Killer Fiction’s Kick off the New Year Contest!!!

By Robin "Red Hot" Kaye


There’s nothing better than a contest to kick off the year! Here at Killer Fiction, we’d like to thank all our readers for a fabulous 2010 and kick off 2011 in fine fashion. And what better way to kick off the New Year than with free stuff? All the rules for the contest are on the sidebar, so read up and make sure you’re entered to win great prizes.

IMPORTANT NOTE: All contest winners will be drawn the weekend following the end of the contest. So if you didn’t hear about the contest right away, don’t despair—you can still go back to previous blog posts and enter.

For my blog day, I’m giving away a $25 egift card to Amazon.com or BN.com—winner’s choice and a copy of one of my books, I have Romeo, Romeo, Too Hot to Handle, or Breakfast in Bed--winner’s choice.

Now, for my official contest post…

I can’t believe I said that!

I don’t know about you but have you ever listened to someone and laugh about how an otherwise highly intelligent person could sometimes say or do the dumbest things?

My mother is one such intelligent person. Years ago, when I was going to college and she was getting her masters, she walked past my bedroom door on her way to the garage and told me she was checking her oil. I wondered why she was telling me this. Did she want me to alert the media? I smiled encouragingly and said, “That’s nice, Ma.”

About ten minutes later, she came back and said she was a quart low. I resisted the urge to make a joke, and nodded thinking nothing of it. I’m a girl who would crawl under her car and change her own oil regularly without a problem until I got married and put my DH in charge of all automobile maintenance. Just because I can do it doesn’t mean I want to. But that’s a topic for another post.

My mother returned to the garage and I returned to whatever I was doing. A good ten minutes went by and I looked up to find my mother standing in my doorway holding a dipstick. “All done?” I asked. She shook her head. “I can’t figure out how to get the oil in that teeny-tiny hole.

Needless to say I laughed so hard, I almost peed my pants. Back then, in my early twenties, I thought I was so far above ever doing something that ridiculous. I used to call what my mother did “pullin’ an Angi.” since her name is Angela.

Several years later, I was married, had a few kids who were, unfortunately, old enough to remember. My husband was driving down a road in Boise, ID that I traveled daily. I sat in the passenger seat and was looking over at a pasture where horses grazed. I did a double take because the horses looked strange. They were short. Their bodies looked to be about the average length, so I knew they weren’t miniature horses. Stupidly, I opened my mouth and pointed at the misshapen animals. “Honey,” I said. “look at those short horses.”

My husband took one look at me and laughed. “Rob,” he said, “They’re not short, they’re just standing in an irrigation ditch.” I laughed so hard, I cried. I still do every time I think about it. I had turned into my mother. I had pulled an Angi! At the time, I laughed too hard to be mortified. That came later and said mortification revisits me every time one of my kids brings up the short horse story.

So tell me, have you turned into one of your parents or ever said anything as inane as “Hey, look at those short horses!”?