down on the list. It's always in the same spot, centrally located, not hard to find.
And where's the bag of Craisins?

Susan went through her normal TWISTED hystrionics; shouting, slamming, cursing, slamming and cursing. When she was done she cut up some figs, or dates, Susan gets them confused. She threw them into the whole wheat flour and baked her soda bread.
It came out good.