Susan hates to answer the door.
Once it's opened, that's it, she's stuck with whoever's standing there; drunk neighbors, political pollsters, teenagers selling magazines, costumed children seeking candy. She hates all of it.

This is not to be confused with the Drop In. Susan loves the Drop In. Please, drop in anytime. She hates to hear Oh, I was going to drop in but I didn't. Please, drop in!
Call ahead, don't call ahead, whatever.
Although, she wouldn't mind if you gave her ten minutes notice to clean the toilet.

Susan's not going to mention NaBloPoMo. Maybe she'll do it, maybe she won't. It'll be exciting to find out what she decides.

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

Here's Wild Bill holding his birthday gift from Susan's son.

Wild Bill is big on flags and history and politics and is in the habit of opining at great length on each*. He carries a copy of The Constitution to keep him occupied when he has some free time and has been known to liberate a flag when incorrectly displayed.

Wild Bill enthusiastically educated Susan's children on the history of this particular flag; the Gadsen flag.

It was named for Colonel Christopher Gadsen who was involved with the first mission of the Navy in 1775. Accompanied by the Marines, the Navy was established to grab incoming British ships carrying war supplies to their troops in the colonies. The Marines carried yellow drums on which a coiled rattlesnake with thirteen rattles and the motto Don't Tread On Me were painted. Afterwards, Gadsen made up some flags and gave them away to a bunch of important people.

The first reference to the rattlesnake was made in a satirical commentary by that smart and funny guy, Ben Franklin twenty five years earlier. Four years later he used a picture of a snake cut into eight sections, representing the colonies, with the message Join or Die; the original political cartoon.

Wild Bill, fun and informative.

Footnote:
*A habit he picked up from his old man

Susan liked these illuminated peace signs that she saw in the window of a store in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. They were very primitive in their construction, just light bulbs held within a cardboard form, but they pulled Susan up the block with their inviting glow.

Can you believe that Susan's teeth still hurt? Not as much as a week ago when she slept in her clothes for two days, but enough to still require ibuprofen. Right now she's making her jaw ache by fiddling with the remaining stitches and when she opens her mouth wide enough she can feel where the BIG needle went in.

While she's on the topic she'd like to thank everyone who took her dental procedure seriously and made nice comments so she'd feel better. Same with the blog photo recommendations.

Y'all rock!

Susan and her daughter took a road trip to Ohio this past weekend. They were invited by Susan's little sister to accompany her on the eight hour drive she has to make in order to visit her husband.

He's not in jail, the current economy just dictates that in order to be employed he has to live and work two states away from his family.

Ohio is so pretty! They saw trees in full autumn splendor and rocks and waterfalls and beautifully rusted machinery in apple orchards and rolling hills with ribbons of fog and tons of dead things on the side of the road.

Susan took pictures of her trip and has been f*cking around for the last two hours trying to post them instead of sleeping because
it's already tomorrow and she's tired!

She can't get them to appear in the order of her preference and she knows that there is some simple solution but she doesn't know what it is right now!

Before she left, Susan's hardrive selfishly killed itself as well as all her pictures and music. This has nothing to do with her current problem, but she's very frustrated and just wanted to mention it.

One side of Susan's face is still swollen and a little black & blue. She's been using her tongue to play with the disintegrating stitches in her mouth but has been able to downshift from vicodin to ibuprofen for the pain.

Wild Bill came out to spend the afternoon which forced Susan to take a shower and change her clothes, something she hadn't done in 36 hours.
His daughter met them for lunch at a local hippie cafe, Susan ate the carrot ginger soup. Afterwards they walked a few doors down to the used book store where Wild Bill purchased forty pounds of books on WWII for nineteen dollars.

Their little sister came over for dinner and Susan ate some real food; soft chicken breast on top of salad greens with cranberries and goat cheese.
Again with the goat cheese.
She spent the rest of the evening farting.

Vicodin and farina.
Amoxicillin and yogurt.
Ice and a kitchen towel.

The pain in Susan's mouth woke her up during the night and she found herself spending a portion of that time in the company of the Hollywood Housewives.
All nice ladies.

The smell of coffee got her out of bed in the morning. It was her son's coffee, he's fourteen and he drinks coffee now.
Did you know that? Well, he does.

Susan made herself a small pot of coffee and a bowl of farina. While she waited for each to cool down she applied a towel filled with ice to her face and turned on her birthday laptop. Only it wouldn't turn on. Ultimately it was ascertained by Taufiq J of HP that the hardrive was defective and he's sending Susan another one. Ugh.
For the next few days she'll have to fight her way onto the old laptop, or she could avoid the line and sit down at the regular computer.
At least she has options, could you imagine if she were totally offline? It's too upsetting for her to even think about.

She baked a wonderfully soft batch of carrot applesauce muffins which she was able to eat without chewing.
And took a nap.

Susan hadn't notice that June's Bye Bye Pie was left off Sharing Is Caring. She doesn't understand how this omission eluded her for almost two weeks because she looks forward to checking in with June every day.
Or every other day.
Or as often as her schedule will allow.
Susan would apologize to June but it's apparent that June doesn't know Susan exists and wouldn't know what Susan was talking about.

Well, June gets alot of commenters so it's probably easy to overlook Susan even though she leaves June comments about how much she likes her hair everytime she gets it cut.

Or maybe June purposely overlooks Susan because there is never anything worthy of her commentary. Susan doesn't comment on every post she reads either, and she reads everyone on Sharing Is Caring. Anyway.

Susan's enjoying her mid-morning BLAHging in her pajamas, next she's making chili with sweet potatoes and later she's going to the health food store for more vanilla beans to make her own vanilla extract.
Then to the dentist.

Susan is taking a three day vacation from Acme Sweatshop during which she'll get some teeth pulled, go to the library, read, bake stuff, stay up late, listen to music, watch old movies, play with her dog, make curry and hopefully finish up an art project.

She put a boring Sunday to good use by making Deb's roasted eggplant soup because she had all the ingredients, including the goat cheese. Susan loves goat cheese and will argue that it enhances everything that it rubs up against.
She made a serving's worth of quick croutons & had a lovely lunch alongside her friend the laptop, of whose companionship she never tires.

Susan asked her daughter to rate her as a mother using the standard one to ten scale; one being awful and ten being wonderful.

An hour earlier Susan made her daughter cry when she yelled; 'You go out and work fifty hours a week, not make enough money, come home, and I'll b*tch at you the way you b*tch at me.' Anyway, what do you think Susan's number was? You're going to be surprised.

Susan was awarded an 8.5!

The daughter thought Susan would be upset that she didn't get a 10 but Susan is a realistic person with imperfections and knew she couldn't possibly score a 10. She inquired of the daughter what she might have to do for a 10 & it was recommended that she eliminate some yelling.

The daughter's gonna have to be happy with an 8.5 mom.

Alright, Susan tried to slide Batman by instead of thinking up something to BLAHg about. What, you've never done that?

She continues not to have anything to say unless you want to hear how she's having three teeth pulled next week. Or maybe it's two pulled and one grinded down. Grinded? Whatever.

She wore an outfit today that she didn't like, is that interesting?
This isn't going to get any better.

Susan used to drive a minivan.
She was totally taken by surprise the first time she ever drove a minivan because she immediately fell in LOVE with the minivan.
Immediately.
In LOVE.
She doesn't even remember what she thought of minivans prior to falling in LOVE with one because the LOVE was so transformative that it completely obliterated all previous abstract thoughts and feelings about minivans.
There was only LOVE.

She filled her minivan with small children and their stuff. Then with girlfriends, their small children and their stuff. Then everyone drove somewhere together laughing and talking and being very comfortable.

Susan no longer requires the seating and space of a minivan and drives something reliably utilitarian that looks like every other car in the parking lot. She has a favorite bumper sticker advertising a local bookstore which she has been happy to slap on a number of her cars. She also has a least favorite sticker that makes her wonder about the person who chose it.

Always on a minivan.
Rear window, driver's side.
You know which one it is.
The cartoon lineup of the van owner's family and pets.

It starts out with the emascalating figure of a husband in shorts and mouse ears, then the bland mother in shorts & mouse ears and so forth.
Susan wonders what woman sees her husband as a sexless one dimensional line drawing and if she sees herself that way too.

Susan was clearing out some of the unattended blogs over at Sharing Is Caring and managed to remove everyone.
Jerk.
She's put a bunch back but needs all her bloggy pals to take a look & let her know who's missing. Everyone who leaves a comment gets included, today and always.

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.

A Letter From Nanny

Susan's niece asked to borrow a book last week and tucked inside were two letters from Susan's Nanny.

They were written well over twenty years ago, before any of Susan's nieces were born, back when Susan could still lose ten pounds in a week by staying away from sugar and white bread.

She was a good Nanny; quick to bust out a song or a story about the old days or scare you off with a glimpse of her arthritic toes.

In this letter, Nanny's sending Susan three dollars for her birthday and reminiscing about the weekend the family was together to bury her son, Susan's Uncle Butch.

Somewhere there's a picture of Wild Bill holding eggs up to his eyes and making everybody laugh.
Thanks for the memory, Nanny.
Catch you later.

Susan thinks she's going to enforce a limit on how many words a person can speak to her per conversation. There's just too many she's got to listen to and half of them aren't necessary. This rule is applicable to many of her relationships but she's thinking of a few specific people.

Often she just walks away.

Susan doesn't need to hear extraneous details or listen to the conversator make their point more than once or provide a political opinion or speak on a topic with which they are unfamilar. It's obvious.
Don't make sh*t up and don't brag.
OMG, don't brag.
You will be evicerated.

Recently Susan was present while two co-workers were having a discussion involving space men vacationing on planet earth and a government cover up. Susan recommended that they continue the conversation in private because they sounded f*cking insane.

Susan stole this from Nick Holmes.
She thinks she loves him.

You know Susan was just kidding about the soul mates, right?

Susan was reading this post by NieNie which made her recall when the UPS man saw her naked.

Stop her if you've heard this story already.

Well, Susan was totally alone in the house.

Fresh from the shower she went into the kitchen to replay a telephone message. The sunlight was streaming through the windows as she bent over the answering machine,

ass to the door
and heard a quick knock.
She turned around just in time to see the UPS man walk away.

Susan and the husband recently completed sixteen years of marriage and boy, they just flew by. Flew by.
She likes to think of herself and the husband as soul mates. Isn't that romantic?
Soul mates, indeed.

Would you believe her if she said that they haven't had a bad year yet?
Not an entire year.
Portions of some years have been bad
and Susan has not always been happy with her soul mate. Not at all.
But, she she sticks it out with him day after day the same way he sticks it out with her. They have things in common, like watching The Pope of Greenwich Village together, liking half & half in their coffee and having two children.

He's funny when he tells Susan
They are all jealous of our love.
Susan and the husband even made a video of their love. Twice.
Then erased the uninspiring evidence immediately after the initial viewings.

Susan still hasn't found her wedding ring. She stopped looking although she offered the kids $100 if they could find it. Susan assumes that one day a replacement will have to be purchased after which she'd like to renew her vows. The soul mate has already agreed to this.
From that day forward Susan will pay attention to where she puts things.

Susan's daughter told her that she was mean.
It was a few weeks ago while they were standing outside the Chinese Food Buffet,
of which Susan is not a fan, and she was speculating that the size of the patrons' asses would match their plates of greasy spare ribs and fried rice. Susan preferred to think of herself as accurate although she definitely inserted a bit of meanness for her own entertainment.

Days later Susan's daughter told her that she was critical.
The family was sitting at the dinner table and Susan was criticizing someone who didn't think or feel or do things exactly the way Susan does.
Susan is aware that she's critical but to hear it stated so simply from the twelve year old she was teaching by her example was a little startling.

The meanness she could do something about but what would be left of her personality if she could not be critical? There would be nothing for her to say.

Children ruin everything.

Susan is going to give a negative review of George Clooney's new movie, so get ready.

It wasn't as bad as Inception because that would be impossible.

Susan would more accurately liken it to sitting in a waiting room for an hour and forty five minutes without any magazines.

The movie starts out good when George Clooney has to shoot his girlfriend in the back of the head. Oh, no!
Then he builds a gun for over an hour.

At the very end he booby-traps the gun which blows off the side of a pretty face. Neat!
But that was it.
Five good minutes in the beginning and another five at the end. Then he dies.

Susan's going to watch Michael Clayton again.

Let's all say thanks to Linlah for sharing this.
Thanks, Linlah!

Susan took a quick spin thru the thrift store right around dinnertime and found it overrun with Spanish people and their screaming children. Well, it's always overrun with Spanish people and their screaming children but on this particular trip the kids were out of control. One little boy was in negative blood sugar meltdown and the mother's response was to drag him across the floor yelling What's wrong with you?
It was quite entertaining.

Moments later a very aggitated voice came over the loudspeaker demanding that parents keep their children by their side, there were to be no children running in the aisles, no jumping, throwing or rolling. The list of prohibited behaviors went on for a good forty five seconds followed immediately by the sound of a microphone being slammed down.
Tre adorable! Grown men and women were scolded by a public address system.

Oh, and the husband located Susan's green ribbed top, it had fallen behind the dresser. Now her wedding band is gone.
Really, the f*cking thing was on the bathroom vanity and now it's gone.
She's managed to hang onto it for almost sixteen years so she's not going to panic yet, but she's getting ready.

Susan hasn't figgered out where her green ribbed top is yet. She looked in a few more places where it wasn't then tried to badger the huband into a confession.
He wasn't cracking.

In the meantime Susan's getting ready for her three day vacation which is really only two days because she has to leave on the third day. But, they'll be two full days of waking up and going to sleep between which she'll be enjoying the company of her favorite vacationing companions, Cousin Lisa and her husband.

After she gets back she'll get to pal around with her recently absent brother in law who left his family behind and moved to another state in order to find work. More on this later when Susan's not so tired from late night blogging.

Has anyone seen Susan's green ribbed top?
It's sleeveless with a V neck and she likes to wear it with one of her black and white skirts. There's not too many places it could have gone to, it's either in the closet, somebody's drawer or the laundry,
except it's not. She extrapolated that the husband must have disposed of it after he washed & shrunk it, or poured bleach on it. Susan has enough anecdotal evidence to support her theory and dismissed the husband's claim that she's paranoid.
What nerve.
Susan needs all her clothes and can't go sacrificing even one little thing. She has a personal relationship with each top, bottom and inbetween. They do their best every day to prop her up and send her off feeling good.

She's launching an investigation.

Later this month Susan and her family will be going away for three days.
Yes, you read that correctly, three days!
No more b*tching about never going anywhere because Susan's going somewhere and she's bringing rum, mint and limes.
She's going to have herself a little vacation after all.

Susan had the opportunity to watch Lindsay Lohan's mom on TV the other morning. Susan observed her to be a very unsophisticated thinker with limited conversational skills, and possibly a little bit of a fibber, who is determined to push her daughter farther toward a Valley of the Dolls ending. Very sad.
But sadder still was her hair.
Stop doing it at home, Lindsay's mom.
Get out to a salon already.

Uh-oh, Susan missed a day of blogging for boring NaBloPoMo. She assures you it wasn't on purpose, it was that tricky day nine. Damn that day nine!
Well, she can't in good conscience continue knowing that she broke the rules. She's off to punish herself by eating potato chips in bed. She'll see you soon!

Do you know who I am? I'm Mo Green!

Go, green Bobby Lee, go!

OMG really, who saw Inception?
Not saw. Wrong word choice.
Who endured the punishing monotony that was Inception?

Was there anyone from Susan's modest fan base who was able to sit on their asses for the entire ten years it took for that movie to play out?

Susan will admit to liking some of the effects, particularly when Juno folded the city streets up and over her head, or when that guy was weightless and trying to kill those other guys. That was neat.
But the rest, oy.

The way Juno talked and talked and talked;
I know what's going on, you put everyone in jeopardy, blah, blah, blah. Enough!
And, DiCaprio and his dead wife being so in love. Really? They must have met in a teenage girl's fantasy.

Who cared about anything in that movie especially the end. Was it reality or a dream? Here's Susan's question for you;
WHO CARES?

Let's talk about something that Susan is totally interested in, Jersey Shore! She's got so many fave parts from last week's episode that she doesn't know where to start.
The tranny clothing store was fantastic, JWoww's outfits are the best, Susan is completely mesmerized by those boobs.
If JWoww's boobs had a show Susan would watch. Roni and Sammi are always good fun but Angelina is showing real talent for entertaining behavior. Susan knows that someone's going to get punched real soon but she doesn't know if she can wait that long. Oh, the agony of Jersey Shore angst!

Day 7 is a fave in our house

Day 6, even better than Day 5

Day 5, enjoy.

Day 4

Susan was not filled with envious green rage on day three of boring NaBloPoMo but she found some forgotten tomatoes in her fridge and fed them to her family instead of throwing them in the compost. This is her offering for the day, she knows it doesn't even make sense but she's tired.

Day two and Susan is already bored with NaBloPoMo. She's hasn't shaken her pathetic envy of people with money and all she wants to do is fight with her husband about it. Thus far she has resisted but five minutes from now is up for grabs.

Susan has a compost pile in her yard,
here's a link go make one.
Day two, green.
Done.

Susan was all set to ignore NaBloPoMo as she does each month because really, wasn't once enough? She can BLAHg every day on her own if she wants to, and she never wants to.

However, while experiencing the sudden uprising of some extreme jealousies Susan noticed that Green is the topic for this month.
Green
The color of her BLAHg
and all the money absent from her life
and her seething envy.

She took it as a sign and suddenly saw the topic for a month's worth of posts.

Susan doesn't consider herself a jealous person, I mean, she b*tches alot but that's different. Susan views jealousy as being sad, like having an essential discontentedness with things. Susan is just frustrated and a little TWISTED.
Just a smidge.
The teeniest little bit.
You may not have even noticed.

Susan has things pretty good.
She's got a husband & children she still talks to, a house with two new shower heads thanks to a decaying bathroom wall,
people who love her, a job she likes and reliable transportation.
All of this has been temporarily obliterated by vacation envy.

Susan hasn't had a proper vacation in a while and it didn't help that she hated the last two. She generally suffers from a mild form of vacation related jealousy which is easily dealt with by getting up and leaving the room whenever anyone starts talking about theirs. Unfortunately, during this season of vacations there is no escape because that's all everyone talks about. Susan has actually sought refuge in the bathroom to keep from overhearing the unsolicited details of a summer vacation.

Over the weekend Susan's family found themselves knee deep in other people's vacation conversations. Susan's daughter, who Susan thought knew better, asked quite aggitatedly why they couldn't go on vacation as if it were something Susan was witholding from her on purpose.

Susan chased the daughter away by throwing a pound of macaroni salad at her.

Susan loves Jersey Shore. LOVES it.
She can't understand what everyone's so crazy about;
who cares that they're dopey and bronzed and get arrested for public drunkenness and have hot tub hook-ups and don't wear underpants and have big boobs and fist pump and tawk like dis and vomit and have questionable decision making skills.

As for making Jersey look bad...it's friggin' Jersey for Crissakes.

Snooki, JWoww, The Situation, Ronnie, et al are delightfully entertaining and Susan will punch you in the face and pull your hair out and talk sh*t behind your back if you don't believe her, b*tch.

No really, Susan was watching it with smoking, Pabst drinking Jesus.
He totally LOVES Jersey Shore too.

Don't you love Susan's smoking and Pabst drinking Jesus? She saw him over at Friggin Loon and dragged him off with her because she takes whatever she wants (just like when she was twenty three). Plus, a one dimensional Jesus has no power over Susan. None at all. 

And, may she update you on the fake birthday nun? She's been subpoenaed by the NYS Attorney General! Susan may yet get her three dollars back. Susan's biggest fear, aside from getting Lou Gehrig's disease, is winding up on the front page of the NY Post. Susan can't even imagine how awful it would be to read about any of the stupid things she's done combined with having to look at an unflattering photo of herself. Maybe one showing her jiggly upper arms or waggly neck or just wearing a bad outfit, although that rarely happens. It's guaranteed that she'll provide them a quote she wishes she hadn't. A few years back Susan quite enjoyed reading about the well paid civil servant targeted by the Post. The reporter stood outside his office building & documented how many breaks he took, how long they were and where he went. This poor slob was fired & eventually sentenced to 366 days in jail for bribe taking. Last month reporters woke up transit workers sleeping on their graveyard shifts and photographed them. Fired. 

Susan much prefers to live under the radar.

Remember last week when Susan's family was in NYC for the daughter's birthday?

Well, while they were walking in Little Italy they gave three dollars to a nun in a real old school get-up.

Look who ended up on the front page of the NY Post along with this story.

Susan's normally seasonable corner of the universe has been horribly hot and muggy for such a long time she can't even remember when she didn't feel like she was dipped in oil and rolled in salt.

Susan panicked when she found out there might be some record breaking temperatures over the next few days.
Oh, for the love of God.
Enough already!

She created a heat management plan which involved mangoes, ice and extended periods spent floating in the pool. Then she painted her toenails.

Alright, so nobody liked Susan's street art. That's fine, she likes it enough for everybody.

Whip 'Em Out Wednesday

Happy Birthday, Miss Twelve!

Susan's daughter is turning twelve this weekend and has requested to go to the least interesting place in the world;
Times Square.
Specifically she has requested to visit the Hershey's and M&Ms stores.

The weekend promises to be hot and muggy, perfect for carrying five pounds of melted chocolate, eating crappy grease drenched food and generally being in a bad mood.

Susan, not her daughter.

Susan's daughter will be in a fantastic mood because her mother is going to shower her with fake enthusiasm and treat her like the sweet little queen that she is by letting her do whatever she wants until the budget breaks.

Wish Susan luck.

Susan had no idea when she woke up this morning that this would be the first day of her emancipation.

It started quite normally with blue skies, the Sunday papers and children grumbling about having to go back to the church of their mother's experiment after a lengthy absence.

When the family returned home Susan changed into something more appropriate for the summer heat and set about the business of enjoying the day. She took her new birthday laptop out to sit under the shade on the deck and check her e-mail.

Ugh, a message from Facebook;

Somebody posted something on your Wall and wrote something boring.

Susan f*cking HATES FB and is sorry she ever let her little sister sign her up for it.
She originally thought that it might be a good way to keep track of her nieces who were not always accessible because they had better things to do than anything Aunt Sue could offer them.

Pretty soon some of Susan's cousins had profiles, and her out of state girlfriends, and her children, which started a war with the husband but he backed off, and then everyone else in the universe including Wild Bill's much loathed former spouse who used FB to spy on everyone until they figured out to change their privacy settings.

Unfortunately, no one ever wrote anything interesting unless one finds misspelled tedium with lots of exclamation points interesting.

Susan does not.

As a coping mechanism she would prowl FB after hours writing nasty comments on deserving friends' walls, unfriending them one by one.

Today was the day that she reached her limit for insipid blathering and deleted her profile.

Goodbye FB friends, some of you weren't friends anyway, as for the rest,
she'll see you in real life.

Susan was reading a story in the local paper about a man who commemorated the 4th of July by stuffing some explosive shells down a length of pipe and blowing his shoulder off. The arm went too.
Later, she caught the drunken eyewitness interviews on the news.
Oy.
Susan can think of few things more embarrassing than having to tell people that she blew her arm off on the 4th of July.
Yeah man, we were all drunk!
It was a great party up until the arm thing.
You gotta come next year.

OMG guys, Susan was so busy last week throwing out food spoiled by her no longer functioning refrigerator that she never told you about the husband's eldest daughter's visit over the weekend.

The last time Susan saw her was here, and that was a long time ago. Normally Susan is very entertained by the husband's daughter but Susan practically didn't even care that she was coming because Susan was really only interested in the daughter's twin boys. Twin boys!

The parents walked through the front door each carrying a chubbly wubbly nineteen month old in need of a haircut. Interesting distribution of genetics resulted in each boy resembling one of the parents but not each other.

Very quickly it was revealed the neither was going to fall in love with Susan during their short visit.

It was a hot day, Susan was sweating and behind schedule, as she usually is, so she jumped in the shower then ran out to the supermarket. Upon her return she became reacquainted with what it's like to have toddlers in the house. Each was stripped down to a diaper and beyond adorable.
They very suspiciously eyeballed Susan,
one was intrigued but the other wanted nothing to do with her.
Susan knew exactly what he was thinking, Forget this b*tch, mama.

The mother of the twins offered them some hummus, the boys displayed their discerning palates by dipping in their crackers, sucking the hummus off, then dipping them in again until the crackers became too soggy for another trip. This didn't bother Susan, it takes more than sloppy babies to turn her off to food. However, wiping their sticky hummusy fingers all over their bare baby chests was a little yukky. When they climbed up on mommy to wipe their fingers all over her clothes, Susan moved away. That was her limit. The delicate Susan is barely able to hold herself together in the summer heat and found it too hot for twins with messy fingers.

The twins were very charming toddling all over the deck, babbling mama mama mama mama mama mama mama, both hoisting themselves up on her lap at the same time using her shirt for leverage, rubbing their little faces with their chubby hands. Susan made herself an alcoholic beverage with a lot of ice.

A short few years ago when the generation immediately behind Susan began having babies Susan felt sort of pushed out of the way, even though she couldn't have any more babies and she really didn't want any more. Susan understands that she no longer has what it takes to do the grunt work.
That's ok.

Susan and her family attended her youngest niece's high school graduation over the weekend (Hooray Liz!) and came home to a house that smelled like dog diarrhea which had been baking in a hot airless environment for hours because Susan, ever paranoid of home invasions, locks the windows every time she leaves the house.
Was that sentence too long?
Well, she's not changing it.

The source of the stench was located behind the couch, a cleanable area. Susan walked away and let the husband clean it.
In the meantime, she sent the kids over to be nice to the dog who was cowering in the hallway with her tail between her legs.

As Susan listened to the sounds of dog diarrhea being cleaned off the floor she reflected on how how lucky she was to have a husband who takes on dirty tasks without being asked.

When he finished they retired for the evening.

A few hours later the dog requested to use the restroom by sticking her wet nose in a sleeping Susan's face. Susan let her out into a dark yard then went over to investigate the cleanliness of the crime scene while she waited. Gasp! It was splattered with diarrhea again!

It was Susan's turn to clean.

On Monday Susan knocked her son's brand new Old Spice bodywash off the shelf in the shower and onto her foot.
Ouch you m*therf*cker, ouch!
She watched as a monstrous red bump rose immediately from the instep of her delicate size 10 foot.
She wore flip flops to work even though Acme Sweatshop does not observe a flip flop dress code.
Every day she watched the mark on her foot get larger and purpler, eventually it began to reverse course and get lighter because, how much damage could 16 fluid ounces really do? By Friday her foot was back to normal.
The end.

Susan thinks she fell asleep in front of an Excel spreadsheet. Late in the day she rested her eyes for the teeniest moment, the next time she opened them three columns of information were missing and her head was about to crash into the desk.

She's fallen asleep in public before, but that was back in her twenties and she was usually drunk.

Her old man used to fall asleep in church all the time. He'd listen devoutly for as long as he could before his attention span gave out and sweet sleep came to rescue him. Slowly he would tilt forward in his seat until his head jerked back and he'd wake himself up. A teenage Susan found this horribly embarrassing and poked him awake as often as was necessary.

Susan has always been a BIG fan of the nap. The ability to remove oneself from consciousness for an hour is the height of luxury. The absolute tops.

Susan dropped off the map for a little bit to spend time with her folks and then recover from having spent time with them. Over the weekend she held her BIG happy birthday party, the one from which she banned all children. In fact, she banned everyone under forty and it worked out so well she may employ that criteria again. The day after the party she felt the full effect of having stayed up late enjoying her guests, drinking and smoking cigars.

Susan struggles with entertaining and tried to avoid the areas of previous party failures like not having enough food, chairs or ice. She rarely provides enough soda because she doesn't think anyone should be drinking it to begin with. In the past she's had to stop mingling in order to wash dishes, hunt down serving utensils and climb up on chairs to look for more red plastic cups.

This time she did as much planning as she was physically able to tolerate but still found herself making critical decisions the day before she needed to feed and entertain people. She abandoned most of the food she was going to make in favor of things she could purchase, and a trip to the health food store provided her with all sorts of options for the compartments of her '70s lazy susan.

She took Friday off from work to clean her pantry, it's not what she intended to do but it's what she ended up doing. Saturday was spent stomping around the house in a completely humorless state taking care of all pre-party tasks. She found the time to scream at the husband when the CD player stopped working even though she knew there was something wrong with it two years ago.

Don't say anything, she's aware that CD players are ridiculously '90s.

She cleaned the bathrooms, strung colored lights along the deck, set the table then jumped in the shower where she relaxed and unclenched her jaw. Susan emerged refreshed, put on her party dress and had a lovely evening.

In a day or two she'll tell you about the wonderful gift she had to hand back to the givers.

When Susan got up yesterday morning Wild Bill was on the couch under a pink Barbie quilt and her folks were drinking the weak coffee her mother makes. When she got home they were gone. Susan read the note they left, did laundry, went through a week's worth of newspapers, returned a few things to their regular locations and advised her son how to get spray paint off his hands.

Her parents were pretty good guests, they ate what they were served as long as they didn't think they were eating onions, garlic or peppers, they were nice to the dog even after she growled at Susan's old man, they even read one of the books on Susan's shelf.

During their visit both Susan and Wild Bill's daughter had birthdays so there was plenty of cake to eat. There was also take-out because the husband was away for three days and he usually does the cooking.

Even though Susan missed her company she quickly fell back into the rhythm of her normal home life and felt very un-TWISTED.

Saturday morning Susan, her little sister and their mother went yard sale-ing and OMG did Susan get some good stuff! Five dollars went to a stylish rattan handbag then another five went to a dead lady's black beaded necklace. Her biggest yard sale coup came in the form of a genuine 1970s artifact; a red, orange and gold ceramic lazy susan which she purchased for a dollar. Absolutely horrible.
It would be perfect for her impending birthday cocktail party.

Even though Susan's been planning her party for two months one very important component is starting to fall apart; the food. Susan researched intriguing recipes fitting the criteria of what she'd like to serve and has been roadtesting them one by one,
thus far she doesn't like anything. She has a week to get things together or she'll be mixing Lipton onion soup mix into sour cream and serving chips.

Anyway. In the afternoon Susan took a break from never spending any money on her children and brought them to the mall. The son needed sneakers and a soccer ball and the daughter needed shorts and a giant icecream drink with whipped cream.

The daughter's friend came along and Susan allowed the girls to shop without her as long as they kept in touch via text. The son didn't mind sticking with his mother for awhile which was a pleasant surprise.

Susan's daughter texted her location almost immediately. Good girl. Then she texted another location. Good again. Susan left the son in one store so she so she could go across to another.

While in the dressing room the son texted something requiring a response, so Susan sent a quick text back.

Then the daughter texted something requiring a response. In the interest of expediency and because Susan was in mid strip she phoned and got the voicemail. Susan texted Answer your phone! which solved the problem.

Little sister was headed to the mall with one of Susan's nieces, she texted wanting to know Susan's location. Susan texted back.

Then Susan's mother phoned wanting to know what everyone was doing for dinner.

Then Susan's husband called to let her know that he was on his way to the airport to come home from where he had been for the last three days.

Then Susan's son texted looking for her.

Then her daughter texted requesting that Susan come quickly with her charge card.

Then little sister texted looking for her.

Susan's still in that dressing room stripped to her underpanties.

Hugs and kisses from Susan to all her bloggy pals who take time out of their regular lives to write nice things and make her feel good every day.
Simple Jack probably best captured how she feels when he said
'You m-m-m-m-m-make me happy!'

Susan turned 50 today, hooray for her!

She cartwheeled out of bed and was greeted by applause everywhere she went.

What a day.

But really folks, it was a great birthday that started with a pumpernickel bagel and ended with cake. In between there were mojitos & a nap, Wild Bill's garlic soup, unbelievably fantastic mashed potatoes and fried chicken cutlets. Oh, Susan got a couple of good gifts including a brand new laptop just for her!

Susan's house guests took their babies and went back home. For the rest of the day she still heard them in her house even though they weren't there.

Susan likes having guests although she can't always adjust to having their stuff in her house. She found herself looking for a balance between completely turning off her OCD brain and collecting, cataloguing & grouping everything together in one location every five minutes.

During their stay they turned Susan on to

3o Rock and 992 coupons while Susan made mojitos and shared Fawlty Towers. After they left Susan occupied herself by washing all the towels in the house to prepare for the next wave, her folks in two days.

Susan's been writing late at night which has resulted in a decrease in her ability to think up funny sentences.
She's sorry. She wants to be funny for her modest fan base but her little BLAHgy paragraphs take up a lot of time as well as mental effort and she can't do any of this stuff at work because she's really gotten used to being employed. But she takes notes during periods of inspiration and tries to get to the computer before midnight.

Another problem comes from knowing who reads her BLAHg which limits what she is willing to write. Like, her mother. She could have gone in a whole other direction with that. Mothers are funny to make fun of anyway. I mean, wouldn't it be hilarious if she wrote that her mother was like the monkey who ripped the hands and face off that lady? Susan's LOL-ing just thinking about writing that.
But she can't because her mother would cry and that's not funny. Susan absolutely does not want her mother to cry, she doesn't want anybody's mother to cry. You know, because of her.

Susan decided long ago that she didn't want to be mean, just angry. Mean is better done in person when vocal inflections and facial expressions can be employed. Words are easily misunderstood if the right ones are not used in the proper order. Susan's much more comfortable with anger, it sort of fuels her day. Besides, there's plenty to be angry about.
Being broke is a scream, OMG is that funny!
TWISTED bad moods? Funny.
Farts? Funny.
The husband talking while Susan reads the papers? Funny.
Dentists, banks, drunk neighbors? Stop, stop! Susan is doubled over!

Enjoy your Sunday, guys.

For the third time this week Susan came home to a hot house and began yelling at people to open the windows. Susan exempted her house guests only because the regular occupants of the house are completely aware of what they must do when they get home; open the f*cking windows! Holy crap, how difficult is that? Surely they must recognize when they're hot. Susan feels like she's living in bizarro world with this bunch.

Susan's house is not equipped with central air conditioning, which is perfectly fine because she likes open windows, fans and cool drinks with ice cubes in them. When things get particularly brutal she jumps in the pool and floats around. She floats because she doesn't swim. She wouldn't mind learning how to swim except for the fact that she's really not keen on being in the water to begin with, it's a little claustrophobic for her. So, she floats and paddles and is very comfortable as long as she can touch the bottom. Touching the bottom is good.

Susan didn't grow up with a pool, she had a sprinkler.
She remembers being pretty happy with the sprinkler,
it was cold and wet and got the job done. The summers of her childhood included low tech ice pops made of frozen juice which she guesses were better than nothing. Sometimes they'd go to Carvel and Susan would get a Cherry Bonnet. OMG, Susan still loves Cherry Bonnets!
In fact, she ate one belonging to a houseguest today.
The husband tried to get some of it but Susan wasn't sharing and sent him away.

Susan had a bunch of nice things happen to her over the last week.

Every morning she found a happy gurgling baby and his big sister mashing bananas into goo and spilling Cheerios.
Plus, they were always glad to see her.

Susan's little sister, inspired by a particularly TWISTED tirade about a broken patio umbrella, bought Susan the most beautiful patio umbrella ever made anywhere, ever. Susan spent all weekend having cocktails, reading the papers and enjoying her guests in shaded splendor.

Susan's co-workers surprised her with a cake, a verse of Happy Birthday a fantastic handmade necklace and a generously stuffed card which Susan turned into her summer wardrobe on the way home.
She spent that money crazy fast.

Lastly, Susan received two interesting compliments in one day. The first was provided by a foot fetishist acquaintance of hers who said that she reminded him of Princess Diane. At first she thought that the deepness of her new turquoise shirt messed with his brainwaves but then realized he was just responding to her good breeding and regal authority. Later in the day a lady stranger told Susan I love your hair and admitted that she had been admiring Susan in such close proximity that she was surprised Susan didn't feel the lady stranger breathing on the back of her neck. Susan was flattered and excited to have a stalker, TGIF everybody.

Things Susan had forgotten about nine month olds:

They're naturally very charming
They have zero common sense. None.
Little chicklet teeth
Dribble
They topple over if not supported
They're comfortable being sticky
They yank out earrings
Everything goes in their mouth
They don't travel light
They are happy with whatever plans you make
Poopy diapers

Things Susan had forgotten about three year olds:

They talk all the time
Sometimes you can trick them into doing what you want
Bedtimes require pre-planning
They have something to say every time you curse
Chicken nuggets
Bubbles get spilled immediately
You push them on the swing till your arms fall off and still have to push them some more
They want to help with everything
They open doors without knocking and peek behind shower curtains
Their conversations can be quite elaborate
They're nice to pick up and carry around

Susan took a quick run over to the library to pick up

this book which was being held for her since last week.

She arrived to find that it had already been returned to the shelf and taken out by another reader. She placed it on hold again then went to get some cocktail party music for her upcoming BIG birthday party.

A few weeks ago she found Pink Panther Penthouse Party and has been on a roll ever since. Today she selected six or seven CDs that looked promising including a compilation of James Bond soundtracks which was sitting right out in the open as if it were waiting for her.

While Susan was checking out she overheard one of the librarians provide some information to a mom with a stroller. Susan recalled what a large part the library played in her life when the kids were small including the time her toddler son spread his little frame across the library floor and drew a picture which helped lift Susan from a notable depression. Some day when Susan has more energy she'll tell you about it.

Anyway, the mom extended her conversation with the librarian beyond its expiration date with who really gives a crap stuff revealing her strung-out self to be desperate for grown up conversation. Poor thing. Susan saw that the mommy was also accompanied by a second-grader and a husband and wondered why she was boring a librarian when there was a perfectly serviceable husband to blather at? No matter, Susan took her CDs and left.

As Susan was exiting the parking spot she saw strung-out mommy pushing the stroller followed by the rest of her family. Susan sat with her foot on the break as Mommy walked directly in front of Susan's car without ever glancing over in Susan's direction.

Susan waited for them all to get sufficiently far away then drove off.

It's after 10:30 pm and Susan has a very un-tired three year old singing in her bed.
She doesn't want to go night night, she wants water.
She wants to tell Grandpa she loves him.
She wants to know what Susan's name is.

Susan is doing her best not to respond to the unbearably adorable three year old who is singing about mashed potatoes and putting her bracelets on the table so that she doesn't lose them and drinking as much water as will be necessary to wet the bed later on. Earlier Susan tried witholding the water but was driven into submission by tears.

The relationship is new so Susan doesn't have an arsenal of things that will get the three year old to submit to sleep. Susan's strategy is to type softly on the laptop with the lights off and classical music playing through the TV while Miss Three relaxes.

Miss Three yawned while she was humming
then she kissed her stuffed companion
then she asked do you have Fly Me To The Moon do you have Fly Me To The Moon do you have Fly Me To The Moon do you have Fly Me To The Moon?
then she heaved a big sigh
then she fell asleep and provided Susan with a blog post.
Goodnight.

Forget about Sangria, Sangria is out, Susan needs RUM.
Rum and lime and mint and sugar and seltzer are the divine components which have been delivering Susan from a series of bad motherf*cking TWISTED moods.

Susan is aware that she's been relying more on drinking lately. In the name of keepin' it real she rolled on over to the the A A website to see how many questions she might answer yes to.
How do you think she did?

Every one was a big NO. Thank goodness because many of those questions were hardcore;
Need an eye-opener?
Having black-outs?
Calling in hung over?
Getting drunk when you don't mean to?

Who gets drunk when they don't mean to?

Anyway. Susan's glad there weren't any questions about her zealous observance of happy hour or spending money on liquor that's been earmarked for her family's food.

Susan's daughter saw a picture of Mick Jagger with his name in the caption underneath.

D: Who's that?

S: Mick Jagger.

D: His name is Mick?

S: Yes.

D: I thought it was McJagger.

Every time Susan uses the restroom she sends a little prayer of thanks to the person, or team of persons who invented plumbing. OMG, plumbing is so fantastic!

Imagine if we couldn't flush our bodily filth away?
It's too horrifying to even consider. Plumbing is the number one necessary component to any decent quality of life. Let's say we were all rich and beautiful and in love,
that would be pretty fantastic, right?
Now, what if we also had to live with our own pee and poop? Horrible!

Susan's almost gotten into fist fights with people who didn't pick up their dog poop from in front of her house, imagine if she had to run after people who didn't pick up their personal poop? She'd have to become one of those full contact fighters or risk getting her ass kicked every day and that's no good because Susan's a lover not a fighter.

Well, Susan's only a lover after her husband reminds her of her marital obligation, but you get her point.

Susan is lucky enough to have two bathrooms in her modest, architecturally bereft house. Two bathrooms means one is for her and one is for everyone else.
The one that's for everyone else has a wonderful vintage 1986 aesthetic; frosted glass and mirror shower doors, peeling flowered paper and big round lightbulbs sent into a mirrored medicine cabinet. She's got plans, but for now she just keeps it clean and stocked with nice smelling soap and plenty of reading material for those who won't just be in & out.

Thank you Romans or Greeks, thank you.

Not too long ago, like last Friday night, Susan pretended she was thirty and went out to a bar to hear a band.

For many years Susan was no stranger to bars and bands. No stranger. Her current status as a grown-up and positive influence to her children really doesn't allow for this sort of recreational activity. But, she doesn't miss it because she's able to get her drinking and loud music listening done at home.

A co-worker of Susan's little sister was the lead singer, the band was in Susan's age range, Beatles songs were in their repertoire and the evening was shaping up to be unremarkable. But, beggars can't be choosers and there would be Guinness on tap for one post-menopausal suburban beggar with a potty mouth and a big birthday coming up.

Little sister's childhood girlfriend, code name Hot Widow, met them in the parkinglot. Inside was m*therfucking LOUD, it was so loud that the bartender couldn't hear Susan even though she was screaming her drink order in his face. Eventually the band took a break and Susan got a chance to interact with her companions.
The crowd was mature. Was that Max Von Sydow in the back of the room? There were an abundance of nice boobs and bad hair. When a drunk grandmother dressed like Madonna tried to insinuate herself into the conversation Susan removed herself to get a second pint.

The band came back on, Susan withstood their racket until she couldn't tolerate another second and fled outside. Outside into the cool, quiet refuge of the night, under the illuminated Guinness On Draught sign. She wasn't alone, the bouncers and smokers were out as well as a highly stylized girl's motorcycle. It was zebra striped, very low slung and had long fringes hanging from the handlebars.
It was pretty. After a short time she got bored looking at the bike and walked across the street to buy a vanilla cigar at the gas station.

Susan stood outside smoking her cigar and signalled to her sister to join her. Little sister was out in a flash.
Things were much more lively for Susan then.
They shared the cigar and watched everything going on inside; the band screaming, Grammy Madonna bothering patrons with her drunk nonsense, a big unstable Lurch looking guy standing in Hot Widow's personal space blocking her view. What fun it was outside!
Eventually Max Von Sydow came out too. He got on his zebra striped motorcycle and rode off.

The band ceased their racket and the sisters went back in.
The band came back on and Susan went out.
She returned with beef lo mein and signalled to her sister to join her. Little sister was out in a flash.

The beef lo mein got Susan noticed. One gentleman inquired if she had beamed in from somewhere because the Chinese food seemed like it came from outerspace. Susan didn't want him to be afraid so she assured him that it only came from down the block.

This time when Susan was outside she saw a normal looking motorcycle on which rested a minimalist helmet with a HELMET LAWS SUCK sticker. Susan wondered about who owned the helmet and why helmet law sucked. Surely helmets only wanted to help people, not become the object of derision. Susan ate her lo mein, joked around with her sister and eventually the owner of the bike and helmet appeared. Paul. Susan asked Paul all her questions, learned all his answers and had a nice exchange of information. In the midst of their conversation Drunk Larry stumbled over and steered the sisters' attention his way with questions like are you as smart as you look? and have you always been pretty? Drunk Larry was funny in a charming and sad sort of way. Eventually it was time to leave so they rescued Hot Widow and went to the diner for some essential grease, starch, sugar and caffeine.

Susan attended a seminar one day this week instead of going to work.

Before she left, the husband handed Susan a modest number of bills for lunch money which she combined with what she had in her purse. She counted it then walked directly into the kitchen and made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Susan arrived at the seminar, eyeballed the complimentary breakfast bar, signed in then made the acquaintance of those sitting nearest to her; Raul, Kim and Virginia.
During the first break she went into the hall to get herself a cup of coffee and maybe something to eat. She picked up a plate, considered her choices and was poised over a muffin with the tongs when a uniformed gentleman stopped her. This was not Susan's food, it belonged to the other conference room. Holding her head a little higher than usual she returned to her seat and ate the peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

The lunchbreak came, Susan packed up her belongings and was headed toward her car when Raul, Kim and Virginia invited her to join them in the hotel's cafe. Susan was charmed by their offer and impulsively accepted knowing that she didn't have enough cash for a proper lunch.
What the hell, she had more than enough for coffee.

Susan read the menu in reverse, searching for the lowest number then following along until her lunch choice was revealed; Soup Du Jour for $5.
Alright! Susan would have minestrone soup with her coffee.
A mature twist to the liquid lunch.

The four acquaintances had a friendly lunch with plenty of interesting conversation. The bill came, Susan pulled out her bankroll and Kim started figuring out how much each person owed by dividing the bill into quarters.
Susan couldn't do a quarter of the bill, she could do exactly what she ordered + $2.75 for a tip.
Um, I have ten dollars.
Kim accepted Susan's money and recalculated the bill. Everyone was very nice and Susan spent the rest of the afternoon filling up with gas from her minestrone.

Susan got up early on Saturday morning to watch her son play lacrosse. The husband carried and set up a foldable chair so that Susan would have a comfortable place to sit. It was a lovely misty morning, the field was surrounded by pine trees and Susan couldn't imagine anywhere she'd rather be than sitting with a cup of coffee watching her boy (whichever one he was, they all looked alike) in the full flourish of his youth.
Simple pleasures surely are the best.

Then the parents showed up.

They were unassuming in appearance wearing jeans and windbreakers, bearing Snapple bottles. They came in twos and threes, greeted each other and then took their place along the edge of the field.

Susan would like to take this opportunity to mention how ferociously she has argued with the husband over his need to yell from the sidelines.
You're not the coach, why are you yelling?
The son backs her up, We can't hear you anyway, Dad.
A compromise was struck; If he feels he must yell then he is to position himself as far away from Susan as is practical, otherwise he is to completely refrain from yelling while she is in attendance.

The game started and the parents yelled.

They f*cking yelled like they were being overcharged at the butcher. They yelled at their kids, they yelled at the coach, they yelled at the referee, they all yelled at once. The women yelled like men and the men yelled like baboons.
Susan was horrified.

During periods of inactivity the parents chatted quietly, one scratched his private area in full view of anyone unlucky enough to be facing him. Another, aided by his spouse, gave incorrect directions to the field through his cell phone. Shortly thereafter the game was called because of lightning and Susan was returned to her calm universe.

Susie Booty Humps wants everyone to give themselves
a new RAP name this weekend. She and P Patty Trip are just gonna be kickin' it with their gangsta ass niggaz Furious Seanny F and Wicked LL Money.
Maybe they'll bake cookies.

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.

Susan was temporarily drawn out of her tiresome depression over being broke by this
NY Magazine article about bed bugs.
Thanks guys, you're awesome!

Susan gets totally TWISTED anytime she's near people doing things she can't do;
Buying new clothes? Good for you
Going out to dinner? Fantastic
Planning a vacation? Go f*ck yourself

She can't enjoy her favorite fluffy sections of the newspaper anymore because she's only interested in articles about people living in poverty.
She's been having trouble regulating her bad moods and has to coordinate them with the husband so they don't have one at the same time.

This morning she stayed prone long past her alarm watching a silent movie because she didn't have the strength to throw her legs over the side of the bed and crawl toward the shower. She got to work an hour late, forgot her pocketbook, couldn't get her computer working till 4pm then came home to a broken window (Mom, I fell in that hole in the yard and my lacrosse ball popped up and broke the window) and not a drop of sangria left.
She can't take much more.

Haiku

While brushing her teeth
She hears a rumbling outside
And investigates

Through the open door
She sees the husband engage
The man with a truck

The cars! she panics
Still wet and in a towel
She runs to get dressed

Hands shaking she thinks
Which car are they here to hook?
Or will they take both!

She calms herself down
And works it out in her mind
It's only a car

Dressed, she walks quickly
To join the husband outside
And remove her things

Wait, that's no tow truck
But a PODS container truck
Here for a neighbor

Barely averting
A f*cking heart attack sets
Her mood for the day.

Susan farted in front of a lady in the supermarket.
She ran back to get the two boxes of Pop Tarts she abandoned on the shelf and farted as soon as she got there. She didn't even know that she had to fart, it just happened.
Susan is normally flatulent but this was different,
like a little surprise puff of air passing through her anus.
It was almost cute, like a quick Bronx cheer.
That was quite unexpected she said out loud, not directly to the woman searching through the breakfast bars, but for her benefit. Susan took her Pop Tarts and ran away.

Why is it that nobody in Susan's house can;
Do anything without a television on
Lock the back door
Indicate that they've used the last of something by putting it on the grocery list
Refrain from leaving their fingernail clippings in the bathroom
Put the cereal away
Shut lights off
Engage in any requested action without saying in a minute
Feed the dog
Throw a wet towel over the top of something to help it to dry
Keep small electronics from hitting the floor
Hide the dirty clothes when company is over
Quit talking when Susan's had enough of listening

Susan's back to being a redhead again;
RR07 Intense Copper Red.
She cut her hair to within an inch of its life too.
It's so short now people say Oh, you got your hair cut instead of Oh, I love your hair cut.

Tonight Susan and her daughter made dinner together. Susan did most of the grunt work like shopping for tomatoes, scallions, parsley & basil then doing most of the chopping but the recipe and enthusiasm came from the daughter. It's got all the food groups as she learned when she made it with her Family Consumer Science class
(that's Home Ec, old timers) and only requires boiling the water for macaroni. Dare Susan bore you with the recipe?
She thinks she will.

1 lb pasta
2 cups fresh tomatoes
8 tblsp fresh scallions, just use fresh everything
4 tblsp parsley leaves
4 tblsp basil leaves
1/8 cup olive oil
4 tblsp Parmesan cheese

Chop tomatoes, scallions, parsley & basil, put them & the olive oil in a bowl. Set aside.
Boil pasta, drain (reserve 1/4 of pasta water) and toss into the tomato mixture. Add Parmesan, toss again and serve.
Feeds 4.

After dinner Susan was making fun of her son for misplacing his cell phone. He got even by reminding her of the time she put the rental car keys in a Slim Jim container and then had a melt down in the Florida heat when she couldn't find them. Florida is not a good place for Susan. Her first exposure to that sunny hell was when she was 15 and had a f*cking stroke because a palmetto bug the size of her fist was running rampant in the motel room.
Her second exposure was two summers ago when she took her kids to Disney and lost the keys.
The final time will be to bring back her parents' bodies.
Maybe she'll make her little sister go instead.

Susan had a very short interaction with a sheriff of the county in which she resides. She wasn't getting in trouble or anything, she just had to accept a legal document on behalf of someone else. As part of the interaction the sheriff had to write down a description of Susan including her date of birth, weight and hair color. Susan breezed through the 6-9-60 and 165 lbs but then hit a bumpy patch.

Sheriff: What color is your hair?

Susan: Um, it's supposed to be red.

Sheriff:

Susan: I know I'm past due for my L'Oreal.

Sheriff:

Susan: It was orange when I was a kid.

Sheriff: Let's just say brown.

'Mom, your breath smells so bad, I'm not even kidding.'

Susan was reading Jessica's blog, (she's very funny take a look) and Susan decided to lift Jessica's topic of her worst date ever and use it.
Susan's dating experience was limited because she went right from being a virgin to having affairs. In high school she didn't understand what going all the way was.
Really!
But, she did have two dates with the best friend of a co-worker which qualifies as her worst date ever.
This is what she remembers from thirty years ago;
Her date told her that he had a 'sexual problem' as Susan ate her salad,
When they walked along the street her shadow was like five feet longer than his shadow,
and she spent the whole drive home thinking of a way to avoid kissing him which she did by agreeing to go out with him again.

Susan's in between paychecks and got caught doing her food shopping in the dollar store tonight.
She stopped in for burritos and a bag of peppermints but ended up getting Hamburger Helper, tomato sauce, frozen cubed potatoes, green chilies, kosher salt and 48 ounces each of iced tea and a fake orange juice drink.
Horrified?
She would have bought more but she ran out of cash.
She went home to drink sangria and fix her third day of chicken leftovers.

Susan had a painful bump on her eyebrow yesterday.
A hot compress made it feel better but she went to bed knowing that it was the beginning of something bad.
She woke up with a real old fashioned ugly high school pimple, the sort of thing she would have taken care of if it were anywhere else. She hit it again with a hot compress, a dab of concealer, eyebrow pencil then threw on a distractingly large necklace and left for work.

She looked in a mirror every chance she got, it was getting bigger and turning purple. She avoided her coworkers and kept her conversation to a minimum whenever she was in their company so they wouldn't look at her. All day long she daydreamed about going home and popping that thing.

Eventually she got her chance then hid her work underneath a modified band aid.

The next morning it looked better but still required a bit of camouflage; concealer, pencil and multiple strands of wood and glass beads. She gave herself a headache from poking it every hour to see if it still hurt.

Susan was rewarded for being up very late the other night with a movie from her teenage past, Burnt Offerings.
She propped herself up in bed to watch Karen Black in all her '70s glory transform from wholesome mom on vacation to crazy lady in the attic. A creeptastic hearse driver was on hand to keep Oliver Reed from enjoying a good night's sleep and Bette Davis was collecting a paycheck for being cheeky and adorable until it was her time to die.

Susan made it through a good portion of the movie but
3 am is her cut off for being awake. Anything after 3 am and she risks having an anxiety inspired episode.
Susan formerly suffered from panic attacks, totally debilitating panic attacks which she controlled through sheer force of will. Really.
Since that time she carries around a certain amount of residual anxiety which she sidesteps by employing proven strategies, like not staying up all night long.

The last time Susan was on a plane she felt herself declining into a state of overheated claustrophobia. She adjusted the nozzle above her head and directed a stream of cool air directly onto her face. Immediately she relaxed. The claustrophobia, which does not generally reverse course before pushing the host to the brink of hysteria, disappeared. Banished by cool air.
Fascinating.

Well, tonight was the night that Susan was unable to join Bossy and her bloggy posse in NYC. She assumes that they were all able to enjoy themselves without the company of Twisted Susan and she'll catch them next time.