Live, Laugh, Love

Life isn't always easy, right?

Just when I thought the contest on my website was up and running seamlessly, guess who shows up? A spammer. Twice.

My website person says I can enable moderation or add a Captcha box. So I've chosen to moderate the entries. At least for now. I'm hoping this nips the problem in the bud.

The entries feed directly to the email I use all the time, so there'll be no long wait for approval. All entries that aren't spam or XXX rated (I don't have an Over 18 notice) will be approved just as you send them in.

If you haven't entered yet, what are you waiting for?

http://www.carolkilgore.net

In other exciting news, I had to call the police about Live-In Handyman the other night.

Are you going WHAAAAT???

He left here a little before six the other evening to go to a man's house who was selling some items the Handyman was interested in. It was a referral through an acquaintance, not a Craigslist kind of thing. The man lives 15-20 minutes away.

I was editing and didn't know what time it was until I came out of the cave about eight. Handyman is blessed with the gift of gab, so I wasn't really worried. But about 8:30, when the sun was going down, I knew he would notice that. When I didn't get a phone call by the time it was full-on dark, a little worry crept in.

To back up a little. Besides being blessed with the gift of gab, Handyman is also blessed with being an excellent communicator. He calls if he's stuck in traffic and will be even five minutes late. If he's out-and-about, he calls and tells me where he is. He calls a lot. I kinda like that :)

So by now he's been gone about three hours - and no phone call. It's dark - always a phone call - and no phone call. And I forgot to say he had to drive through a not-so-great area to reach this man's house. I call his phone, and it goes straight to voicemail. It never does that because he never turns it off.

I look up the guy he went to see and call his number, thinking they're inside having such a great time Handyman hasn't even looked out a window. The guy's phone rings then goes to voicemail. I leave a message.

By now, I'm wondering if Handyman ever made it to the guy's house or if he had a problem on the way home or if the guy he went to see was a killer lying in wait. I don't write crime fiction for nothing, you know :)

During all this, I call him every ten minutes or so. Each time, I leave a message.

By 9:30, I'm certain he's lying in a ditch someplace, either from an accident or from a hijack. I gathered up all the information I had and placed THE call. I tell the police operator I'm calling about my husband.

I tell him Handyman's been gone only a little over three hours, but it is so out of the norm that I'm worried. So I explained what happened. Then I gave him Handyman's name, his license number, his phone number, the make and model of his car, half his license number - you already know I have a tiny problem with numbers.

I then give the operator the name of the man he went to see, his address, and his phone number. I tried not to sound like a crazy writer woman or a raving lunatic.

The operator said he would send it out to a patrol unit. I asked him to please tell the officer to keep in touch with me and let me know whether he finds him. I again said I feared he may have been in an accident.

When I hung up, I decided I better pull together a list of the local hospitals so I could call if the officer didn't locate him. I was in the process of doing this when my phone rang. It was a local number, but not one I recognized. I thought it was someone from an ER.

"Hello?"

Live-In Handyman answered back. All smiling and laughing. Seems his phone died. He was calling from the officer's phone. He and the other man were outside putting the things he bought in the back of his car when the officer arrived and said he was looking for Handyman - which injected a little panic into him because he thought something had happened to me.

A Friday night in the seventh largest city in our country, and the officer got there in under ten minutes on a non-emergency. I call that pretty darn good.

Now I tell Handyman if he doesn't behave, I'll call the cops on him. We laugh. But I'm happy all the crime was only in my head.


DISCLAIMER 1: This incident may appear in a future novel in a form you may or may not recognize.

DISCLAIMER 2: I think I may have switched back and forth from present to past tense more than once. Please ignore. I'm still editing and all that juice is going into my manuscript instead of this blog post. I wrote it as if I were telling it to you face to face.