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
    • Bio
    • Media Kit
    • Privacy Policy
    • Stella Maris Books, LLC
  • Books
    • All Books
    • The Liz Talbot Mystery Series
    • Carolina Tales Series
    • Printable Book List
  • Maps & Extras
    • Stella Maris
      • Who’s Who in Stella Maris
      • Stella Maris Map
    • Carolina Tales
      • Sullivan’s Island Map
  • News
  • Events
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Stella Maris Bookstore

The Stingray Incident

March 11, 2019

I can’t believe I haven’t told y’all this story, but I’ve searched my blog high and low, and somehow, I have not.

Like many folks, I love the beach. Give me a beach umbrella, a chair, and a book, and I am one happy camper. I used to swim in the ocean, or perhaps more accurately, bob around in it, and ride the waves on anything that would float. That was before my close encounter with a stingray.

 The waters off the coast of South Carolina have a fair amount of sand and such stirring around in them courtesy of the rivers flowing into the Atlantic in the vicinity. Disclaimer: I’m not a scientist who studies such things. This is the reason I’ve been given since childhood when I ask why the water in South Carolina isn’t as clear as south Florida and the Caribbean. This could just as easily be something Mamma pulled out of thin air to keep me quite. I digress. The point is, you can’t see the bottom.

A few summers ago we rented a beach house in Garden City, South Carolina for a family vacation. It had a boat dock in the backyard and the Atlantic in the front. The first day—it was a beautiful day—Sugar, (my husband, aka Jim) my brother, and my brother-in-law took the pontoon boat out fishing. Daddy, my sister, and I were taking a late afternoon dip. Mamma was sitting in her beach chair watching us try to push each other down in the waves. We aggravate each other as a way of showing affection.

Suddenly, fish started jumping out of the water—lots of fish. They’d break the surface, hit the water and jump again. They flopped and splashed all around us. Now, I’ve always heard that when small fish do this, it’s because a bigger fish is trying to have them for supper. Naturally, I’m thinking, Shark! 

“Run!” I screamed and bolted for the beach. We were almost out of the water when something got ahold of my foot and I just knew I was going to have a stump where my foot used to be. I expected gallons of blood. I’d have to be helicopter-lifted to the hospital. Would I ever walk again? Would I die on the beach from blood loss? These were the things that ran through my mind because it felt like something had chewed my foot clean off.

Imagine my shock seconds later when I reached the beach and my foot looked nearly normal—still attached and everything. It still hurt like blazes. But aside from a little redness and a mark just below my ankle, it looked fine—still attached and everything. 

“A jellyfish must have gotten you,” my sister said. “I know those hurt.” 

She sounded real sympathetic, but I knew there was no way on God’s green earth she could possibly know how bad my foot hurt or she would be calling 911. I wanted Sugar.

“Find Jim,” I wailed.

“Let’s put some vinegar on it,” my sister said.

“This was not a jellyfish,” I growled. My foot was now a brighter shade of red, and it had puffed up.

I limped towards the house. Someone called Sugar on his cell phone, and by the time I made it to the house, he was there. He put me in the car and off to the ER we went.

I am telling y’all right now, this hurt worse than childbirth. The pain radiated up my leg and the swelling spread. It hurt so bad I howled all the way to the hospital, which took only about twenty minutes but felt like days. I was scared.

I kept right on howling in the ER. They were busy, and wanted to shut me up, so someone brought out some hot towels and wrapped my leg in them. “Does that feel better?”

I stopped my caterwauling. “Yes—that helps.”

“A stingray got you. Heat breaks down the venom.”

Every time the towels cooled off, I started howling again and they’d bring more. I didn’t have to wait long. The doctor had to cut open my foot to make sure the barb wasn’t in there. Thankfully it wasn’t. After several shots and prescriptions for antibiotics and painkillers, I left on crutches.

I spent the remainder of that vacation propped on pillows in the screened porch or hobbling around. I still love beaches, but I have one iron-clad rule: If I can’t see the bottom, I don’t get in the water.

Y’all stay safe.

Susan

Tagged With: Evidence of My Insanity, Family

Y’all Won’t Believe This, Either…

April 22, 2014 in Crazy Happens, Evidence of My Insanity, Family

I’ve been completely absent from social media for the last week or so because we’ve been in the middle of moving. Anyone who has ever moved knows what an all-consuming, body-and-soul-battering experience this is. I’ve been in over my head, is what I’m saying.

Because Sugar has been home for two and a half days of this move—his paycheck is a key component of this entire project—my parents have been in town to help me organize. Mamma is especially good at pantries and all things kitchen. Dad toted a thousand boxes of books upstairs to my office, then broke down the boxes after Mamma alphabetized and shelved my books. I don’t know what I would have done without my parents this last week.

But the crazy happened Sunday night after we’d dropped Sugar off at the airport to go back to work. Mamma and Daddy went to bed about ten thirty. We were all exhausted. I turned in about twelve thirty after a long hot shower. I slept pretty well until exactly five thirty when I woke to loud moaning and groaning. I hopped out of bed and ran upstairs to the door of the guest room, thinking something was bad wrong with one of my parents. But all was quiet on the other side of their door. I went back downstairs, checked the doors and windows, and went back to bed thinking maybe I’d been dreaming.

At six thirty, I awoke to an alarm. I hadn’t set an alarm. I checked the clock. It was silent, as was my phone. The beeping came from a box I hadn’t unpacked yet. I tore it open and dug through a mess of unrelated items until I found the weather station that has occupied the corner of my bedside table for years. It displays the temperature indoors and out. I never knew it also has an alarm clock feature. We’ve never used it, and it hadn’t gone off the previous three nights that unpacked box had sat in my new bedroom.

I finally got the dang thing to shut up and went to powder my nose before returning to bed. Y’all, when I sat down on that toilet, I nearly fell in—ladies, y’all have experienced this I’m sure. It happens every time a man you live with leaves the toilet seat up. Except Sugar had gotten on a plane at three that afternoon and my daddy has his own bathroom upstairs and a powder room downstairs and no reason whatsoever to wander into my bathroom. Also, I had used the bathroom in question myself before going to bed, and I assure you I did not raise the seat.

Let me tell you, I was spooked. I started wondering about the lady we’d bought this house from. She’s such a sweet lady. She and her husband built this house in 2008, but her poor husband passed away two years ago. I never asked her if he’d left this world for the next while in this house because I didn’t want to know.

I think we have a ghost.

Sugar has offered all manner of far-fetched explanations for all of the above, but I’m not buying any of them. I think we have a ghost who likes to play pranks. All things considered, this isn’t a bad thing. I can get all sorts of inspiration for Colleen from him.

 

Peace, out…

 

Susan   

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

I Make Things Up and Write Them Down

October 18, 2012 in Family, I Am Therefore I Write

That line, “I make things up and write them down,” used to be my short bio somewhere–maybe it was Facebook, back before my Facebook page was a part of my ONLINE PRESENCE. But it’s true. That’s what I do. In a few minutes, October 18 will be here, and my debut novel, Lowcountry Boil, will be a month old. The last month has flown, and it’s been so incredibly wonderful I get teary-eyed just thinking about it. We’ve taken lots of photos, and the web gurus are making a special page for them. (This is my first post on the new website, and I’m trying not to blow it up.) My guess is that for most authors, the launch of a first novel is all cupcakes, champagne, friends, and fireworks. Okay, there were no fireworks, but my brother-in-law fired his cannon. I digress.

Because I have been blessed beyond the imagination of most normal folks in the colorful family department, my relatives simply do not believe they are not in the book. Some of my friends are convinced they must be in there, too. On several occasions over the last month, as we’ve celebrated this milestone various family members and friends have pulled me aside and asked, “Who am I in the book?” [Read more…]

Filed Under: Family, I Am Therefore I Write Tagged With: Family, I Am Therefore I Write

The Christmas Trees Won’t Fit in the Bathroom

November 2, 2011 in Crazy Happens, Evidence of My Insanity, Family

I can write about this now, because it’s over. But, I’ve danced perilously close to the line between sane and crazy these last few months…

Sugar and I are blessed with a large family, and we are grateful for each and every loved one. We love it when they all come over to visit. We were not, so much, prepared for five of them to move in for an extended stay. But, the economy and other disasters made it necessary. This is what family does, right?

The guestroom became an extended-stay bedroom, which meant all my off-season clothes had to either fit into my closet or be stored in the basement. Both my office and Sugar’s also became extended-stay bedrooms, which meant that everything in those offices, including all the stuff stored in the closets, had to go downstairs. All of this had to happen quickly, which meant we ended up with what looked like the aftermath of a tornado in the basement.

When we first bought our current home, the partially finished basement served as an overflow area. It was eclectically furnished, and we could hang out there when all the family was around, or when we felt like rounding up a group of friends for Karaoke and didn’t want trouble with the HOA. (The sound doesn’t carry outside from the basement.) Also, there was a nice-sized storage room, the laundry room, and a pre-plumbed, but unfinished, bathroom.

We tried carving office space out of the storage room, but the Christmas trees wouldn’t fit in the bathroom, which was the new storage room. With all the stuff now in what used to be the unfinished-but-not-too-bad Karaoke/Family room we were low on space for everyone to hang out separately when we started getting on each other’s nerves. And, as I am slightly–okay, maybe much more than slightly–OCD, the chaos in my house was driving me to the brink of a breakdown.

Suddenly, the basement we might finish one day became the basement we needed finished lickety-split. All the stuff that had just been moved to the basement had to be moved to the garage. The cars had to be parked outside. Never one to pay someone else to do something he can conceivably do himself, Sugar drew up a construction plan, got a permit, and got to work–during the one day a week, some weeks, but not all, when he was home.

Progress was slow. Nerves frayed. Construction dust drifted upstairs and covered everything, no matter how often we cleaned. After about eight weeks, Sugar looked at me and said, “Call somebody.” I did, and the work is mostly finished now. We had a few bad moments when we were cleaning the aftermath and moving things back in from the garage. Several pieces of furniture are worse for the experience, and one didn’t make it.

But, we have a fully-functional family/Karaoke room now, with more than one bare bulb and a disco ball for lighting, and more than one electrical outlet to replace the two power strips and spaghetti bowl of extension cords. The Christmas trees have their own storage space. Sugar has his office back, and I have a killer new writing cave. And boy, does that extra bathroom come in handy.

Peace, out…

Susan

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

An Incognito Rock Star with a Sprained Derriere

November 10, 2010 in Crazy Happens, Family

You know that old Billy Joel song We Didn’t Start the Fire? Sometimes my life is like that–one long rapid-fire series of events. But hey, I’m never bored.

When Sugar and I arrived home from two weeks in Indiana around tenish on Friday the 29th, we lugged our stuff upstairs, had a glass of wine, and collapsed into bed. Saturday morning, we had to fit our house tour and all the errands into a compressed time slot, because we were invited to a killer Halloween party in Greenwood,  ninety minutes away.

This was a Guitar Hero party, and we were supposed to go dressed as rock stars. All we could pull off was Sugar in his (typical) Jimmy Buffett weekend attire, accessorized with a captain’s hat and shoulder parrot, and me in big sunglasses. I told our hostess I was incognito, and could be any rock star she wanted me to be. (For some reason, people kept calling me Tennille.)

The party was a blast–so much fun, good food, good company–but we stayed well past the pumpkin carriage’s schedule, and spent the night in a local hotel instead of making the ninety-minute drive home.

We arrived back in Greenville on Sunday just in time to prepare for friends and family coming to our house for a cookout. When our loved ones left around tenish, we finished the laundry and repacked, as Sugar was leaving on a jet plane at 5:00 the next morning, and I was headed home to North Carolina to “handle” my father who was being obstinate about a gall bladder operation he needs. This, of course turned out to be a fool’s errand, as Daddy is completely unmanageable, but I got in some quality family time.

I spent half the week with Mamma and Daddy, then went to Raleigh to “handle” another crisis involving my offspring. This leg of the trip was marginally more successful, and again, I got quality family time–always precious.

Then, when I arrived home on Friday last, I did a very stupid thing. I do not travel light. I have a large suitcase, which is always packed with everything I might conceivably need. (I’m nothing if not prepared.) As Sugar wasn’t home yet, I carried this monster in my left hand, with my laptop and mammoth purse on my right shoulder, up the stairs. This arrangement required me to rest the suitcase on my left hip as I lugged it up the steps.

It wasn’t until Saturday, when the lower back pain started, that the full consequences of my stupidity started revealing themselves. At a friend’s house for dinner Saturday night, I had to keep moving from chair to chair to floor to standing trying to keep the pain at bay.

By three a.m. Sunday–mere hours before Sugar and I were scheduled to head BACK to Indiana–the pain in my left derriere was so intense I was nauseous. I nudged Sugar. “I hurt so bad I’m about to throw up,” I said.

The love of my life mumbled, “Just relax. We’ll go to the ER in the morning.”

“Why do I have to wait?” I wailed.

“They aren’t open now.”

“It’s the ER–THEY DON’T CLOSE.” The louder wail woke not only Sugar, but likely the neighbors, and set several dogs to barking.

Sugar was up, dressed, and had me in the car within mere moments.

The doctor gave me a shot of something that allowed me to ride ten and a half hours in the car to Indiana, and five prescriptions. But, since the shot wore off, I can’t sit. I can lie in any position that doesn’t put pressure on my left derriere at all, or kneel at the desk and answer quick emails.

All of this to explain my absence from Jazzercise, Twitter, Facebook, my blog, and most human interaction for the last week and a half. I’m also over-medicated, so anything I do say should be taken with a large grain of salt.

Peace, out…

Susan

P.S. About the house… Your know that saying about how you can’t go home? Sometimes it’s true. When Sugar and I walked into the house we loved, the one that holds so many memories, we realized immediately the answer to what had mystified us a few years earlier: why did it take so long to sell such a great house?

Since we left, we’ve lived in new construction, and have grown accustomed to an open floor plan, nine-foot ceilings, modern baths, and windows that work properly. We’re spoiled, yes. We stepped into the foyer of our previous home, and immediately felt claustrophobic.

The good news is, we can quit pining for what we thought we missed, and even if we never embrace certain aspects of subdivision living, we can fully embrace our new home and get on with life. This is a good thing, as we have a full one.

Filed Under: Crazy Happens, Family Tagged With: Crazy Happens, Family

When Life Sends You a Fruit Basket

October 28, 2010 in Blather and Profound Notions, Evidence of My Insanity, Family

We all know what to do with lemons, right?  When life hands us lemons, we make lemonade and add our libation of choice. Common sense, that. When we have only one choice, we make the best of it.
But what to do when life hands you a basket filled with mangoes, kiwi, and all manner of luscious fruits? I’m ridiculously blessed, and perhaps, sometimes, have too many choices. If I fill up on figs and strawberries, I won’t have room for a peach, right? And I love peaches…

Saying yes to one thing always means saying no to something else. Saying no is hard for me. I spent years of my life so over-extended by commitments–okay, yes, I’m no longer talking fruit here, we’re on time management, please stay with the group–that I was in need of an intervention and regular doses of that spiked lemonade.

But the need to make hard choices, embrace them, and not look back applies to so many things. (Leaving time management, on to life choices…it’s all about the fruit…)

A few weeks ago, when I was explaining how Sugar and I are not cut out for subdivision living, I mentioned that we were working on a plot with our old neighbors–the ones we lived next door to for years in the house we loved, before I filled up on pears (decided we should live downtown, within walking distance to restaurants, etc)–to convince the interlopers who bought Barbie’s Dream House that it was in fact haunted, and they must move to satisfy the spirits and whatnot.

Well, I guess it worked. I got a phone call a few days ago from said dear friends next door, who we’ll call Wilson and Sandra, because those are their names. It seems the folks we sold our house to are interested in selling. Now, I have no evidence that Sandra or Wilson either one hid a tape player with a timer in the neighbors’ attic that played “GET OOUUTTT” at 3:15 a.m. every morning, so we’ll say no more about it.

Sugar and I have an appointment to see our old home and discuss details on Saturday morning. Right now, I so long to drive into OUR driveway when we get home from Indiana and be home again. Of course, there’s the detail of selling the subdivision house…

But saying yes to Barbie’s Dream House will mean saying no to some other things we really want to do. It will need new windows soon (two vacations we won’t be able to take). And Sugar wants to replace the paneling in the den with sheet-rock. The master bath needs updating… Already we have a list of projects we’re excitedly considering. The budget for all those projects would eat up a lot of travel.

And the time spent on all these projects could be spent enjoying family, volunteering, or taking up crop circle interpretation.

That house is special to us. We have so many wonderful memories there. It’s home. But saying yes to it will mean making choices. It will mean fewer date nights out, fewer vacations, and less time and money for a long list of things we enjoy.

But I suspect if we can come to an agreement with the very nice folks who bought it, we will buy our home back. We’ll eat the peaches with the juice dripping on our hands, having learned that pears are nice, but you simply can’t eat all the fruit in the basket. You must choose.

And there’s no place like home. (Clicking my heels together…)

Peace, out…

Susan

Filed Under: Blather and Profound Notions, Evidence of My Insanity, Family Tagged With: Blather and Profound Notions, Evidence of My Insanity, Family

In Which Sugar Hatches a Devious Plot

September 8, 2010 in Family

I am a book lover. We have many, many books in our home, and shelves measured in miles, not feet. I have on many occasions proclaimed to family, friends, and random strangers that I will NEVER own an e-reader, because I love the feel of a book in my hands, the smell of paper, the flap copy, for heaven’s sake!

Sugar has always nodded like he understood, and never once argued the point. He had no dog in that fight.

But then I mentioned how we needed another set of bookshelves, perhaps a row in the not-yet-completed family room downstairs. I’m working my way through my to-be-read stack (which has its own bookshelf), and as I add books to existing home-library shelves, they are becoming overstuffed. I don’t have room to work in more books by my favorite authors. Clearly, action must be taken.

But Sugar’s vision for the downstairs room is more “Jimbo’s Tiki Bar” than family room. He did not welcome the suggestion that yet more bookcases might be part of the decor. Still, he didn’t press the point.

Now, next to my books, Sugar knows I love my iPhone. He’s a smart man, and one day he comes home from a company meeting with an iPad. I don’t doubt his story that this is business equipment, necessary for presentations, etc. BUT, I’ll say this: He’s been waving that thing under my nose every chance he gets, showing me one cool app after another.

Then, he started downloading books. He’s already got most of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series on that gadget. “Look, it’s back-lit,” he says. “I don’t even need a book light.”

For the first few days he had it, he’d demonstrate the fabulosity of the toy, but wouldn’t let me play with it. When he had me in a mad frenzy to try it out, he let me read a few pages. Okay, it had me at “browse, download, read.” I love books, but I’m an instant gratification junkie.

Thinking I would have to talk him into this pricey new toy, I casually said, “You better stop showing that thing off, or you’ll have to buy me one.”

Here’s where he made his mistake. He didn’t protest quite enough. He worked up a weak, “We’ll have to see about that.”

And I knew. I looked at my true love square in the eyes and saw the truth. He had done the math. The iPad was less expensive than more bookshelves. And it would not interfere with his plans for a man cave downstairs.

I have been had. But, hey, I’m getting a new toy. Everybody’s happy at Chez Boyer.

Peace, out…

Susan

Filed Under: Family Tagged With: Family

Things I Learned on the Road Trip

July 8, 2010 in Family, Road Trip

Here are a few things I learned on our recent odyssey:

  1. My mom will dance on Beale Street (literally ON the street–she would not go into the clubs) and have her picture made with the large rooster outside The Red Rooster bar. This caused my reality to bend a little.
  2. The Mississippi River isn’t all that wide in Memphis. I’ve always imagined it as a mile-wide river the whole length of the thing, but it’s not. It’s a mile wide in places.Someplace in Minnesota it’s nearly 11 miles wide, but in spots, it’s only about 20 feet wide! I’m sure I must have learned this in school, but so much has fallen out of my brain over the years. I’ve flown over the Mississippi many times, but had never seen it from the ground. Crossing it in Memphis and again in St. Louis on the way back was very cool.
  3. Graceland isn’t as large as you might think. (My dad had to go there.)
  4. Oklahoma City is quite lovely. I’d picture all of Oklahoma like the black-and-white parts of Kansas from The Wizard of Oz. (We were in Oklahoma City the day of the flooding, and that was scary. We nearly had to swim out.
  5. We visited 18 states in three weeks. Every one of them was beautiful, and watching the landscape change gradually from mountain to plains to desert and back to mountains is fascinating. I thought I would sleep in the car, as we drove about 8 hours every day on the way to California and back. I never closed my eyes.

More later. I learned a lot on this trip. I’ll never forget it, both for all the beautiful country we saw, and for the gift of three uninterrupted weeks spent with Jim. This was the most consecutive time we’ve seen each other in the errr… some years we’ve been married. It was wonderful.

Also a very special gift was spending the time with my parents while they are still young and active and loving life. Here’s to you, Wayne and Claudette!

Peace, out…

Susan

Filed Under: Family, Road Trip Tagged With: Family, Road Trip

The Mother of All Road Trips

July 7, 2010 in Family, Road Trip

The Husband, (aka Jim, aka Sugar) and I just got home late Saturday from a three-week road trip from our home in Greenville, SC to San Francisco, then Napa. We took my parents. For their 50th wedding anniversary. (Note: Yes, they had me VERY late in life. I was a miracle baby, in fact.)

I’d told Mom and Dad not to worry about how much they packed–“take whatever you need,” I said. They took me at my word. I myself am not a light packer, and I think it’s safe to say that the result was that we hauled more stuff to California than your average family moving west in a wagon train.

So, it took a while to pack and unpack all that stuff, and I’ve been unplugged for a while. I’m catching up on email and laundry. Planning to drag myself in to Jazzercise today so The Queen of Pain can start working some of what I ate off my derriere.

Trip highlights are too may to count, but coming soon.

And, my dad was well behaved. He didn’t show his tongue to a single soul, though he looked at it in the visor mirror a lot when he was riding up front.

Peace, out…

Susan

Filed Under: Family, Road Trip Tagged With: Family, Road Trip

The Number One Reason I’ve Had No Time to Blog

May 12, 2010 in Evidence of My Insanity, Family, Road Trip, Uncategorized

Things have been intense lately. I’ve been traveling almost non-stop. Here are a few highlights from the road:

  • Last visit to Indiana, while we were on a side trip to Amish country for pickles, the police raided our hotel. They brought the drug dogs and everything. Seems one of the locals had rented a hotel room to hang out at the pool and smoke some weed. Someone must have reported the smell. This was big news here, as we’re in a very wholesome, family-oriented part of Indiana .
  • Last trip to Jasper, AL, we NARROWLY missed an F-3 tornado, which formed virtually on top of us, then moved on to the next county where it did a lot of damage. I love Jasper, but I am SO not going back there in spring or summer. The Husband has strict instructions he can only work there in fall and winter.
  • On a happy note, the hotel in Jasper now has a Belgian waffle maker. The Queen of Pain now has a few waffles to work off of me when I get home.
  • I made a quick trip home to Faith, where I spent most of an entire day chauffeuring my dad (who is young and perfectly able to drive himself) to various doctor’s offices so he could talk to the poor receptionists and nurses about this curious coating on his tongue and throat. Now, most folks will call and make an appointment to see the doctor. Not my daddy. He doesn’t like dealing with the automated answering machines that require him to press one to make an appointment, et cetera. He just drops in. To his credit, this has proven to be effective in that these nurses will do ANYTHING to get him to stop showing them his tongue. I can relate, which explains why I was driving him on this fool’s errand.

As exciting as all of this is, the number one reason I’ve had no time to blog is that I’ve been busy lurking over at Do the Write Thing for Nashville where I’ve been busy plotting my strategy for scoring some of the goodies.

I had my heart set on the manuscript consultation by none other than Janet Reid. I’ve had a little ebay experience, so I strategized waiting until the very last minute and placing one bid–but WAY before midnight last night the bidding got too rich for my bank account.

Then, I set my sights on five days at Kari Lynn Dell’s ranch in Montana–only to be quickly left in the bidding dust. This one is still open, and a bargain for anyone who has ever wanted to go to Montana. I think the bidding closes at midnight tonight.

I hear that tomorrow Barbara Poelle and Holly Root have a combo meeting at RWA or BEA going on the block. I’m glued to my PC. but I have a sinking feeling this one will go for big bucks as well.

Y’all check it out–there’s a lot of great stuff being auctioned for a great cause!

Peace, out…

Susan

Filed Under: Evidence of My Insanity, Family, Road Trip, Uncategorized Tagged With: Evidence of My Insanity, Family, Road Trip

You Can’t Tell That Here

April 1, 2010 in Blather and Profound Notions, Family, Road Trip

I went home last week, to Faith, the little town of about six hundred, with one caution light, where I grew up, and where my parents, my brother and his family, and a slew of other relatives still live. I got into the whole ancestry thing about a year ago and was shocked to find out how many people in that town I’m related to and never knew it. I digress…

Dad is retired, and mostly he spends his days looking up imaginary symptoms on Web MD. He needs a hobby. Mom refuses to retire, mostly because staying home doesn’t look all that attractive. Anyway, Dad and I went to The Faith Soda Shop for breakfast one morning–several mornings, actually. Side note: One would think that somebody who spends hours a day on health-related websites would stop ordering sausage and egg sandwiches with mayo for breakfast, but not my daddy. I’m just saying…

One morning, we walked into The Shop, and the couple who’d lived around the curve from us my entire childhood sat in a booth just inside the door. I graduated with their oldest son (and played in the creek with him, and fought with him, and love him like a brother). Their faces lit up when they saw me. You can’t find that just anywhere…

I said, “I’d know these folks anywhere,” and went over to chat. I hugged them, and they hugged me back, and it felt like I’d never left. There were a few other familiar faces in The Shop that morning. After we’d eaten, Dad and I made our way to the register to pay. We passed another pair of faces I knew well. This couple, parents of another guy I graduated with, lived a block and a half away from the house my parents still live in.

We exchanged the usual hey-it’s-good-to-see-you kind of things. Then, Arlene patted my hand and said, “John just had a birthday, are you older, or younger than he is?” She was trying to pin down if I had already turned the same age as John, or if that was upcoming. She knew we were about a month apart.

I didn’t answer immediately. Age-related chit-chat is not my favorite.

She said, “How old are you?”

I didn’t miss a beat. I said, “Arlene, I’m twenty-four. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.”

She laughed out loud and said, “You can’t tell that here.”

Now, in Greenville when I tell people I’m twenty-four, they look at me oddly, like perhaps I’m Not Quite Right, but no one has ever called me on it. In Faith, most people have a general idea how old I am, and many can tell you exactly what year I was born.

My eyes misted up. There is something so compelling to me about being in that place where, even after I’ve been gone more than…err…a few years, folks know me. Makes me think of that Cheers song…

I love Greenville. I do. We have friends here, and a lot of Jim’s family lives here. There’s a beautiful downtown, with a river running through it, and restaurants of every description. There’s culture. Diversity. Costco.

But, on any given day, if I walk into any restaurant on Main Street, odds are, there won’t be a soul in the place who knows me, or can tell you approximately how old I am, or remembers the time I painted the old shed in the backyard five different colors (on the outside) and turned it into a weird sort of clubhouse where I could have hang out with my friends with minimal adult supervision.

Lord, I’m homesick.

Peace, out…

Susan

P.S. This is NOT an invitation for my Greenville friends and family to discuss my age. The official age of all Jazzercisers is 24. It’s a rule.

Filed Under: Blather and Profound Notions, Family, Road Trip Tagged With: Blather and Profound Notions, Family, Road Trip

There’s No Place Like Home

December 1, 2009 in Family

Like a lot of folks, I went home for Thanksgiving. I’ve lived in Greenville for a while now–we won’t go into how long, as that brings up troubling math problems related to my age. But somehow, the little town in North Carolina where I grew up will always be home.

Mom did what she always does–she made enough food to feed a small country. While we stuffed ourselves silly, we caught up on the ins and outs of each other’s lives… Dad’s acid reflux problem, my niece’s ear tubes, my uncle’s new red El Camino with the orange Firebird-looking thing on the hood…

And the latest on the group of women who bought my grandmother’s civil-war-era farmhouse.

My maternal grandmother passed away a little over two years ago. My grandfather had been waiting for her at the Pearly Gates for years, so their six-thousand-square-foot house was empty. It’s a gorgeous home, and it had been lovingly cared for. Our family had many years of happy memories there. It was an emotional thing, is what I’m saying. No one wanted to sell, but it was the only practical thing to be done. None of us needed a house just then, especially one that size. Though everyone hated to see it pass out of the family, my mother, aunt, and uncles decided to sell.

After a year or so, a group of women bought the house. My understanding was that they planned to use it as a shelter for abused women. Now, to say that this home (on six plus acres) in a rural part of a county that’s a hundred miles east of nowhere is an unusual place for a shelter would be an understatement. Whatever. They bought the place.

What The Shelter Women did not purchase, was my uncle’s house, which is next door and shares a driveway. We’ll call my uncle Harley, because he would not appreciate having his actual name on the Internet. The government, and all that.

The Shelter Women want Harley to leave.

They have told him, multiple times, that he cannot stay there, as the women who will be given shelter have been traumatized, and will not like having a strange man so close by–I’m paraphrasing, but this was the gist of it. Harley would be happy to leave if the Shelter Women would buy him out. They just want him to leave.

The Shelter Women have never moved into the house, but periodically they come by. I think my uncle watches for them, and maybe goes outside and acts extra crazy just for fun–maybe shoots something. (He once took out two squirrels with one shot.)

So, The Shelter Women showed up a few weeks back with a minister of undetermined theology. He didn’t speak English, and my uncle didn’t recognize whatever language he was speaking, but the minister’s mission that day was to exorcise the property.

Recently, The Shelter Women have become upset that my family didn’t tell them the house was haunted. Listen, my grandparents lived in that house for thirty years. My grandmother lived there for seven years by herself. There were no ghosts. (At least if there were, they were well-mannered and quiet.)

But the minister, nevertheless, went into the house with a bottle of what was presumably holy water.

Then, he walked all over the yard sprinkling and chanting.

Then they–The Shelter Women and the minister–came next door and asked if they could sprinkle Harley’s yard. He’s an easy-going guy, so he said, “Sure, why not?”

Then, they wanted to sprinkle Harley.

I think they settled for rubbing his head with some of the water in the bottle. What the minister was chanting is anyone’s guess. Hey, they can sprinkle Harley with whatever they want to, but unless they come up with some money, he’s not moving.

Poor Dad. With drama like this, his acid reflux got no attention whatsoever.

I really need to go home more often. And take a tape recorder. You can’t make this stuff up.

Filed Under: Family Tagged With: Family

Three Words You’ll Only Hear at Jazzercise

September 11, 2008 in Family, Jazzercise, The Queen of Pain

Sing it, Susan!

This, from the Queen of Pain today, as we writhed on the floor in agony while of one of those American Idol winners belted out a poor imitation of Aretha’s Chain of Fools. I couldn’t tell you who was singing–I never watch that stuff. I think reality TV is a network conspiracy to make more money by not paying actors and writers. I digress.

To distract myself from the searing pain in my upper thighs–officially known at Jazzercise as the side butt–and because I love Aretha, I sang with enthusiasm. It’s a testament to how bad the leg routine was that no one got up and left.

The last time I sang in front of people was during our annual Labor Day Family Weekend in the Mountains. I was jamming around the cabin with my iPod, singing along with The Black Eyed Peas when most of my family bolted from their rocking chairs into the woods, where they fled the vicinity along with all creatures great and small.

Only my brother-in-law, who is a kind soul, and was particularly attached to his rocking chair (and possibly bidding on something on Ebay as his eyes were glued to his laptop) stayed behind. “You sound different with that thing in your ears,” he said. Who knew?

I have actually sang on stage, though it’s been a, ahh…ahem… a few years. In high school, they let me sing on stage in not one, but two musicals–Bye Bye Birdie, and L’il Abner, although, a case could be made that few of my classmates wanted to sing and dance on stage, making it hard to cast an entire musical, and parts therefore easy to land.

Nevertheless, I sing, not so much for the enjoyment of others, but because it makes me happy. They let me do that at Jazzercise, which is one more reason I go.

Peace, out…

Susan

Filed Under: Family, Jazzercise, The Queen of Pain Tagged With: Family, Jazzercise, The Queen of Pain

Through the Looking Glass

June 5, 2008 in Family

So, my very good REASON for missing Jazzercise all week (even though I now have clean clothes) is that I’ve just returned from a trip to another galaxy. Faith, NC, may as well be another planet for how different life is there. I forget this when I haven’t been home in a while.

Now, lest anyone think that I am ridiculing small towns, let me reassure all that I LOVE small towns, especially Faith. It holds a charm for me like no other place on earth. And, frankly, were it not for spending my formative years in Faith, I would no doubt be a normal person (how tediously boring!) without the neuroses from which I draw creative juice. It may not be necessary for every writer to be insane, but, speaking for myself, I would be utterly useless as a writer were I mentally stable.

I will tell y’all just ONE of the many interesting things that occurred during my recent sojourn. It involves squirrels, as many small-town tales do.

While I was growing up, my father shot many a squirrel. Along with rabbits, quail, deer–whatever. And we ate what he shot. Not all the time, of course, we had normal food as well, but, I confess that as a child, on many occasions, I had squirrel for dinner. My grandmother would skin, braise, and serve them with gravy, and usually rice. At the time, I thought absolutely nothing of it–it was a routine dinner menu. Although, looking back, I do recall that many nights Mamma had no appetite. And you can bet the farm she NEVER skinned anything.

While Daddy still owns his collection of rifles, shotguns, etc., the town of Faith has long since passed an ordinance against firing guns inside the town limits. For years, residents largely ignored this, but recently, some new folks have moved into town who tend to call the law, or, at the very least, walk over to inquire what is being shot at.

In recent years, squirrel has not been a dinner table staple, so this would not be an issue, except for the squirrels tend to dig up my mamma’s flowers. This makes her unhappy, and when Mamma ain’t happy…well, you know.

So, my brother-in-law bought my daddy a squirrel trap. Daddy baits this contraption with peanuts, and when a squirrel goes in, the door slams shut. When I arrived, on Monday afternoon, Daddy was aglow with the victory of a recent catch. He’d just returned from releasing the squirrel “out in the country” (which in and of itself is a joke, as Faith hardly qualifies as an urban area–I digress).

Late yesterday, as I was trying to catch up on email from Mamma and Daddy’s snail-paced dial-up connection, Daddy yelled from the kitchen, “Come here, quick!”

I went running. He stood pointing out the kitchen window. “Look, he’s going in!” A poor, unsuspecting squirrel was poking his head into the cage. He went for the peanut. As soon as the door slammed shut, Daddy went running out the backdoor. I followed him, aghast, as he proudly admired his catch. “Come on,” he said.

“What?” I looked at him in disbelief. Surely, he didn’t think I was going with him to relocate the squirrel. But he did. He put the cage in the back of the pickup truck. “Come on, you’ll have to help.” Under protest, I went, but only in case someone had to call 911 if the squirrel turned out to be rabid, or just plain mad about being caged and evicted, and bit Daddy.

Ten miles from my parents home, where Daddy reasoned the squirrel could not find his way back, my father pulled over, muttered at a women in the car behind us who was rubbernecking to see if perhaps he was disposing of a dead body, and released his captive. I stayed in the truck with the door locked, which was smart, because Daddy tried to open the passenger side door and give me an up-close view of the caged squirrel.

In a separate squirrel-related incident on Tuesday, my uncle, who lives outside the town limits, shot two squirrels with one shell, cunningly waiting until they were lined up, so he could take them out together.

Last night I kissed my mamma goodbye and drove two hours and fifteen minutes to the other side of the universe right after dinner–grilled hamburgers, nothing wild.

Peace, out…

Susan

Filed Under: Family Tagged With: Family

It’s a Sad, Sad, Sad, Sad World

May 3, 2007 in Uncategorized

I don’t do sad. I don’t like to see sad movies or read sad books. And I really don’t write about sad things. Disturbing things, sometimes, but never sad. There’s far too must sad in reality. I like my escapism pleasant. And truth be told, I write to escape. It’s like creating this alternate reality that you can climb into where you control everyone and everything. There’s not a doubt in my mind that there’s a clinical name for that, and somewhere, folks like me are locked up for their own protection and that of others.

Anyway, when this blog goes quiet, one of two things is happening: either I’m juggling too many balls and have dropped one, or too many sad things are going on around me. Lately, it’s a little of both. I am trying to do too much. One of my personalities–y’all know I’m slightly schizophrenic, right? And before somebody gets all offended about me making fun of crazy people, just let me tell you that I’m also a hypochondriac. So I’m not sure if I’m truly schizophrenic, or if I’m just imagining it cause I sometimes exhibit the classic symptoms, but, either way, I in no way mean to ridicule crazy people. I am definitely a part of that club, either way you slice it.

I digress. One of my personalities (see above) agreed to be this year’s conference chairperson for the South Carolina Writers Workshop Conference. I thought, This will be fun. And it is. It is also a job that I work at 10 – 12 hours every day. This is a volunteer position. I think it was Suzanne that agreed to this–she loves a party. Loves to entertain. This is just like something she’d stick me with. So, I’m busy.

But there’s also too much sadness going on around me right now. But I can’t write about that stuff–I just can’t. And sometimes, it overwhelms me and I can’t escape into my imaginary worlds anymore.

And now the bees. This thing with the bees isn’t sad–it’s scary as hell. On top of being blue, I’m freaked out by the bees. Have y’all been reading about this? I had not heard a word about it. I almost never watch the news. You rarely get good news from Fox or CNN, and I have doubts about how straight a scoop you get from any of them anyway. So I had not heard about the bees.

Then, Sunday evening we we sitting on my brother-in-law’s deck having perfectly grilled steaks when a wasp flew by. I have an aversion to being stung, and wanted someone to kill it. My brother-in-law has a garden, and, who knew, wasps apparently (at least according to him) pollinate some of the stuff he grows. I want to state for the record that I have no knowledge of any of the specific crops in his field. Anyway, he wouldn’t hear of swatting the wasp.

Then, he launched into this (at the time I thought typically nutcase) sermon about how all the honeybees are dying out, which will cause all of our crops to fail which will cause us all to starve. I was rolling my eyes because my brother-in-law, like most of my husband’s family, (none of whom read blogs) are all loony.

Then, this morning, in the Greenville News, which I do read every morning, right there on page 6A–right beside the stuff about Iraq–is the headline, “Bee Die-off Endangers Food Chain,” and a picture of a worried-looking scientist in a bee suit with a tray of dead bees. Even certifiable fruitcakes say something sane every now and again, so you can’t just ignore everything that comes out of their mouths like you might think.

It seems some sort of disease or parasite has caused something called Colony Collapse Disorder. You might know they’d call it a disorder. Apparently, we now have to be politically correct when discussing bees, cause, you know, we don’t want to offend. Anyway, this Disorder is responsible for U.S. beekeepers losing a quarter of their bees in the last few months. According to someone at the USDA, this is the biggest threat to our food supply. And don’t you know the price of honey is going through the roof.

Here’s something else to lie awake and worry about. I’m counting on what usually happens in these scenarios: tomorrow or the next day some other expert will chime in as to how this is a normal, cyclical thing–like global warming–and there’s no cause for panic. And, people like me, who tend to obsess about stuff like this, will grab hold of that like a life preserver and tell ourselves that so we can sleep at night. Whether it has any basis in fact or not.

Peace, out…

Susan

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Blather and Profound Notions, Family

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