Susan has a teeny little office.

It started out as the back end of the office next to hers, but one wall and a door later Susan has a place to toil the hours away.

Susan's office has a dorm sized fridge thanks to her niece's departure from the sleep away portion of art school.

On top of the fridge is a wonderful Keurig coffee machine, a gift from her boss in appreciation of all the hours Susan spends pulling her hair out in the teeny office.

For the last few months Susan has been working on an art project, a triptych of collages, completed after much agony.

Susan quietly humped them in to work and had them hung on her wall then practiced behaving modestly in anticipation of the praise she would receive for her awesome talents with glue stick and magazine cut outs.

Here's Susan's fave comment thus far:
They look like motel art.

Susan has it on secondhand authority that two of her cousins are engaged in a Facebook fight.

It was explained to Susan,
by someone who wasn't there,
that an Easter Sunday conversation later degenerated into a nasty FB brouhaha.

Comment pileup is a common hazard in this setting and it's always fun to see what they reveal about the commenter.

Usually it's nothing good.

Jersey Shore Gone Wilde

You all know that scene with Julie Andrews twirling against the backdrop of the Alps? Well, that's how Susan feels about her new obsession,
PUFF PASTRY.

Every weekend Susan sautes something delicious and wraps a puff pastry around it.
Mushrooms, sausage, broccoli rabe, goat cheese?
Yes, yes, yes, YES!

Susan can't believe that she's gotten to her advanced age without it.
Carmelized onions, prosciutto, mozzarella?
Yes!

Pears, walnuts and bleu cheese?
No!
That was a test.
Were you fooled?

Did everyone have a happy Earth Day?
OMG, Susan loves the earth so much!
Susan commemorated Earth Day by wearing shoes that pinched her pinkie toe.
Ouch.

Susan is going to tell you something then ask if you've ever heard of such bullsh*t before in your life.

Susan is able to maintain a stash of dark chocolate in the house because no one else likes it. They don't like it so they don't look for it. Even still, Susan keeps her dark chocolate eating restricted to the husband's company. She trusts him.

The lure of dark chocolate was too much and drove the husband to weave a web of bullsh*t.

Let me see that chocolate he sez.

You don't like it.

Yes I do.

No you don't, it's not sweet.

It absolutely is sweet.

You're completely full of sh*t and will say anything to get my chocolate.

I like dark chocolate.

F*ck you, liar.

Susan deviated from her normal neckline and wore a turtleneck which made her sweat all day long.

Susan located a folder of e-mailed photos that survived when her brand new birthday laptop killed itself after taking her pictures and all her music hostage. These two are of her old man and his Pan Am pals, Bill and Charlie taking a bi-plane ride way back in 2006. Susan can't imagine anything she'd like less than being strapped into a teeny plane with no roof or anything to protect her when she panics and tries to jump out.
Go, pop!

OMG guys, you are too fantastic!
Really.
Imagine Susan is giving each one of you a BIG HUG filled with sincerity and warmth and maybe a little boob smush.
Hers are only B cups.

It was really lovely to see all your comments of concern, encouragement and support and Susan appreciates the crap out of them.
Thank you, darlings.

That being said, Susan would like to reassure you that everything is fine other than the normal troubles of modern life;
unaffordable mortgage modifications,
twelve hour work days with a few weekends thrown in,
male members of her household making the bathroom smell like urine, the absence of springtime in her neighborhood,
a favorite earring gone missing,
dog hair everywhere.

During her bloggy black out Susan stayed up past her bedtime to watch this movie which she loved as a teenager, invited her little sister over to watch this movie, stayed in bed late on a Sunday morning to watch this movie and had to leave for work in the middle of this movie which required all her self discipline because Bette Davis and Mary Astor were at each other's throats.

She also treated herself to a quartet of Young's Double Chocolate Stout on which she will report back later.

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

She can't hear you.

DID YOU MISS HER?

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

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

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

Susan's childhood pal, Grace wished her a happy St. Paddy's day and reminded her that 36 years ago they were on their way to watch the parade then go drink in Central Park.

Susan believes it was only 33 years ago.

She recalls a drunken conversation with her mother from a Penn Station pay phone requesting to stay out past her curfew, but that could have been from another day.

Anyway, Susan is sorry for the quality of her BLAHg post today, she knows it's not her best and invites you to read this one from two years ago, which is better because at least it's informative.

Thank you.

Susan is taking a suggestion from Mama Kat and will fascinate you with what she has been daydreaming about.

Susan has a recurring daydream of gaining ten pounds in Italy, but who wouldn't like to do that?

She has another daydream of seeing that her medium sized children develop all the skills they'll need to navigate the tricky times in their lives. But, so does every parent.

She also daydreams of straightening out her mortgage and squeezing out a few more years in the working class neighborhood she calls home. But, so do a million other people.

Leaving Acme Sweatshop on time at the end of the day is a total fantasy daydream, completely ridiculous and unattainable, so she doesn't really bother thinking about that.

Susan dreams about something that she just might be able to pull off, something she deserves, something she will take tender care of for as long as she can.

Susan daydreams about all new towels and sheets!

Big, soft, wonderful towels with patterns woven into their plushness. Towels that will not be bleached the first week she purchases them because the children have grabbed them direct from the pool. Towels that will elevate whichever bathroom she places them in. Towels that will show her guests how much she values their comfort.

And sheets!

Sheets that actually fit around all four corners of the bed, that are not stitched together where the dog shredded them when she forgot to close the bedroom door. Sheets that don't have their own bleach related issues. Sheets that come in pretty colors! Maybe with flowers!

Sheets and towels throughout the whole house is Susan's daydream.

Susan's town threw their annual St. Paddy's Day parade. There were plenty of porta pottys, bagpipers, marching bands, twirlers, national high school varsity cheerleading champs, girl scouts, policemen on bicycles, firemen in dress blues leading rows and rows of fire trucks, flags and sirens, a marine rescue unit, antique cars, bands on flatbed trucks, a NY State Senator and a very enthusiastic crowd out with their dogs including some dressed in Guinness hats.

Susan was all set to b*tch about an advertisement she saw for the Ritz-Carlton when she got some extreme mood elevating news from Maggy at Three Many Cooks.

Susan won Levain Bakery COOKIES!

Unfortunately, she wasn't wearing her thinking cap and blurted out her good fortune to the family. Now they're all on the lookout for Susan's cookies. Making matters worse, she's expecting four divine, six ounce cookies (free of additives or preservatives) which exactly corresponds to the amount of people waiting at the mailbox.
She has no idea how she'll avoid sharing them.

Back to the Ritz-Carlton advertisement.

Of course it features a standard good looking couple embracing on a beach. Ho hum.

Leaving Everything Behind. Yet, Discovering So Much. Yuk.

Then it lists a bunch of things that Susan would never do, like bike riding and windsurfing, calling them a host of experiences she'll treasure for a lifetime. A romantic dinner with ocean views will guarantee she achieves the perfect day.

Susan loves a nice dinner, but romantic? Can't Susan just eat her steak au poivre without having to gaze into the husband's eyes and speak of love? That's not how she likes to conduct herself.

What is romantic anyway? She's down with the candlelight and wine and maybe a wink & a nod, but anything else and she's calling for the check.

Susan began her day baking beer bread with a bottle of Guinness, but she's still not sure if she liked eating bread that tasted like stout. Later this week she'll throw some caraway seeds & raisins into it and see if anyone mistakes it for Irish soda bread.

She'll also make the Guinness brownies requested by her little sister. Susan's got no idea what they'll taste like, in her mind they could go either way. But, on the slim chance they're worth making she'll hip you to the recipe.

Can you wait?

Susan can't relate to feeling bad about Charlie Sheen, not when he disperses gems like;
I'm tired of pretending I'm not a total bitchin' rockstar from Mars
or
I'm just going to sail across the winds of the universe with my goddesses.

He's bi-WINNING, bro.

Susan is on a new drug.
It's called CHARLIE SHEEN and is widely available.

Originally she didn't give him much thought, but then she became acquainted with the prowess of his oratory skills.

Describing how he quit drugs and booze Charlie Sheen said I closed my eyes and made it so with the power of my mind.

His confidence is exhilarating and Susan can't wait to bound out of bed each morning to see what he said while she was sleeping.

He exposes people to magic.

In the meantime here's a charming little website discovered by Susan's friend, Fireball.

Susan and her daughter made these donut holes yesterday for their dinner guests. Susan ate them till she was sick and now she can't button her pants. Make them yourself if you dare.

Susan is sort of missing Wild Bill who just up & took off without so much as a text goodbye to his sisters.

But, he's easy to track down and they anticipate that he'll be back in the summer. Hopefully alone.

This photograph of Susan with Wild Bill and their little sister is from way back in 1988 when little sister was
in the family way with the first of Susan's nieces. The photographer, Wild Bill's girlfriend at that time, remains one of Susan's favorite friends and periodic houseguest.

It's also nice to know that the years haven't beaten the sibs up too badly.

Susan would like everyone to send a little love and prayers out to
sweet Dawn.

Susan can't do everything.
She can't work ten hour days at Acme Sweatshop and have time left over to drink sangria and BLAHg.
She can't do it, she's only one person and a very low energy person at that.

If she BLAHgs then she can't read her pals' blogs, and when she reads her pals' blogs she can't always come up with a decent comment.

Susan employs an alternating schedule of BLAHging or reading blogs or sleeping. Sometimes she has to work in a marital obligation or two and then everything's thrown off.

Susan's done bending over.
She's been bending over for almost five decades and she's through with it. From now on someone else can bend the f*ck over.

She's already abdicated vacuuming, which requires tons of bending over. Did she say abdicated?
That's incorrect.
She meant to say that she engages in the same argument every Friday night with the son about vacuuming on Saturday morning. If he's unavailable on Saturday morning then the vacuuming is to be done on Friday night. But, not only does she have to argue with the son she's also got to argue with the husband about not arguing with the son.

Somebody's insane and it's not Susan.

Next, Susan will no longer be bending over to pick up the change that falls out of the husband's pockets when he takes his pants off. Susan's husband doesn't even attempt to pick up the change, like somehow it's not his job. She hears the change hit the floor every night and thinks the same thing I'm not bending over to pick up that f*cking change.

She's not bending over to pick up other people's belongings from places they shouldn't be. She's not bending over to get a new garbage bag from underneath the sink or to clean around the toilet or to pull laundry out of the dryer or to unplug the printer in order to get it out of the dining room when there's company for dinner.

She'll bend over to fill the dog's bowl that's it.

Happy St. Valentine's Day to Susan!

She received a heart shaped box purchased from a real chocolate shop which was tied up with a wide satin ribbon and filled with dark chocolates. Score!

She broke with her selfish protocol by suggesting that the husband present it to both her and the daughter.

Sometimes she does things just to make other people happy.

Susan's son remarked to Susan,
I can't wait till I get a car, know why?

Her brain immediately ran through all the reasons an newly minted fifteen year old might have;

To pick up slutty girls
To drive really fast and cause accidents
To do three sixties over the frozen lake like Susan had seen someone do the other week.

OMG, no!

Me and my friends are going to drive to restaurants and tell them it's my birthday so that we get free food.

Susan broke into a BIG smile, danced a little jig and gave silent thanks to the Lord, God Almighty for keeping her son sweet a little while longer.

Susan is delighted to report that she had absolutely zero exposure to the Superbowl on Sunday. Nothing.
No lame commercials, no halftime show. Who was even playing? It could have been the Jets and the Sharks for all she knew.

Instead, she spent those hours in the company of Nigella Lawson.
Nigella showed Susan how to make paella.
Then she showed Susan how to make an egg and bacon salad.
Then a voluptuous fruit tart.
Heavens!

Susan is smitten, she could watch Nigella cook until the end of time. Nigella is all soft roundness and femininity and cleavage with a little swing of the hair.

Susan and Nigella have a few things in common;
They are the same age!
The both like garlic oil!
They both use a rice cooker!

Susan wants to know how Nigella removed her fruit tart intact from the deep sided flan tin with fluted edges.

Susan's friend Fireball surprised her with the most wonderful gift; a BIG bag of dark chocolate covered almonds.

Please indulge Susan as she describes the almonds to you.

First of all, they are AMAZINGLY CRUNCHY. For someone who adores crunchy things, they are the epitome of crunch. Just fabulously crunchy.

Next, the chocolate covering is DARK CHOCOLATE, not that wimpy milk chocolate that everyone loves. Milk chocolate does nothing for Susan, although she has been known to eat more than her share of it. Susan is all about the intoxicatingly dark, barely sweet chocolate.

Lastly, the chocolate is more of a dusting over the almonds than a layer allowing Susan to eat more of them per serving.

The lovely bag of almonds are locked inside the little baby fridge that Susan keeps in her teeny little office. She doesn't have to hide them from anyone, they are there waiting for her whenever she wants. Just for her.

May God bless and keep Fireball.

Susan walked past a television set at the exact moment that Oprah was asking Jennifer Lopez how she manages with two little ones at home. She imagines that Oprah was referring to Jennifer Lopez's career making billions of dollars while raising twins.
Jennifer Lopez's started to explain by saying 'Like any working mom...' and that's when Susan's emotional barometer went all the way to HATE.
F*cking dopey b*tch.

Last Friday night, Susan realizes that Friday night was ridiculously long ago, but last Friday night she had a previously established date with Cousin Lisa. Due to an extreme case of Workplace Freak Out Susan cancelled Cousin Lisa.

As the week progressed and Susan got a handle on things she reinstated the date with Cousin Lisa. Then Susan got a phone call from her pal and periodic house guest, GP who was in town for one night only.

Susan's second cancellation of Cousin Lisa didn't go over well.

Susan and Cousin Lisa have a long standing history of lengthy conversations and were able to talk through their way through this little blip. Susan apologized and admitted to not knowing what to do after she accepted the invitation then found that GP had driven thirty hours to her side of the country and only had an availability for the same date.

It's certainly easier to reschedule with Cousin Lisa than it is with GP, so is that the criteria that should be employed to determine the answer? Maybe it had been tricky for Cousin Lisa to arrange, maybe she was looking forward to seeing Susan, maybe she just didn't want to give her up.

The outcome was that GP got to watch Susan argue with her family all night over a range of topics including, but not limited to; vacuuming, strawberry jelly and the lack of adequate income.

Your body can tell you're pregnant before you can.

This is the opening line in a commercial for a home pregnancy test.
Have you seen it?

Your body can tell you're pregnant before you can.

It's sounds like a typical comment on Facebook, but it's not. The home pregnancy test company paid money for it. A group of college educated men and women thought that sentence up, and a second group signed off on it.
There was a bunch of time and energy expended in order to bring that commercial to Susan's TV.

Impressive, don't you think?

Susan was so worked up about all the misspellings on Facebook that she
personally herself committed a misspelling on her last post.
Don't bother looking, it's gone.

Susan spent some quality time with her daughter at the mall. The mall again.
What can she do? It's where the kid wants to go. Susan's budget for the daughter was very small.
S. M. All.
The daughter behaved in a very joyless manner thinking about how little the allotted amount would purchase. She brightened up as she amassed a modest collection of shopping bags.

Susan and the daughter are not all giggly and girl friendy. Their relationship is based on mutual admiration and conversation.
It works for them.

Recently, during their weekly viewing of Jersey Shore, Susan advised the daughter that just because a pair of boobs develope doesn't mean they have to pop out of every outfit.
She also made the point that alcohol fools you into thinking bad ideas are good
That girls shouldn't climb under the covers with every boy available
That boys will do whatever you allow, then do it tomorrow with a different girl
And Sammi is an unbelievably pathetic wretch who should be ridiculed.

Apparently Susan has made these points in the past because the daughter covered her ears with her hands and yelled 'I know, mom! You tell me all the time!'

OMG, everything on Facebook sounds so SMART

Here's a sampling of things Susan saw on one Facebook wall;

The tragedy was tragic

I'm going to go with the mentally ill theory personally myself

1am Saturday night

Aisle misspelled as isle

Psycho misspelled as psyco

Roll misspelled as role

Were misspelled as where

Stick with Susan as she checks another;

Were misspelled as where again

so spelled sooooooooo

definitely misspelled as definately

!!!!!!!!!!

In a very short period of time Susan and her little sister amassed three brand new bottles of Kahlua.

Kahlua is as close as she likes to get to Mexico.

Back in the day Susan enjoyed drinking a combination of Kahlua with Bailey's and vodka, she's got a number of memories attached to that particular cocktail. But, it's definitely a young person's drink and nothing she'd like to revisit.

She's still experiencing a shudder of nausea when she thinks of Irish cream.

Susan lied to her daughter.
She totally fabricated a response in order to avoid sharing a bar of dark chocolate.
She just made something up that had absolutely no truth to it at all.
Susan values truth yet she lied.
And kept her chocolate.

Susan and her daughter
made ice cream in a plastic bag
and it tasted like ice cream.

Susan's brain doesn't work properly anymore.
After dinner Susan and her little sister were sitting on the couch rubbing their bloated bellies separated by Lucy, the lucky pit bull. Lucy wasn't rubbing her belly, she was licking her lady parts until Susan nudged her to knock it off. Immediately after Susan let Lucy lick her face. Lick her face!

Susan didn't even realize there was anything wrong with that until her little sister looked horrified and said Ew, I'm not kissing you goodnight. How could Susan's brain forget from one second to the next where Lucy's tongue had been?

Susan's never let any other dog get anywhere near her face but she's made exceptions with the new dog because she still misses the old dog.
This doesn't negate the fact that Susan's brain doesn't work properly anymore.

Susan did something today that she hasn't done since the '80s; she cried at her desk.
The whole thing took about a minute and it didn't even help her feel better. Of course she had to keep a lid on the sobbing or risk being overheard. So, she sniffled, wiped her tears, put on her unhappy face and went about her business.
Don't worry, no one's being mean to Susan or anything rotten like that. She's just experiencing the typical frustrations of someone from whom perfection is expected, who has too much to do and not enough time to do it.
Anybody else have this problem?

Susan made chicken salad from the dark meat no one ate at dinner. To minimize how unappealing all dark meat chicken salad is she threw in a bunch of nonsense like Craisins, walnuts and cilantro. As she was adding orange zest, she accidentally zested her knuckle.

This was to be tomorrow's lunch. She wanted to eat it with crackers, but she had none. Susan had been wanting to make crackers since she watched Mark Bittman make them, so she made some.

On their way out of the oven she dropped a pan and the crackers hit the floor. Susan slid them back into place and went to pick the pan up with her bare hand. Susan watched two of her fingers blister immediately; big puffy white blisters that took almost thirty seconds to send the message to her brain that OW, THEY HURT.

She reflexively reached for the small stash of Vicodin left over from her dental surgery. Reflexively? Immediately and without thinking she reached for the Vicodin and ate one, then she removed the dog hair from her crackers. It took another half hour for that loopy, boozy sensation to arrive but by that time she was in bed watching Celebrity Rehab.

Christmas has been eradicated from Susan's house, the only things that remain are two wheezing poinsettias and a few hanging snowflakes. A girlfriend had already come & gone in the morning, leaving her gigantic fake tree and seasonal decorations for storage in Susan's basement.

Susan generally has her fill of Christmas before it even begins so you can imagine how satisfying it is for her to rub it out.

Susan started the year by sitting in bed and watching a favorite odd movie. Her first breakfast of the year was lox and cream cheese on a pumpernickel bagel and her first baking project was biscotti for Cousin Lisa's house later in the day. The biscotti, with candied ginger, cranberries and toasted almonds was declared by Susan's little sister to taste like fruit cake so now Susan's all paranoid about making it again.

Susan doesn't have any resolutions this year other than making a list of art projects she wants to complete. She wrote a list for each of her kids too, unfortunately for them their lists were more utilitarian in content; clean off the dining table, do a load of laundry, give the dog water.
Boo hoo kids, get to work.

Susan's daughter ended the year under the effect of her first monthly menstrual cycle. Poor thing. She's got another 40 years of discomfort and inconvenience ahead of her, but Susan did her best not to let on.

The daughter had previously been prepared with both information and supplies for the wonderful thing that happens once a month, they've just been waiting. Now the wait is over. Happy New Year, kid.

Susan presented the Monthly Mess as a club that the daughter was now a member of and welcomed her with some chewable Tylenol.

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

It's been two entire days since Susan drank any liquor or ate any goodies.

The absence of liquor is completely unintentional, she'll be back to it on Friday night, but the lack of sugar is agony. Agony!

It generally takes three, four, five days of abstinence before her cravings depart, she's halfway through her detox.

Her eyes are rolling back in her head and she's covered in bugs. She'd love it if someone would please mop her brow and make her eat some hot soup like they do in the movies.

Wild Bill's been drinking the Irish cream, in fact, it's going home with him on Tuesday because Susan finds it so completely disgusting that she can't even stand to have it in the house. Currently it's outside in the snow.

Champagne and Chambord have made Susan's Christmas weekend happy.

Starting Monday she's going to cut out the goodies and sugar and a little bit of the drinking.
Next Monday.

Susan's got so many cookies in her house that her kitchen is like a bloody mine field. She added a new biscotti to her baking repertoire and has been tapping the big tin of rainbow cookies that her little sister made.
Rainbow cookies = almond paste.

Before the snow started making the roads really hairy, Susan, her son and Wild Bill went to the BIG, new, organized, clean thrift store. Susan's son went under protest but managed to fight through his lack of enthusiasm and find stuff for his mother to buy him. Wild Bill scored another twenty pounds of books about WWII and Abraham Lincoln as well as some cold weather gear. After 45 minutes Susan started to sneeze so they left.

Susan's posting this picture even though she looks heavy and is wearing a forced smile.

Susan made a gallon of Irish cream last night. It required ingredients with such horrifying fat contents that it might as well have been made of butter. She doesn't even want to drink it except that she poured a bottle of whiskey in it, so she will.

Susan drank the last of the real Bailey's over the weekend which got her thinking about making her own. She knew it would be a good holiday craft so she washed out the Bailey's bottle and took great care to safeguard the twist top while the bottle dried. Within an hour the husband demonstrated his talent for throwing out things that Susan tries to save.

Susan made him look through the garbage can for the little twisty top.

Who wants home made Irish cream now?

Susan saw somebody's ass today.
She walked through a door and saw the ass four feet in front of her. She turned immediately around, flagged down the first available person and showed them the ass.

The ass was chubby and belonged to a male bent over looking through a bag or a box or something. He was bent over a long time so Susan stood there for a long time.

The ass had an ENORMOUS cleavage. Susan soaked it all in because she didn't know when she'd see something like that again. Eventually she had to get back to work so dragged herself away even though the ass was still out.

She made a stop, told people about the ass then had to double back when she realized she left something behind in the previous location.

Behind in the previous location. Ha!

Anyway, she went back & saw that the ass was still out although it was now facing east.

Other than the ass, it was a regular day.

On Saturday night Susan took a ride with her little sister into the greatest city in the world. They were on a mission to move out ninety eight percent of her niece's belongings from the dorm she occupies at sleep away art school.

While the other two were packing everything up Susan's job was to read the paper and chase panhandlers away from the car.
She did an admirable job with both tasks.

The niece kept only what she could transport home on the train the next night; a change of clothes and an iPod. Shortly after goodbye kisses and begining their drive home, Susan and her little sister witnessed a bicyclist smack into a couple as they all crossed paths at a corner.

Somehow, no one hit the ground.

The bicyclist managed to get knocked off the bike, but stay on his feet, propelled by the energy of the collision into a sort of fast walk toward the line of cars waiting at the red light. He didn't stop, he just kept walking like an over-wound robotic Frankenstein until it became evident that he was drunk.
He was wearing a mohawk hat.

The girls roared with laughter and tuned the radio station to Xmas music.

Susan has been poised over her keyboard for the last eight days, uninspired.

During that time she attended Acme Sweatshop's swanky holiday party, sat in an auditorium filled with mom jeans to watch her daughter play clarinet, made a fantastic smoked oyster and shrimp gumbo and read through three weeks of saved Style sections.

She also received a wonderful musical present from Patti, went Xmas shopping with her little sister, and forgot to bring her lunch to work a bunch of times.

Here's Susan's Xmas wish list, already provided to the husband;
Wish #1
Wish #2.

Susan's friend Fire Ball sent this to her upon learning Susan's age.

Anonymous asked if Susan ever found her wedding ring.
Not yet.
Susan is currently wearing a $20 silver ring. It's an adequate substitute.

Susan and the husband went at it on Saturday. She was so sick of the sound of his voice talkingtalkingtalking and offering opinions she didn't ask for. Even when she said OMG, will you shut up! he wouldn't.

It all came to a head when the husband called Susan's son back into the room to tell him the same thing that Susan had just told him two seconds earlier.

After a brief discussion concerning the superfluousness of his added commentary the husband became disgusted with Susan and left the room, saying something under his breath as he went.

She threw the TV remote at him which was stupid because if she broke it she'd be back in 1979 unable to change a channel without getting up off the couch. The husband responded by throwing a chunky candle which put a dent in the wall & sent Susan shrieking.
Susan can shriek.

Anyway, by bedtime it had all blown over because Susan & the husband are soulmates and never go to bed angry.

Susan got undressed for bed and discovered that she hadn't put on a brassiere that day. Susan went to work without a brassiere!
She has a collection of stretchy tank tops with shelf bras that she wears underneath many of her tops, always in conjunction with a brassiere. But today there was only a stretchy tank holding her boobs up.
She's going to have to add
Wear your brassiere
to her daily tasks immediately following
Watch for two little Pinkett Smith junkies.

Can we discuss how much Susan hates the Jada Pinkett Smiths? Susan is counting the days till the kids start shooting heroin. Susan apologizes to anyone who is acquainted with children shooting heroin, she knows it's tragic and nothing to make fun of, but she can't wait until the Pinkett Smiths start.

She even put it on her daily task list of things to look out for. In fact, that's what she'd want for the second day of Hanukkah if she were Jewish.

Why does that family think they can earn all the money in the world? Other people need money too, twisted people who write BLAHgs definitely need money.

Susan's got 22 days to figure how to squeeze out enough non-existant cash for Xmas presents. Just for her kids. Nobody else.
Just the same as last year and the year before.
But, what's sadder than a grown woman with not on single present under the tree? Nothing. So, she's got to get the husband something if she expects him to get her anything.
Oy, it's complicated already!

Susan is very HAPPY to say goodbye to NaBloPoMo!
Thirty posts in thirty days all constructed between 11pm and 1am have taken their toll on Susan's beauty sleep. Now that this grueling task is behind her she's going to attempt quality over quantity, catch up on reading everyone else's blogs and focus on hating Xmas.

Kisses everyone!

On their last night in town the old folks funded a Chinese takeout banquet for all available family members, and one guest.

After dinner Susan busted out the little 20 Questions ball and amazed everyone with its magical guessing powers. She asked her father to think of a word and the little 20 Questions ball set to work asking questions for which the answer could be either YES, NO, SOMETIMES or UNKNOWN. Susan's father thought of seaplane and the little 20 Questions ball came up with robot.
Stumped!

This prompted Susan's father to tell his favorite seaplane story;
Back before they were married and Susan was on hand to illuminate their universe, Susan's father piloted her mother around in a seaplane. After he landed the seaplane it had to come out of the water which was done by pulling it up to land on a set of rails. As this occurred the pilot had to be in the plane but the passenger could not be. On one occassion a large, handsome man assisted Susan's father by carrying Susan's mother from the plane, through the water, up to dry land.

Upon hearing the story Susan's mother smiled broadly and added; His name was Steve, he wasn't big, but he was well built, blonde and tan. He carried me a couple of times.

Susan slept till 10:45 am on Sunday morning. She hadn't slept that late since that magical time before she had kids, back when she regularly slept off hangovers.

A few days earlier Susan's mother had admired a necklace Susan was wearing,
it was one of those five dollar Murano glass necklaces that they sell in the mall.
After breakfast Susan's mother drove her two daughters & one granddaughter in her rental car over to the mall so everyone could buy five dollar necklaces. Susan's daughter didn't want one but she put herself in charge of picking one out for her brother's girlfriend.

Sidebar: Susan met her son's girlfriend over the weekend. Assessment; Adorable and confident and tall.

Other than purchasing her son's girlfriend's necklace, Susan had no additional money for shopping and wouldn't allow anyone to purchase anything more expensive than a coffee & mini cinnabon, after which they went home.

Susan's family was enjoying cranberry cheesecake after dinner when Susan's father asked, Did I ever tell you my favorite cranberry story?

Susan didn't have a favorite cranberry story of her own so she was intrigued.

Many years ago, back before Susan's mom stopped letting Susan's dad do anything fun, he used to fly. There was a private airfield in Cape Cod that ended in a cranberry bog. If he landed when the field was flooded he'd have to wear his rubbers.

That's not really a story, Pop.

Yes, it is.

No, it's more like a description.

Okay.

Susan only has seventeen minutes with which to throw together her mandatory BLAHg post.

Did everyone have a good Thanksgiving?

Susan was disheartened to find that 68% of women who responded to an online survey were anticipating holiday drama and fights.

Who are theses women?

Susan's family takes a break from fighting while at the Thanksgiving table then they start up again on the ride home.

People are crazy.

HAPPY Thanksgiving to all Susan's bloggy pals.
She'll be at her Aunt Eileen & Uncle Joe's today eating, drinking & yukking it up with all her cousins.
Enjoy, everyone!

Susan's old dog has been dead one year.
She can hardly believe it's been that long since she was gassed out of a room by extreme flatulence.

Susan gets all misty thinking about how she'd watch the old dog eat too fast, throw up, then eat the vomit.

It seems like only yesterday that she stepped in dog pee every damned day, and that sometimes the pee seeped through the floorboards & dripped onto the basement floor below.

Memories.

Susan woke up this morning and Wild Bill was on the couch, in town to see the old folks. This is how Susan's going to refer to her parents from now on, the old folks.
She's in the habit of using folks to describe people in general & has got to be able to differentiate her folks from regular folks.
The old folks won't like it but this isn't their blog now, is it?

Susan's not a people person in the morning, she barely tolerates her husband and he helps her get out the door with all her stuff and a cup of coffee. This morning there were too many people up and talking.
Too many.
Perhaps later, after she arms herself with a glass of wine, she'll be better able to withstand all the talking.

As it turned out she was correct.

Susan came home to find that the old folks went shopping, Wild Bill prepped the chicken cutlets & boiled the potatoes for mashing, the husband walked in the door with a gallon of sangria & salad, and little sister brought the ginger ale and all the fixin's for apple crisp. Everyone got to work frying, mashing, setting, clearing, peeling, baking, washing and enjoying each other's company.

Susan's been working on her own Xmas list, this is what she's come up with so far:

Love's Fresh Lemon
A nap
The ability to make people disappear
Enthusiasm

Susan would like to invite her bloggy pals to read her tweenly adorable daughter's Xmas list :

Dear Mom,
I added more to my Christmas List, and added links to the things I want.
In order of how much I want them:
1. GHD IV Styler (link)
2. iTunes Giftcard $25
3. Pink with a Splash Fresh & Clean (link)
4. Prismacolor Double-ended Markers 24 pack (You can get it at Michaels and on Amazon)
5. BH Cosmetics 88 Color Matte Eyecolor Palette (link)
From,
The most amazing daughter ever,
Lily.
Yay.

Please be aware that the daughter referred to herself as amazing because of the way her mother feels about that wretched song from last week at the mall.

Instead of reading one of Twisted Susan's BLAHg posts, read Three In The Bed, hers is much better and Susan didn't actually write anything today.

Come look at Susan's current fave blog, she challenges you not to love it.
Go ahead, try.

A cowboy opened the door, tipped his hat and smiled at Susan tonight. She doesn't know what he was doing in her neck of the woods but she loves cowboys now.

Susan's husband continues to bug her about her BLAHging and she continues to ignore him. He's obviously jealous of her talent and all the important things she has to say.

Susan recently purchased three tins of chocolate covered nuts which she's kept hidden behind a bottle of coconut rum. Every day she pops a few of the toffee almonds on the sly but pressed her luck when she took them out to share with the husband. The daughter heard the crunching and came in to investigate. She ate a few then returned the candy to Susan's secret hiding place leaving Susan no other choice but to wait till she was gone and eat the rest.

Lastly, Susan would like to leave you with Foxy Baby Boutique. Tre fabu!

Susan has just about had it with the amount of apostrophes she finds where they don't belong. She's perplexed at the widespread misuse of something that is so elemental in writing. Apostrophes are used to indicate that something belongs to somebody, such as Susan's exasperation. They're also used to help make one word from two words, such as didn't we all learn this in grade school?

I know that Susan went over the apostrophe thing in a previous post and doesn't understand why she is being made to revisit this topic.

There's a particularly sweet and adorable blogger who adds extra apostrophes all the time, which is very unusual because Sweet & Adorable has a substantial readership and someone should have brought it to her attention long ago. If any of Susan's bloggy pals think that she's referring to them, she's not. Although some of her bloggy pals do indeed commit this annoying sin, Susan is positive that Sweet & Adorable is not a reader.

Susan knows she's not perfect with the grammar herself and can tolerate a bit of constructive criticism. She's all about self improvement.

Susan thinks her husband resents her being on the computer all the time.
Well, f*ck him!

Susan's mother would do her ironing on Sunday afternoons during the Million Dollar Movie, she'd have the damp clothes rolled up in a towel and squirt them with water as she went along. She didn't have a fancy spray bottle, she used something closer in design to one of those ketchup bottles you find on picnic tables, cylindrical with a pointy spout. She also dipped her old fashioned fingers into a glass of water and sprinkled the clothes that way.

While her mother ironed Susan watched Trapeze and The Two Mrs. Carrolls and
I Want To Live!

Susan knows people who don't iron but can't understand how they manage to escape that particular chore. Susan likes to wear clothes that require ironing, so she irons.

Instead of having the substantive sex talk with her son Susan made Jessica's pumpkin lasagna. Everyone liked it except Susan's niece, who's a pill about food anyway. Some went for seconds although Susan and her little sister strategized about adding a layer of vegetables or sausage next time.
After dinner Susan reorganized her closet. She needed more space so she took over half of her husband's closet, which she also reorganized. They aren't big closets so it didn't take her very long. She hemmed a few pairs of pants and ironed about five shirts in between loads of laundry. She can't iron too many shirts at one time because they'll get squished in the closet. She tries to arrange her ironed shirts so that they don't touch each other although that's not always practical. Susan went to bed knowing that she was totally prepared to get dressed for any occassion, except something fancy,
and slept soundly.

The Mall

Today's a special day, Susan is going to give you two BLAHg posts!

Susan took the daughter and the girls next door to the mall, each a representative of either 7th, 8th or 10th grade. The girls are mature enough to be unsupervised as long as Susan is no more than half a mall length away. Susan even carried their shopping bags so as to relieve them of the responsibility for not losing them.

It was relaxing for Susan to shop the clearance racks in solitude then rejoin the girls and their chatter. They're nice girls, noisy and happy, the way they should be. Susan saw more than her share of mutated Ugg-like bootie things, very unattractive. She assumes the wearers don't have full length mirrors at home. Perhaps they'll get some for Xmas.

As they were preparing to leave, Susan and the girls walked past a store and saw a pretty girl with an even prettier smile leaning against the front facade engaging the customers. She was wearing little plaid shorties and had a reasonable amount of cleavage exposed. OMG, it was a hooker! Susan walked past a second time to get another look. The hooker was so pretty and relaxed and young! Susan was stunned!
Look at all the exclamation points she's using!

On her second pass Susan came to the uneasy realization that this young lady in glorfied underwear was just an employee of the store using her tits and ass to advertise their wares. A hooker lite.

Susan looked up their website as soon as she got home and saw that she was correct. She sent the company an e-mail congratulating them for their marketing strategy indicating they should take pride in all their important work because we don't have enough half dressed young women standing around in the mall.
Then she wrote a couple of other things.
Knowing they likely wouldn't be interested in Susan's opinion she wrote a second e-mail to mall's property management indicating that until they can guarantee that she wouldn't be encountering a contracted employee of their mall in her underpants Susan would have to abstain from shopping there. And she will. She doesn't need the mall for her shopping.
She doesn't need the mall at all.

Susan's not done.
Please indulge while she backtracks a bit.
Driving home the girls were in control of the radio and were singing along to Just The Way You Are by Bruno Mars. Are you familiar with this song? It's a rather limp and soulless song about a girl who's amazing just because she's beautiful.

Susan doesn't like the word amazing because she never hears it used to describe anything amazing.

Susan asked her girls about why the girl in the song was so amazing. They sang louder. Susan asked them if they felt comfortable being judged soley on how pretty they were, not how smart or funny or caring or honest, just how pretty.
They totally tuned her out and very wickedly sang at the top of their lungs.
When they got home Susan went next door and told on the 8th & 10th grader.

Don't Expect Much

Susan is currently bereft of all inspiration. Her feet hurt. She wasted twenty minutes this morning trying to find the proper necklace for her outfit. Twenty minutes.
Then she got all mad and threw stuff out.
She got her hair cut then went food shopping and bought more goat cheese. She left her notes for the substantive sex talk at work. It's scheduled for the weekend so she'll create an outline from memory.
Her neck gets in the way when she looks down. She wonders why people read a Kindle when they could read a book. She can't even keep up with her pals' blogs.

Susan peed on her sweater.
She got it a number of years ago from one of those clothing stores that sell everything for $10. It's probably lasted so long because it's ninety percent synthetic.
Byproduct of petroleum.
Susan's sweater is nubby and long with a hood that used to have a pom pom until she cut it off. It's used as a bathrobe, as blanket, and as something she actually wears outside the house, but that's rare.

The other morning Susan got up, and since she won't turn the heat on the house was freezing. She put on her petroleum byproduct sweater and went to the potty. While she was sitting there she had time to consider whether she had gotten her sweater completely out of the line of fire. She's had tons of experience wearing the sweater to the toilet so she felt confident that everything was fine. She concluded her business and as she was turning toward the sink she realized that she had miscalculated the ratio of synthetic nubbyness to toilet seat circumference to urine stream trajectory.
She had peed on it.

Susan's husband got mad at her last night, he accused her of being rude and left the room. She was thankful for the break because she was trying to construct her mandatory BLAHg post and he kept talking.
She listened while he had something to say but abandoned him with extreme prejudice as soon as he didn't.
She doesn't like it when he's mad at her because he's usually right about whatever it is and then she's got to apologize.
She doesn't mind apologizing, it's part of being in a mature, functioning relationship, but sometimes the territory is murky. Was she really rude? Wasn't he hyper sensitive?
The next morning she gave the only apology she could honestly support;
I'm sorry that I upset you.
The husband understood that it was watered down. Susan shrugged, It's all I got.

Susan started doing research for the substantive sex talk she has to have with her son.

She started by consulting a coworker with similarly aged boys. The coworker's focus was primarily on disease transmission and pregnancy. Susan thanked her and jotted down some notes.

Next Susan spent some time on the internet and took more notes.

Susan remembered things she's seen in documentaries, conversations with other moms over the years, an episode of Oprah; notes, notes, notes.

She also appreciates all the support from her bloggy pals, she'll be ready by the weekend.

Susan's son has a girlfriend.
She found this out when he posted it on FB. Susan's son is a boy of few words, so she took advantage of his online self disclosure and asked him some simple questions, all of which he answered.

The following day, Susan had a separate conversation with her social worker girlfriend and as a result has to have a substantive sex talk with her son.

Susan told her son that the sex talk was imminent and allowed him to choose which parent he'd prefer to have it with.

Neither.

Susan's in the batter's box. She'll let you know how she does.

Susan and her little sister enjoyed watching Tom Jones dance. Stay with it, he really lets loose halfway through.

Susan was reading this post at Mama's Losin' It and was inspired to participate in Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop. The topic that grabbed her was to look up a favorite childhood actor and tell us where they are now.

Susan was surprised at the speed at which she chose her fave.
It only took a second to bypass Danny Bonaduce even though they he was funny and they shared the same hair.
Then Bobby Sherman, even though she still sings some of his songs.
Then Johnny Quest and Bandit, who were ineligible anyway because they're cartoons.

Susan travelled back to her eleven year old self; back to her 7:30 bedtime, back to getting spanked, Shake & Bake pork chops, riding her bike and stealing quarters from Grace's mom's purse.

Susan chose Pete Duel but she can't tell anybody where he is now because he never made it out of 1971.

Pete Duel was impossibly handsome, charming and on TV every week in Alias Smith and Jones. He had one eye that sort of didn't look in the same direction as the other eye, but Susan liked that slight imperfection. She loved him.

Susan and Grace played a very unsophisticated game using the letters in the AS&J actors' names while they walked to the deli for a bag of BBQ potato chips and a big dill pickle.

During Christmas vacation children all over the land were home from school.
For Susan there were no math tests to fail and no punishments for missing book reports or talking in class. There was only Dark Shadows, Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea, The Mod Squad as well as The Munsters,
I Dream of Jeannie and The Rifleman. Susan loved the Rifleman too.

While Susan watched that week's AS&J the flames of her crush were fanned. The cuteness of Pete Duel was almost unbearable but she knew how to live with her longing. She rearranged the pictures on her corkboard, she made little dolls out of clay attaching their heads to the bodies with toothpicks, she sprayed her Avon perfume and played Everything Is Beautiful by Ray Stevens on her record player.

Susan remembers walking into a lonely depression when she heard that Pete Duel killed himself on New Year's Eve. She didn't call Grace to find out if she heard about it. She didn't tell her parents. She kept to herself. She felt horrible and confused. She felt completely alone.

When Susan went back to school she finally talked to Grace. Grace felt horrible too. Susan remembers the feeling of her sadness being lifted, the same way her sadness is lifted now anytime she shares a burden. Anytime she thinks I'm going to keep this to myself but doesn't, because she needs to talk about it. She doesn't talk to find answers, she talks to feel less alone.

She learned that from Pete Duel.

On Day Six Susan's daughter tracked dog sh*t into the house.

She didn't make it through the entire house, but she went far enough. All on her own the daughter compiled the supplies necessary for the clean up but fell into a confused trance when she realized the enormity of the task.

Her 8.5 mother stepped in, I'll take care of it, and released the daughter from her obligation.

The daughter ran out the front door and into the sunlight.

Day 5 is almost over and Susan has nothing prepared beyond this sentence, but it's all she needs to fulfil her NaBloPoMo requirement.
See you tomorrow.

Susan's niece assisted in the creation of this mixed media piece of art cleverly disguised as a mop head with tissue paper stuck to it. It's currently hanging in a gallery and available for purchase. No kidding.

Susan feels comfortable making fun of it a little because she quite likes much of her niece's art. Much, but not all.

If you're up for some more art

here's one of the niece's friend's blogs

and here's another.

Susan's wonderfully funny friend, GP sent this to Susan with a sticky note attached on which she wrote See, if you lived here we could attend this event together.

GP sends Susan all sorts of fabulous objects, most recently was a box of adjustable buttons with a sticky note;
As seen on TV. Susan threw the buttons away & kept the note. Susan's fave from GP was found in a parkinglot. It's a matchbox, a wee bit crushed, painted dark green with gold sparkly stars, gold sparkly lace and a picture of the Virgin Mary set inside. Susan keeps it on her fireplace so she can see it every day.

Many years ago when Susan was worried about having cancer GP told her quite dismissively, You should live so long to get cancer. During Susan's bout with panic attacks GP was the person Susan called in the middle of the night.

Once or twice a year Susan is lucky enough to have GP as her houseguest, her room is always ready although sometimes other people are sleeping in it.

Did Susan ever give you her recipe for NaBloPoMo Black Bean Brownies?
No? Well, today's your lucky Day Two.

All you need is 1 box BROWNIE MIX and 1 can BLACK BEANS.

Open the can of black beans, drain & rinse the beans. Drain and rinse the can.

Put the beans back into the can, fill the remaining space in the can with water.

Combine the contents of the can with brownie mix & bake as directed on the box.

Susan likes to take an immersion blender & really mess up the beans & the water before she adds it to the dry ingredients, but that's completely optional.

Susan just made these for her Ohio road trip and everyone in the car ate them even though they knew what they were made of.

This time last year Susan's dog was dying.
The dog wasn't popular outside of her immediate family but that didn't seem to bother her. She had an enviable confidence and never sought extraneous approval.

She carried herself with feminine grace even though she wasn't considered classically pretty and most folks referred to her as him.

She made no apologies for her few shortcomings, she had as much right as anyone to lie on the floor and fart.

When she was permanently banished from Susan's bed she didn't waste time whining, she showed her adaptability by jumping into then next available bed down the hall.

Susan really misses warming her feet under that formerly alive dog at the end of her bed.

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.