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.

Susan cleaned three rooms of her house for company Saturday night; the bathroom, livingroom & kitchen. Oh, and she made her bed. The dining room was kept dark to conceal that she prefers to keep her table piled high with household debris.
Susan had some pears which she wanted to incorporate into a cocktail. Last year her friend Anna served her a lovely concoction of pear puree, pear vodka & lemon juice. Susan pureed the pears & added vodka. She didn't have any citrus, so Italian grapefruit soda was a surprisingly tart substitute topped by seltzer and lots of ice.
Presto! Susan is a genius.
Susan's company arrived, they threw a Duraflame log in the fireplace and had a terrific three hour chat.

Susan is not a lover of the outdoors unless seated on a comfortable chair in a shady yard with a plate of cookies on her lap.

With limited enthusiasm Susan has been known to plant a thing or two, but that's the end of it. There is no further interaction of any sort unless she clips a hydrangea to shove in a glass of water. There is definitely no maintenance, or any proximity to dirt or bugs, neither does she hang around in her front yard long enough for Mr. or Mrs. Drunk to catch a glimpse of her and come over for a chat.

This weekend Susan combined all these avoided actions and set upon the distasteful task of weeding her front yard. Since the untimely demise of her beloved husband the outside has started to look like The Muster's house, minus the impressive Victorian exterior.

The husband would do all her grunt work. By his side she was more inclined to make a teeny effort, or at least sit on the front steps and conversate while he toiled on her projects.

You know the joint must be in really rough shape for Susan to willingly engage in physical labor, particularly the bending over variety. Susan has a keen hatred for bending over, one she has proclaimed far and wide. And loudly.
Weeding seems to have been invented for this miserable position.

Susan's son employed his super human wrestler's strength to yank out a few trees that did not exist six months prior then transported all her weedy debris to the neglected compost bin. The husband used to take care of the composting responsibilities for her too.

Jeez, did she do anything?

At the end of the day the yard look improved but at the cost of Susan's elderly back, so she crawled to her bed & took a nap.

Susan hasn't been cooking lately.

It started when her son left for sleep away college & she had trouble recalculating how much food was needed to feed the remaining people in her house. 

Then her husband got sick & stopped eating. 

Even though her daughter still had to eat it was too late. Susan lost enthusiasm. 

She eventually had her fill of watching the daughter mope around looking for something substantial in a perpetually empty fridge. Susan promised to re-establish the basic tenancy of her maternal contract and make something for the kid to eat.
She started small. A rotisserie chicken became curried chicken salad followed by chocolate chip pancakes from scratch, not Bisquick.
She also made some pumpkin seed candy for company.
The End.

Susan's getting ready to hunker down for the winter. She's cleaning, laying in supplies and finishing projects so that every available inch of her house is usable.

Susan's keeping everything simple. She's gonna take care of her family, make soup, watch movies, BLAHg, invite people over and maybe try a new art project or two.

She's not fighting Xmas either, she'll just be a normal person & let it happen.

Susan's schedule has been thrown off because the husband has been sick and underfoot for more than a month. It started out as a bad sinus infection which confined him to bed with sensitivities to everything from the sheets to fresh air. Oy! In that time he lost thirty five pounds and acquired an appearance like a refuge from an old folks home. Susan's response has been to badger him into making doctors' appointments, force him to eat what he can, get him up to move around, and argue vehemently over the most retarded nonsense every minute they're together. Beyond this she keeps her distance from the elderly shut-in who replaced her formerly burly husband.

Since the husband has not been eating normally Susan has not been cooking anything other than Sunday dinners when her little sister's family comes over to eat & watch Walking Dead. In an effort to keep his plumbing moving she's been making green smoothies using a combination of spinach, cucumbers, bananas, ginger, brown sugar, cinnamon and yogurt or juice. If she has anything else lying around like oranges, tomatoes or celery she throws them in too. Strangely all those things taste really good together. So good, in fact that Susan has been making them for herself. Her inspiration came from Foodie With Family's Green Orange Julius Smoothie which she recommends very highly. Very highly.

During this period her housekeeping has also fallen off, and when she doesn't clean up no one else does either. A few weeks earlier she came to the conclusion that she would never read all the sections of the NY Times she hoarded during the summer and reluctantly threw them into the recycling pile. Then she took them out, carried them around with her for another week, still didn't read them & put them back.

Currently she has a pile of magazines to sort through before passing them onto her little sister where they will end up as part of her lavatory library collection. Susan loves magazines. Big glossy pictures to tear out and save makes her woozy with delight. It started back in 1972 when Susan removed this Coty advertisement from a magazine, folded it up and carried it in her wallet for years, taking it out to gaze at the simple beauty of the model, Season Hubley:

Now she tears out things like this:

And this:

Sometimes she tears out pictures of five thousand dollar alligator boots or Parisian studios filled with books and a little messy bed by a big window on which to read them. But mostly she saves pictures of things she can do in her house.

Till manana, guys.

Susan couldn't let twenty years go by without some sort of a celebratory observance so she whipped herself up a party with a minimal amount of planning.

There were LOBSTERS

And SISTERS

And DAUGHTERS

And FIRE!

And COUSINS

All for THESE TWO

The party got a little white trash when there wasn't enough room for all the guests, beverages & food, and Susan left out a few details like appetizers, forks & cream for the coffee. But, the bathrooms were clean, the ice bucket was filled, Cousin Melissa constructed a fantastic goat cheese and fig appetizer onsite and everyone appeared to muddle through. There was even a little theatrical presentation when Susan challenged the husband with 'You wanna fight? I'll fight you in front of everybody!'
Ultimately there was no fight, instead there was flourless chocolate cake with raspberry whipped cream, blueberry cheesecake and goodie bags.

This is Susan's unemployment office. If she's home sitting on her ass, here's where she does it.

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.

Sometimes Susan's mental resolve weakens & she finds herself thinking OMG, I'm unemployed! 
Susan would like to establish that overall, she prefers to be employed. However, during this specific period of her life she is going to enjoy a bit of unemployment and get her balance back.

Susan finds it soothing to organize things. The fact that nothing stays that way has no bearing on the process. Actually, it's not accurate to say that things don't stay organized, because many things in her house do. The bedroom closet and kitchen cabinets are always in exemplary shape, the pantry is another scene entirely. It's an orgy of unrelated items piled on top of each other, co-mingling without any regard for decency.

The pantry is located behind bi-fold doors in her dining room. Her kitchen and dining room are technically rooms, but more closely resemble spaces one must pass through on the way out the back door. Susan's pantry also houses the washer & dryer and must hold laundry supplies as well as all manner of food, lesser used kitchen appliances such as the rice cooker and juicer as well as cook books, light bulbs, batteries, recycled newspapers and dog food. Bulky items such as extra paper goods are stored in the basement, but sometimes Susan forgets what she has down there and frivolously buys more.

Ever since her first day home from Acme Sweatshop she'd been eyeballing the pantry. Last week it became too much for her to ignore so she tore it apart.

It took the entire day, and then some, but at the end her unemployed brain was soothed and she had a place to keep her mostaccioli separated from her mayo.

Up next; Susan cleans her refrigerator!

The day after Susan's little backyard party for her son found her wandering the landscape of her yard like a zombied hostess collecting all the borrowed tables, chairs & coolers for return to their owners. There was very little trash because the party guests, including the teenagers, cleaned up after themselves, which is what civilized people do.

There was nothing fancy about the party, Susan made most of the food herself and even forgot a central component of the dessert, shortcake for the strawberries, but no one noticed because they were topped with cream whipped five minutes prior to serving. There were a few other failures, such as her panforte and inability to keep the food hot, but this did not deter her guests from eating everything except some grilled pineapple slices. 

Susan maintained a relaxed posture with her guests all afternoon which was directly proportionate to the amount of yelling at her family she had done that morning.

Special thanks go out to Susan's next door neighbor KB, who made a wonderful spinach & strawberry salad including a dressing which had to be prepared twenty four hours in advance. 

And to Cousin Greg for crawling underneath Susan's kitchen sink to tighten her faucet after asking 'What's with this faucet?'. He also bestowed an awesome gift of tequila in a bottle so large it could not fit in Susan's bar.

Teenage guest, Mike showed up after dark with a box of Entenmann's chocolate donuts resulting in eight grown-ups licking chocolate from their fingers in record time.

           *               *               *               *

Susan spent her Party Recovery Sunday moving very slowly, doing very little, staying within collapsing distance of the couch.

Susan opened a kitchen cabinet and five glass bowls stacked in descending size flung themselves downward ("Hey!") exploding on her fancy granite counter top.

This was no safety glass. Shanks and shards flew from the kitchen to the dining room.

Mercifully, Susan got only one small cut but the cleanup involved a three step process;
a straight edge was employed to sweep the debris directly into a big black contractor's garbage bag,
then the cumbersome wet-dry vac,
lastly, a series of wet paper towels to wipe up the sparkly glass dust.

There were no casualties beyond the glass bowls. Spared was the the brand new candy thermometer used for the panforte Susan made last night and the French press filled with hot coffee, a mug for which Susan originally opened the cabinet.

Does the last part of that sentence sound right? Susan opened the cabinet to get a mug and the sh*t fell on top of her.

The husband claimed responsibility for improperly stacking the glass bowls, Susan forgave him and they had coffee.

Susan is aware that she has traded the quality of her BLAHg posts for quantity and thanks everyone for pretending like they didn't notice. She hopes you find the minutiae of her quiet life charming, and are prepared to endure it for an unspecified period of time longer.

Today as she sat outside in the breezy quiet of the morning, listening to the birds, enjoying her coffee, appreciating the serenity of doing nothing, she noticed a wasp buzzing above her head. 

Susan was situated beneath a set of bamboo wind chimes hanging from the patio umbrella. They aren't so much chimes as they are a set of hollow pipes which knock into each other in the breeze and make a gentle, natural sound. The wasp had a long piece of dried grass and disappeared up one of the bamboo pipes.

Uh oh.

When a second wasp came buzzing around Susan jumped up in a panic, doused the wasps with bug spray and threw the chimes into the pool. Six or seven little wasp babies floated out of their former crib along with a parent. Susan fished them out of the pool and stomped them to death. After her righteous killing spree ended she set her attention to blasting the wasp nest out of her gentle wind chimes with the garden hose. Out shot a bunch of dead little bright green crickets.

Susan temporarily hung a set of bell chimes where the bamboo had been and for the rest of the day watched wasps buzzing around looking for their former domicile before flying off.

The CEO is Dead

Susan resigned from Acme Sweatshop this week.

Susan is at peace with her decision even though quitting without having another gig lined up may appear a little insane. She believes herself to be entitled to this sabbatical and alternates between feeling happily relaxed and somewhat untethered.
It's very unusual for her not to be working.
She has replaced those 40 + hours by slicing her thumb while using a sharp knife, driving around with the sunroof open, figuring out how to make pulled pork, scheduling a colonoscopy and missing her co-workers.

Susan's wardrobe also reflects her non-working status. She wears what she calls her Backyard Collection, a less ironed, more lived in version of her work clothes. The only criteria is that she look good and not be afraid to ruin anything when she sits down on a dirty Adirondack chair.
Everyone knows how Susan feels about looking unkempt. There's no reason for it.
Yesterday, while sitting outside the bank waiting for her son to deposit his $12.99 income tax return, she observed a standard issue mom from her neighborhood; sloppy, hair a mess, dressed like a bum climbing into an expensive SUV.
Ladies, is this how we want to represent ourselves?

Join Susan as she navigates her Summer of Unemployment and see which of her own standards she lowers.

Susan's daughter's sez that all her friends refer to Susan as 'The CEO'.
She assumes this is because the daughter has portrayed her mother as a professional person with some measure of responsibility. It could also be based on the fact that they've never met her because she's always working.

Anyway, Susan got a kick out of this moniker. She's often scrambling to keep up at Acme Sweatshop and any progress she makes is only temporary. She has not let this dissuade her. Every day she gets up, tries her hardest, works late, then comes home to a family that has lived their day without her.

Who recognizes the definition of insanity in this pattern?

The CEO took a couple of unscheduled days off and has spent her time opening windows, chatting in a relaxed manner with her children, scrubbing two bathrooms top to bottom, cutting late blooming lilacs for her table, reconnecting with friends, cooking dinner and considering what direction she wants her life to take.

Susan and her son were horsing around in the living room, he's eighteen with a wrestler's physique and she's an elderly woman. Shortly after the son's cell phone hit the floor and Susan faked like she was going to stomp on it she found herself flying sideways through the air. She's not sure what happened, but her brain sped through a checklist of everything in her way and she knew it was going to hurt.

She crashed into it all and slammed to the floor.

The son and husband were on her in a flash, but Susan was in no condition to move. Lucy the dog came over and licked her face, Susan didn't care, her immediate thought was of the old bottle of Vicodin she found in a kitchen cabinet yesterday.

After a few minutes of wondering if she had broken anything other than the IKEA table, Susan was hoisted to her feet nauseous and in pain. She limped out the back door to get air, and to make sure she could walk.

The pain was concentrated in two areas; her left hip & ribs. Nothing was poking out, so that was a relief, but she couldn't take a deep breath or bend without wincing then crying. The hip turned a purpley black and was quite impressive getting a wow! from the daughter. The son stuck around long enough to wait for his ride to the movies then he was gone.

Feel better soon, Susan.

Susan has ants in her house, which aren't the worst things to have crawling around, but they're a bit of a nuisance.
Here are some places Susan has found ants:

• In the bathroom sink
• On the kitchen counter
• In the coffee machine
• In the sugar bowl
• On her sandwich
• On her computer screen
• On her person

The neighbors directly across the street from Susan were evicted yesterday morning and as a result there was a tremendous amount of sh*t at the curb, except that Susan's neighborhood doesn't have curbs, so it was all piled up in the street.
All night cars pulled up and carted off pieces of the pile including a fella with half his ass cleavage hanging out. Susan tried to take his picture but wasn't quick enough.
Normally, Susan would have been right there with them, but it looked more like a hoarder's pile and Susan's already got a few of her own at home.

Did everybody have a good first day?
Susan did.
She went to bed at 2am and emerged eight hours later fully rested ready to spend the day in her pajamas reading the papers, pouring Bailey's into her coffee, baking biscotti, watching an Odd Couple marathon, getting frustrated by her new laptop and going to the movies.
Susan has resolved to go to the movies more. She thinks it's something she can commit to.

Sunday morning all of Susan's frustrations with her children let loose as she loudly and demonstratively admonished them for being the lazy, passive aggressive pricks that she raised them to be. Afterward she felt a better but it still didn't keep her from stomping around the house and starting in on the husband.

She got herself to relax by rolling some Asian meatballs.

The previous evening, Susan's little corner of the universe was reintroduced to winter temperatures complete with snow, not much, but still snow. After Susan's righteous hysterics, the daughter headed out to her figure drawing class in a little denim jacket and sockless feet tucked into her shoes but was blown back inside by a blast of arctic winds.

Susan's son, the high school wrestler, was dispatched out of her sight to clean the subterranean living space so that G-mama and Pippity Pop (the Old Folks) could sleep down there on Tuesday night.

After the meatballs, Susan prepped Slow Cooker Experiment Number Three  and dumped the mess into the slow cooker for the next eight hours.

With the yelling out of the way Susan settled in and spent the entire day in her PJs, it was very relaxing for her.

Food verdict: The slow cooker experiment lacked complexity, but Susan's stubborn so she's going to work on it. The family was split on the Asian meatballs but Susan didn't like them so that's that.

Snow Days

Susan went to Acme Sweatshop on Friday prepared to sleep over. Luckily, the husband was able to get her out and they took an expanded commute home dodging fishtailing cars and snowy ditches. They made it all the way to the end of their block before getting stuck.

Susan shoveled snow till she was dizzy and nauseous. She isn't used to performing manual labor beyond lifting a heavy cast iron pot to the stove. She doesn't have the stamina or the lower back of a young woman any more. She trudged home and dispatched her son to help his father while she shoveled knee deep snow from the street to the driveway.
Eventually the car made it up the driveway and her family members into the house where they've been ever since because Susan's block has not yet been plowed.

Susan has been thoroughly enjoying her snowy weekend relaxing in her PJs, making chili, catching up on her twistedsusaning, taking naps, corresponding with friends, making carrot ginger soup & Moroccan whole chickpea hummus, reorganizing her bedroom closet and doing all manner of leisurely indoor things.

Unfortunately, being snowed in also resulted in no Sunday papers and having to beg a hand me down can of Folgers from Susan's non-coffee-drinking next door neighbor who was nice enough to personally deliver the stuff in the height of the blizzard.  The Folgers can reads 'Wake Up To Rich, Pure Taste', they must be referring to any other coffee in the world because the brown water their grinds produce is foul and putrid.

Enjoy your week, guys!