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Susan's Office Cookbook: Chocolate Slushies.

Obviously I do not know how to draw a chef hat.

Who says you need a stove, microwave, dishes, hand-eye-coordination, or even beginner-level cooking skills to whip up something amazing when alls you need is a roll of Styrofoam cups, plastic utensils, and the ol’ office water cooler?! 

Here’s a sweet treat that will instantly bring a spark to your dead eyes and a shine to your pallid fluorescent-lights-exposed faces: Chocolate slushies!

Step 1: 

Ingredients: ASSEMBLE! 

Gather to yourself in a perfectly straight and aesthetically pleasing row one Styrofoam cup, one plastic spoon, one packet of hot cocoa mix, and access to hot water a la trusty office cooler. 

Step 2:

Magic Chocolate Dust.

Savagely rip the top off the paper packet of hot cocoa mix and pour the whole lot into the Styrofoam cup with reckless abandon (amount of cleanup afterward will correlate directly with how recklessly abandoned you have committed yourself to be for this step). 

Step 3:

Mmm bubbly... 

Add scalding hot water (this dissolves the cocoa better than cold water does) and shake shake shake it like you just don’t care until one of your coworkers walks in on you and throws you off your groove or until the cocoa mix is dissolved (whichever comes first). 

Step 4:

Forever Alone Cup

Stick in the freezer. 

PRO TIP: Wrap in foil to avoid nosey coworkers from snooping all up in your biznatch. Feel free to tape lengthy passive-aggressive letters on the freezer door threatening your wrath upon anyone that touches your goods.

 Step five: 

Nope.

Completely (but not entirely) forget about it for the next four hours. This time will depend on how hot your cocoa is going in the fridge, how cold your freezer is, how much water you have in your cup etc. 

Too long and you’ll end up with a big Styrofoam-cup-shaped cocoa-flavored ice cube. Too little and you’ll just end up with cold cocoa with only the top layer frozen (pictured above). It is absolutely essential to catch the cocoa in its glorious half-frozen state of slushie amazingness for maximum release of happies.

Step 6: 

Awww yissssss

Mix well (the more you mix the less "icy" it'll be), marvel at your skills, consume. 

Step 7: 

Let the euphoria rush over you in torrents of glee and abject delight. For the next five minutes, only you and your frozen chocolate slushie exist in the world. Feel free to let the tears stream forth as every cell in your body rejoices the intake of frozen chocolatey goodness.

Surgeon General’s warning: This substance is highly addictive and may cause an urge to violently and spontaneously break out into song and dance. 

New Do!

Fig. A: Happy Susan

So this news comes to le blog just a LEEEEETLE late (two months late to be exact), but still a big hoopla for me regardless: 

Fig. B: Supplies! 

I cut my hairs! 

I had been in the process of getting sick of my long long hair and how it was always constantly everywhere and also getting slightly grossed out by the fact that hair from three-four-five years ago that had been squeezed out through the hair follicles on my scalp from inside my  body were still hanging intact from my head (gross, right?), and debating whether or not to chop it off when along came…

Fig. C: The epitome of fine art

A bee. 

This bee was the deciding factor of le decision to hack off all my hair because this bee, whilst I was traipsing along a narrow wooded pathway during a Saturday morning hike in the yonder foothills of redwood trees in Northern California, proceeded to wander straight into the pile of hair roped into a bun on the top of my head

Fig. D: La la la look at me traipse

...and get trapped inside.

Naturally, when I felt something in my hair, I freaked out, and naturally, when the bee felt my giant fatty hands swatting in its general direction, it freaked out too.

Fig. E: Why yes, I’m fine, thank you, and you?

Chaos ensued, the bee stung my scalp, I started screaming and pulling at my hair like a madman, and it took my dad a good three minutes to dig through all the tangled bird’s nest of hair on my head in order to locate, untangle, and rid my hair of the bee, then my scalp of its stinger. 

If you have never before had the misfortune of experiencing a bee sting on your scalp, just for reference, it feels not unlike someone is using a concrete jackhammer drill both inside your scalp and out for the better part of the day before dulling into a horrible migraine headache for the rest. It causes you to hate your life, but especially it causes you to hate your hair, that horrid black mess of spindly twine that just mooches nutrients from your body through your scalp and does nothing useful but to sit there stupidly and trap wild insects and cause copious amounts of pain and turmoil.

Fig. F: The pain oh the pain

Immediately the following weekend, I plopped myself into a hair salon chair and demanded that the hairdresser ruthlessly sever the lot it from my person forever.   

Play Date.

Yesterday I took Charlie Popo out to visit my friend A’s four-year-old black kitties Thunder and Lightning. Charlie comes from a bustling home filled with all kinds of animals and grew up playing with four other kitties and three very touchy children so I thought it would be fun for her to play with friends. 

Fig. B: I could never tell these two apart

Thunder and Lightning are massive, pure black, shiny-coated, big-eyed kitties that look more like wild pumas than house cats. 

Fig. C: Le approximate size difference.

They are many times bigger than Charlie, and also many many more times imposing with their all-black coats and gigantic eyes and ability to bound onto kitchen counter tops in a single leap, so imagine our surprise when as soon as I let Charlie go to play…

They immediately FREAKED THE HECK OUT and scattered in a panicked frenzy from room to living room to bathroom to kitchen then to their final destination: the top of the refrigerator, where they remained for the duration of the (now failed) play date, gurgling and growling and hissing in fear and confusion. 

Fig. F: GOWAY OUR HAUS

Snack Time.

Fig. A: Happy Susan Happy Snack

I was masterfully hand carving the peel off an apple with my fruit knife over the trashcan in the office break room and feeling quite proud of my single stand of apple peel and quite happy about this snack that would soon be sitting in my belleh when suddenly 

A WILD FREAK ACCIDENT APPEARS!!!

Apple goes AWOL and plunges straight into the deep dark bowels of the office trash can in heart-stopping slow-mo never to return again.

Fig. D: First reaction

T-10 seconds to second reaction:

ARRRGGGHHHHHH!!!!!

Bridesmaid.

Fig. A: The wonders of professional hair and makeup

A couple weeks ago I was a bridesmaid for the first time in my life in a good friend's wedding. 

With much gusto the weeks preceding, and with exponentially escalating vengeance thereafter, every single person (friend, foe, or stranger) that even barely happened upon the fact of my bridesmaid-hood would NOT stop heckling me to “DON’T BEND YOUR KNEES!” during the ceremony.

Fig. B: Default standing position, knees locked

According to their hearsay, apparently a lot of bridesmaids faint during the ceremony and if they have their knees locked, they end up falling over on their face like a chopped log and creating an unseemly domino effect of falling bridesmaids

Fig. C: How not to faint during a wedding

instead of crumpling “gracefully” onto the ground like a fainted maiden should. These admonitions were then inevitably followed by harrowing horror stories of "a friend of a friend" or "cousin of my sister's coworker" who actually had a bridesmaid faint in their wedding, underwear peepshow and all. 

Stirred deeply by these true stories of fallen bridesmaids of yore, I vowed in my heart that I would not be the next one to make it into their “friend of a friend” story compilation… But could not for the life of me figure out how to stand with knees bent without looking...

like I had just peed myself.

Fig. E: The face of awkward penguin

Even now I’m not exactly sure I had it quite figured out -- Hopefully nobody was paying attention to that awkward bridesmaid on the far left -- But I’m happy to report that not a one in our bridal party fainted and we all made it out of the chapel on our own two feet instead of being unceremoniously dragged out by the arms. 

Fig. F: Probably without a doubt my worst nightmare

CRISIS AVERTED!

Charlie Popo.

Meet my new kitty Charlie Popo. She is three months old and a mutt rescue of unidentified breed with black spots that make her look not unlike she is wearing a little black hat. 

Charlie is a very touchy kitty and will shamelessly spare no cute tactic to get herself some pets. Every time I open the front door she immediately plops her floppy self at my feet squirming belly up like a fish out of water 

OPERATION PET-ME-NAU: COMMENCE

MOVE 1: left flippy flop

MOVE 2: right flippy flop

FINISH HIM: left flippy flop and initiate purr sequence

until my brain all but implodes from sheer fuzzy wuzzy adowable cuteness and I pet her to her teeny heart's content.