Susan M. Boyer

USA TODAY Bestselling Author
Agatha Award Winner

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Susan M. Boyer

USA TODAY Bestselling Author
Agatha Award Winner

  • Home
  • About
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    • Privacy Policy
  • Books
  • Stella Maris
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The Chick-Fila Cows Perform a Public Service

April 13, 2010 in Crazy Happens, Diets and Other Torture, Evidence of My Insanity, Evidence of Rampant Insanity

I love a cheeseburger as much as anybody–more than many folks, actually, if you take into account the vegetarian and vegan sectors. Grilled Angus beef on a sesame seed bun, with extra cheese, mayo, lettuce, tomato, pickle, and Heinz 57. Yum. My mouth is watering and it’s not nearly lunch time.

And don’t get me started on grilled stuffed filet mignon. The moaning might disturb other hotel guests.

I’m a fan of the cow, is what I’m saying–always have been.

But, I’m also something of a…ahem…hypochondriac. Yeah, I  know, you’re shocked and all.

So, when I read this article on page 2 of today’s USA Today, I immediately started inventorying my symptoms. The article states that “A program set up to test beef for chemical residues is not accomplishing its mission of monitoring the food supply for dangerous substances… The health affects on people who eat such meat are a ‘growing concern.'” The article goes on to say that in 2008, “Mexican authorities rejected a U.S. beef shipment because its copper levels exceeded Mexican standards.” The rejected meat was sold in the U.S.

Our beef wasn’t up to Mexican standards, so it had to be sold in the U.S.???

It’s not just copper. (I’m still not clear on how the copper gets into cows, but some of the bad stuff comes from pesticide residue in the cow’s drinking water.) Also, antibiotics are a problem, among them PENICILLIN, which I am allergic to. The article gave a chart with contaminants, some of which I can’t pronounce, and SYMPTOMS TO WATCH FOR. These include oxidative stress (wtf?), renal dysfunction, and death. And those are just the copper-related symptoms. Call me a quack, but death is a pretty serious SYMPTOM.

I had reconciled myself to living with the threat of Mad Cow, now this.

It’s enough to make a girl turn to tofu.

Peace, out…

Susan

Filed Under: Crazy Happens, Diets and Other Torture, Evidence of My Insanity, Evidence of Rampant Insanity Tagged With: Crazy Happens, Diets and Other Torture, Evidence of My Insanity, Evidence of Rampant Insanity

It’s Just Not a Party Unless EMS Comes Out

December 18, 2009 in Crazy Happens, Evidence of My Insanity, Evidence of Rampant Insanity, Karaoke

So, last Saturday evening was the first Christmas party of the season at Chez Boyer. This was a fun group,  which loosely consisted of local writer friends. I need to say up front that NO OFFICAL ORGANIZATION SPONSORED THIS EVENT, and each and every writers’ group that grants me membership is blameless.

It was early in the evening–guests were still arriving. Groups of future literary luminaries chatted about all manner of highbrow matters in the kitchen and keeping room, while sipping festive drinks and nibbling on canapés–okay, it was Southwestern eggrolls, vegetarian meatloaf on crackers, and mini cheeseburgers. Hey, that meatloaf was good. I’m just saying…

Anyway, I was lounging on the sofa yakking with a couple of friends, when something went BOOM! in the kitchen.

I jumped up and looked across the bar, but all I could see was the backsides of everyone who had dashed to the middle of the kitchen.

My husband shouted, “CALL 911! NOW!!”

Clueless, but responding automatically to the tone in The Husband’s voice I grabbed the phone and made the call.

“What’s the nature of your emergency?” the voice on the phone asked.

I had nothing. I shook my head, gestured wildly, and gave my name and address. I peered over someone’s shoulder. A friend we’ll call Ginger because that is SO not her name sprawled in the kitchen floor on her back looking at the ceiling.

“What happened?” I asked.

Realizing my dilemma, everyone answered at once. I picked out a few things and told the operator, “My friend got dizzy and fell out of a bar-height chair onto the hardwood floor and hit her head.”

The operator asked the standard questions, is she breathing, conscious, able to speak, etc. (All yes at that point, but at least one person said she’d lost consciousness for a moment.) I gave directions–oddly we weren’t “in the system.” The 911 operator assured me help was on the way.

By this time, The Husband had Ginger’s head and feet on pillows, and had tried to cover her with a blanket, but she declined as she was too hot already. Ginger seemed a bit confused herself, as to how she came to be flat on the floor, but poll results indicated that 70% of the people who’d seen what happened thought that she’d leaned back in the chair, not realizing she was seated sideways, and toppled to the floor, where she was at least dazed, and possibly momentarily unconscious.

One resourceful soul asked for a flashlight and went outside to wave down the EMS team. Moments later, the firetruck arrived and parked in front of the house. I greeted the team at the door–I think there were three of them–and directed them to the kitchen. The writers backed off, allowing the professionals to form a circle around Ginger and ask her the same round of questions.

Then, the doorbell rang.

For the next thirty minutes, I alternated greeting arriving guests and additional EMT’s. To each group of party guests I explained the firetruck and ambulance, then told them where to put food (and the best route into the kitchen under the circumstances) and coats, and offered them a drink. Periodically I popped by to check on Ginger, who seemed increasingly normal.

After everyone realized Ginger was okay, they went back to nibbling and socializing.

For a surreal while–I really couldn’t say how long–the group chatting around Ginger was just one more conversation clutch at the party, only they didn’t have drinks. After a bit, the EMT’s got Ginger up off the floor. She declined to go to the hospital. The EMT’s left, and Ginger stayed at the party and later sang a Karaoke duet with the gentleman who’d flagged down EMS with the flashlight.

It was a great party…

Filed Under: Crazy Happens, Evidence of My Insanity, Evidence of Rampant Insanity, Karaoke Tagged With: Crazy Happens, Evidence of My Insanity, Evidence of Rampant Insanity, Karaoke

Six Hours in the Twilight Zone

July 10, 2009 in Evidence of Rampant Insanity

The voices in my head are singing Alan Watts Blues by Van Morrison

What I’m reading: Shadowfires by Dean Koontz

So, Jim and our next door neighbor are working on a privacy fence between our yards. Whatever needs doing, if Jim can possibly do it himself, he will not pay someone else to do it. He’s…thrifty. That’s a good word for it. We balance each other well.

Anyway, last week Jim and the neighbor both took a few days off to work on the fence. Things were moving along nicely up until the point Thursday afternoon when I looked out the back door and saw Jim sprawled on the grass. He was lying on his stomach, propped up on his elbows, in what looked like a casual conversation with our neighbor, who had knelt down beside him. I was confused, because it was blistering hot, and it didn’t seem likely he’d sprawl out for a break in the sun–the shade, maybe.

I stuck my head out the door and asked, “Jim, are you all right?”

“Not really,” he said calmly.

By that time I was sprinting across the yard. “What happened,” I asked.

Jim nodded at the line of string that had previously been stretched tight from one end of the yard to the other, but was now lying in the grass. “I tripped over the string, put my foot down in a wet spot, and slid into a split–like gymnasts do on a balance beam,” he said. “I’m not a gymnast.”

We arrived at the ER at 3:45. One of the security people brought a wheelchair and helped Jim inside while I parked the car. By the time I made it through security–the fool thing kept beeping and I had to be wanded and patted down–Jim had already spoken to one of the not-very-busy clerks at the front. There was a desk with maybe six of them, and they were chatting, or staring into space–not frantically admitting patients. There were maybe a half-dozen other patients in the waiting room.

Forty-five minutes later, two people who’d come in after us had gone back, but they hadn’t called Jim. “What did you tell them?” I asked.

“I told them I’d been doing gymnastics, and I wasn’t a gymnast,” he said.

“Oh, no, no, no!” I said, shaking my head. “You never, never joke with people in an ER. You’ve told them two things,” I said. “One, your pain is not bad enough to effect your disposition, and two, you’re an easy going guy who won’t complain if he has to wait four hours.”

“You thing I should do the Stingray Howl?” he asked. He was referring to the noise I made all the way to the car, all the way to the hospital, and in the ER until they gave me something to quiet me down the summer I stepped on a stingray and got stung.

“Yes, actually,” I said.

He shook his head.

I sighed. “We’re going to be here all night.”

I went up front to speak to one of the clerks. “We’ve been here for forty-five minutes,” I said, and my husband is in a lot of pain.” This was true. The thing that scared me was that it was really unusual for Jim to go along with an ER visit. He’s heavy into self-diagnosis and natural healing. His mother had six boys, and her typical response to an injury was, “Put some water on it, it’ll be fine.” The fact that he’d come to the ER told me that, despite his good humor, Jim was in a lot of pain.

“What’s his name?” she asked and I told her. She scrolled down a list. “Is he here?” She scrunched up her face at me.

“Yes,” I pointed across the room. “He’s right there, and he’s been here for forty-five minutes.”

“I can’t find him,” she said, looking blankly at her computer.

Before I could launch into hissy-fit mode, a man in scrubs opened the double doors that led into the Bowels of Hell and called Jim’s name.

Jim started wheeling his chair towards the doors and I skipped to catch up.

First stop was a nurse in a little room who asked a lot of questions about the injury and other related topics. One of the questions was regarding chest pains. I guess this is a typical question for men over forty who admit to having been out working all day in the sun. Jim allowed that his chest muscles were sore from the post-hole diggers, but that was all.

Immediately, she called a technician to wheel us over for an EKG.

Whatever, he was getting attention, right?

After the EKG, they sent us back out to the waiting room. About thirty minutes later, a different guy in scrubs came and got us and led us back into the inner ER. After a half-mile hike through a labyrinth, he settled us into room 15. Room 15 was at the very end of the hall, and you had to go through another room to get to it. Both rooms had sets of thick sliding glass doors, which were left open.

Thirty minutes later, Scrubs Guy came back with a chart. He looked at Jim. “You’re not Amanda,” he said.

Jim shook his head no.

“I got the wrong chart,” Scrubs Guy said. He went off to find the right one.

A few minutes later, a Young Girl In Scrubs can in and attached the little round sticky things and wired Jim up to a heart monitor. She said, “I need to draw some blood for the cardiac panel.”

“My heart is fine, Jim said. “I’ve pulled–possibly torn–my right hamstring.”

She smiled benevolently. “We just want to make sure.” She patted him on the hand. “I just need to go get something, I’ll be right back.”

No sooner had she cleared the door, than a different Young Girl In Scrubs came in. “Time for your X-rays,” she said.

“But I haven’t broken anything,” Jim said. “I’ve got a badly strained hamstring.”

She smiled benevolently. “We just want to make sure.” She then proceeded to remove all the wires and sticky things that the other YGIS had attached. She wheeled him out the door with a “We’ll be right back” over her shoulder.

YGIS #1 passed them on the way out. “Oh,” she said. “I’ll come back later. You want me to get you something to drink, maybe a sandwich?”

“Some bottled water would be great.” I said. “And I know Jim would like a bottle.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “He can’t have anything until he sees the doctor. Just in case he has to go to surgery.”

“Surgery?” I asked. “He’s pulled his hamstring.”

“We just want to be sure,” she said. “He might be gone a while. You sure you don’t want a sandwich?”

I looked at the clock. It was quarter till six. I was still thinking we might pick up take out Chinese on the way home. “No thanks,” I said. She showed me where the vending machine was and I bought two bottles of water.

At five after six, YGIS #2 brought Jim back from x-ray. After she left Jim said, “They x-rayed my left hip. Then they asked me which hip I’d injured. I told them neither one, but my right hamstring hurt like hell. Then they x-rayed my right hip.”

At ten after six, an alarm went off. Scrubs Guy came and closed the curtain, then the sliding glass doors to our room. He then closed the sliding class doors to the outer room. The doors were thick, so we couldn’t hear much from outside. With the curtain closed, we couldn’t see anything, either. Me being me, I was thinking some fruit-loop had gotten a gun through security, or maybe someone had been admitted with the Swine Flu. There had to be a reason why they closed the doors, right?

For the next hour, no one came into the room and the doors stayed shut. Not knowing what was going on was making me a little crazy, and it was getting hot in there. I peered around the curtain and saw that a large cart had been wheeled in front of one side of the outer door, and a guy in a wheel chair was backed up to the other side. We were blocked in.

“I think they’ve forgotten about us,” I said. I started weighing whether or not to go find someone in scrubs and ask if perhaps this was the case.

I heard someone hollering down the hall. Over the guy in the wheelchair’s head I saw three security guards and a police officer heading into a room two doors down. This reinforced my nut-with-a-gun theory. I scooted back behind the curtain. At 7:30, a different YGIS came and drew some blood. They’d had a shift change.

“Why did someone close the sliding doors,” I asked.

“We had a fire drill,” she said.

“And part of the drill is to close us up back here with nowhere to go?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s for your protection. WE DON”T WANT THE FIRE TO GET YOU.”

I don’t know about y’all, but every fire drill I’ve ever participated in involved getting people OUT of the building, not shutting them up in the farthest corner.

She opened both sets of doors. “It’s getting hot in here.”

“Listen,” I said, “We’ve been here for nearly four hours, and my husband is in a lot of pain. Isn’t there something you can give him?”

“I’ll check with the doctor,” she said.

“When do you think we might SEE a doctor,” I asked.

“I don’t know.” she said, “but I’ll let him know that your husband’s vital signs are good.”

With the doors open now, we could hear the hollering from two doors down. “Hey…hey…hey! Help Me!” some guy yelled. Continuously.

After about thirty minutes of that the guy in the wheelchair said to his wife, “I got some duct tape out in the truck.”

Thirty minutes later YGIS # 3 brought Jim some heavy-duty drugs. Still, no doctor.

“He hasn’t eaten since lunch,” I said. “Don’t you think he should eat something with that?”

“I’ll ask the doctor,” she said.

A few minutes later she brought him an imitation cheese sandwich and a bottle of Gatorade. I guess someone had figured out that he wouldn’t need surgery.

“What’s all that hollering about?” I asked.

She shrugged. “He’s just drunk.”

At 9:30, nearly six hours after we arrived, the doctor walked through the door. I have no idea where he was from, only that his accent made communication a challenge.

I think he said, “EKG fine, x-rays fine. Heart fine. Hip not broken.”

“How do we know if my hamstring is torn, and is there anything that can be done about it?” Jim asked.

He shrugged. “These things happen. If it’s torn you’ll have a bad bruise. I can give you some pain medication, but it will just have to heal on its own.”

“Something not quite so strong,” Jim said. “Whatever you gave me made me nauseous.”

“I thought your hip was broken,” said the doctor. “I thought you needed something strong.”

He left to get his prescription pad. We did not wait for someone to unhook Jim from the monitors. We quickly disconnected him, peeled off all the sticky things, and got him out of the gown and back into his cargo shorts and T-shirt. By the time the doctor got back, we were ready to go. The heavy-duty pain pills had taken the edge off the pain enough that Jim could stand and hobble.

The drunk was still hollering as we made out way back out through the labyrinth.

Self-diagnosis and natural healing are now our family policy.

Peace, out…

Susan

Filed Under: Evidence of Rampant Insanity Tagged With: Evidence of Rampant Insanity

I Might Have Gone a Little Crazy Today

July 7, 2009 in Evidence of Rampant Insanity

The voices in my head are singing One Step Up by Bruce Springsteen

What I’m reading: Living the Vida Lola by Misa Ramirez

Periodically, every telecommunications service we subscribe to stops working. All at the same time. They coordinate it, I think–AT&T, Direct TV, and–well, now it’s just the two of them. We’ve bundled. But still, there is no logical connection to why my home phone is dropping calls like a cell phone in a dead spot and suddenly no one can hear me on my cell phone. I hear them fine, but callers cannot hear me shouting into the phone, “Can you hear me now?”

No, they can’t.

And there should be no connection to either of those things that, not only did our Direct TV Receiver/DVR stop working, (the only fix for which involved shipping a new one over July 4th weekend) but the ENTIRE DIRECT TV COMPUTER SYSTEM IS DOWN, so they can’t activate my new receiver even though I’ve called four times. Each time I call they tell me to try again in an hour.

They tell me this AFTER I have navigated through ten minutes talking to a voice activated system. (If I use my headphones, my cell phone works.)

AT&T reports that there’s no trouble on my line. This despite the fact that when THEIR OWN SERVICE DEPARTMENT TRIED TO CALL ME THEY COULDN’T GET A CALL TO GO THROUGH.

I said (to the technician who eventually called me on my cell phone), “What happened when you tried to call?”

“It just clicked,” she said.

“Doesn’t that sound like a problem to you?” I asked.

“Well, yes, but it might not be our problem,” she said.

“We’re bundled,” I said. “You’re AT&T. What are the other possibilities?”

She couldn’t think of any, and agreed to “override it” and send someone out tomorrow. If they can’t find a problem they’re going to charge me $85.

If. the. repairman. is. unable. to. find. the. problem. they. will. charge. me. $85 for. coming. out.

With apologies in advance to my mother, WTF???

I’ve had to medicate to avoid strangling the next person who crosses my path or perhaps setting my hair on fire. And, I’m pretty sure that these things are, in fact, connected.

I had a migraine cycle last week. My brother tells me that my migraines are caused by the isometric changes in the magnetic field as the poles struggle to find harmony. I have no idea what that means, exactly, but I’m thinking that changes in magnetic fields could disrupt telecommunications.

It’s that, or there’s a conspiracy afoot at AT&T and Direct TV to prevent me from finishing my second novel by keeping me on the phone talking to a computer for the next five years.

It’s time for my next dose of pinot noir…

Peace, out…

Susan

Filed Under: Evidence of Rampant Insanity Tagged With: Evidence of Rampant Insanity

Yet Another Reason to Buy Stuff Made in the USA

May 15, 2008 in Crazy Happens, Evidence of Rampant Insanity

On April 29th, my washing machine died peacefully in mid-cycle. One minute it was spinning my delicates, and the next, it had departed this world. As it was only four years old, and had died long before its time, I pulled out my manuals, located the customer service number, and called New Zealand.

You see, when we purchased this state-of-the-art-high-efficiency-eco-friendly appliance and its brother, the dryer, we were totally sold on how efficient and eco-friendly it was. It was a high-end set, one that we normally would have avoided due to the price tag. But it was ON SALE!

The folks at Jeff Lynch saw me coming. They’d likely had this blue-blooded marvel of modern machinery for months with no takers, because the suckers were made in NEW ZEALAND, and most folks in Greenville have better sense. Regrettably, I do not. I was quite impressed with the salesman’s assurance that THIS washer and dryer only had two moving parts each which would naturally cut down on repairs…

The nice lady in New Zealand informed me that, of course their washers will last longer than four years. It simply needed to be repaired. She gave me the phone number of the lone authorized repair shop in the area. I called. They come to Greenville on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, they said, but they were all booked up that week. They could come out the NEXT Monday.

Because my husband loves me, and knows that if I had to go inside a laundry mat my therapy sessions would increase to three times a week (which would be very expensive), he went.

On Monday, the repair team (yes, it takes two repairmen to look at appliances made in New Zealand) were here exactly four minutes before the brave one informed me that all they could do that day was collect the $65 for the service call because the control panel had gone out, and a new one would have to be ordered. They don’t stock repair parts on this brand.

I said something my mamma probably wouldn’t approve of, then wrote him a check. He told me that I’d have to call the office and order the part because the computer was down. He wasn’t sure what it would cost, but I’d have to pay for it in advance because parts ordered from NEW ZEALAND are non-returnable.

I called. I said some more things my mother wouldn’t approve of to the poor lady who answered the phone. She ordered my control board ($245) and scheduled the team to come back out the following Monday. Poor Jim went back to the laundry mat.

But, the part didn’t arrive on time from NEW ZEALAND, and she called me the next Monday morning to let me know that they’d have to reschedule for Wednesday. On Wednesday, I was going to be out of town, so we rescheduled for the next Monday.

Poor Jim went back to the laundry mat. But this time, sure that the washer would finally be fixed on Monday, he only did what we absolutely had to have to get through the weekend.

On Monday morning (of this week) the repair team came in with the control panel. “This shouldn’t take long,” the brave one said. I came upstairs and went about my day. Ten minutes later, the brave one called upstairs, “Ah, Ma’am?”

I was on the phone, but quickly finished my call and scurried downstairs, alarmed by his now not-so-confident tone. The team was huddled over the patient, which had been disassembled like one of those bodies being autopsied on CSI. I will tell you right now that there are way more than two moving parts.

The brave one shook his head. “It was your motor that shorted out the control panel. Soon as we got the new one on, it took it right out. We’re going to have to order a new motor,” he said. From–you guessed it–NEW ZEALAND. All they could do was collect the money for the motor. The computer was up, so they knew they needed a check for another $86.43. “You won’t have to pay for another circuit board,” the one that never would look me in the eye assured me.

They’re coming back next Monday.

Poor Jim will go back to the laundry mat this weekend…

But because LAST weekend he only did what we thought we’d need until Monday, I am slap out of workout clothes. Which is why I did not make it to Jazzercise yesterday, nor will I make it today or tomorrow. I am not happy about this at all, because I was finally back into my routine, but, let’s face it, I can’t dance without my motion-control workout bras and lycra capris.

I bet you those New Zealand washing machine manufacturers are all are part of the Vast Fat-Wing Conspiracy.

Peace, out…

Susan

Filed Under: Crazy Happens, Evidence of Rampant Insanity Tagged With: Crazy Happens, Evidence of Rampant Insanity

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