Sunday, September 14, 2014

I hope this letter finds you happy and healthy.

My current desktop is not one I picked. Not intentionally, anyway. My current desktop is up there because I was working on a novelette called The Wyoming County Fair, A Day With Momma, and while inserting a photo of the bull riding event, I accidentally clicked on the button that made it my desktop. So I just left it up there and it’s up there still.

“A novelette?” you wonder.

Yes, a novelette. We googled it, my cute little red haired sister Diane and I did, and discovered that a novella is between 4,001 and 8,000 words in length. A novelette is between 8,001 and 17,500 words long. A Day With Momma is definitely a novelette at 8,434 words and is the longest story I’ve written so far. I’ve been working on it for almost two weeks and last night I put the finishing touches on it. On the story part that is. I have to put the pictures in it yet.

“You said you got your desktop photo while putting the photos in the story,” you say.

Boy, you guys don’t miss a thing, do you? That’s correct. That is how I got my current desktop photo. But it is the craziest thing! My story (file) became corrupted twice during the writing process and it wouldn’t open. I lost it. The last time was because it couldn’t load a photo and I forced a shut down. I don’t know about the first time, but maybe it had something to do with the photos too. So the third time I started the story I left all the pictures out. But don’t feel too sorry for me. Luckily I had asked three very beautiful and smart ladies to help me with this story because I wanted it to be the best it could be, so I had almost all of it in my sent file on the email. Whew!

The beautiful ladies, A.K.A. my editors, all had great ideas on how to make my story good. Although I didn’t use all the ideas, I took something from all of them. I expect I will get the photos inserted and get it posted sometime this coming week.

“Why Peg?” you ask. “Why would you write something that long! You know I don’t have time to read that!”

I didn’t start out to write a novella, let alone a novelette. I started out just wanting to record the story of our day and it grew from there. Right around the fifteen page mark, I threw all attempts to limit the number of pages right out the window, deciding instead to write the story for Momma, giving her a keepsake of the day, one she can read and relive anytime she wants.

If you want to read it, you can. And if you don’t....I totally understand. If you do read it and want to tell me what you think of it, your comments would be welcomed.

On our way taking Momma home from the Fair, we pass a pasture where the girls had been turned out from their evening milking. I just love cows! “Mike, if you slow down they will all look at us,” I told him.

“They are curious,” Momma said.

Mike slowed way down and sure enough, the girls all lifted their heads to see what we were doing and I snap some photos. Way off in the pasture I see three cows around one that is laying down. “Is that a bull?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Momma answered.

I pulled the photo up on my camera, zoomed it in and showed it to her. “It is a bull!” Momma said. I think we were both surprised because farmers don’t usually freshen their cows the old fashion way. The bull can be kind of rough on the girls, don’t you know. But maybe this guy is gentle and it’s the way they do it.

“Peg, did you get your new RV?” you wonder.

I’m getting there, I’m getting there!

No.

“No? Just no? Aren’t you going to tell us what happened?”

Okay, I will. Mike and I, along with the puppy dogs Itsy and Ginger, headed up to Bath, New York, on the appointed day, at the appointed hour, to pick up our new RV only to be told that our 10:30 appointment was really a 12:30 appointment. So we had a couple of hours to kill, no big deal. Finally one of the shop guys comes for the RV and I have to move to the customer lounge. He’s going to take it in the shop, take the braking system off our old RV and put it on the new RV as part of our deal. No problems there, they get that done. Since Mike and I can both be a little technologically challenged, they also agreed to put in a DVD player for us. It was while doing this that they discovered the HDMI cable was broken, or fractured somewhere along it’s length. And guess where the cable is. Yep. Inside the walls. The DVD player wouldn’t work.

Everyone thought it was a fluke, so Adam, the Sales Manager, searched the internet and the other Camping Worlds and found another RV for us. It would be there the next day.

Mike and I head downtown to a place called Liberty Street Pub and Grill for our dinner that night.

 

“They have a really good steak salad,” Adam told me. “It’s what I always get when I go there.”

So on Adam’s recommendation, I ordered the steak salad and Mike ordered a hamburger with a side of wings. There was only one other table occupied when we got there but as we were sitting there chatting, other people start coming in. Pretty soon we notice that people who came in after us are getting their food.

“It’s just their salads,” I told Mike.

Then they get their main course. Well, okay. “They got the special,” I said. “The special is always ready and that’s why they get it sooner.” Then another table gets their food and another table gets their food. I flagged down the waitress, “What’s the deal?” I asked.

“Oh. Wings take twenty-five minutes so they push the other food out.”

She certainly didn’t tell us that when we ordered, but what are you gonna’ do? At this point it had been almost twenty-five minutes anyway so we don’t have to wait much longer for our food to arrive. And it was worth the wait. My steak salad was really good and Mike said it was the best hamburger he ever had.

The next day the new RV arrives and the first thing they do is check out the HDMI cable and guess what? Yep! This one was broken too. They figure it is a design flaw. As they ran this cable inside the wall, up one side of the RV, across the ceiling and down to the TV on the other side, they somehow kinked it and since the Hurricane by Thor don’t come with DVD players, no one knew it.

“Now what?” you ask.

Yeah, we wondered the same thing.

“I’m not sure I want one of those now,” Mike said of the Hurricane’s.

Adam got back on his computer and started searching around again. He came up with a few other models that were out of reach for us, and negotiations stalled. “What would it take to make you happy and get this deal done?” Adam asked of Mike.

“Give me the Hurricane 34F for the same price and do everything you were originally going to do,” Mike said. The 34F was an upgrade from the 32N that we had been looking at.

“Done,” Adam said and the search was on for a 34F. Here’s the problem we ran across. There were only three 34F’s built. One was in Texas, one was in California and the other one was slated for the Hershey RV show, which by the way, is the largest RV show in the country.

“It will be at least two weeks until we can get it,” Adam told us.

Resigned to a two week wait, and having already spent three days in Bath, we head home to the cats. We hadn’t been home very many days before Mike gets a phone call. There is a brand spankin’ new 34F coming off the line and it was going to be ours.

“I’d rather get you the new one than the one that was in the show and had hundreds of people walk through it,” our salesman said. Hopefully it will be here before we are suppose to head back to Missouri because if it’s not, I don’t know what we will do.

When we left our mountain home to pick up the new RV, we had planned on spending one night in the lot of Camping World, getting familiar with our new RV and making sure everything worked the way it was suppose to. With that in mind, I took my running shoes from the breezeway, where they normally live, and put them in the RV. Our second morning in Bath, I tie on my Saucony’s, harness Ginger and we go for a run. Although Camping World is on the highway and although the shoulders are very wide on this highway, I don’t have to stay on it very long before I came to a side street, which I took, leaving the heavy traffic behind me. I did my interval running down a sleepy little house lined street and when I came to a T, I had a decision to make. Back out towards the highway, or out a country road. I chose the country road.

Ginger does really good when she goes out with me, provided I don’t take her too often. If she gets tired I have to carry her until she rests a little and carrying an eight or nine pound dog while you are trying to run doesn’t work very well.

On this particular morning, we were nearing the halfway point and time to turn around when I hear dogs barking from a farmhouse yard. I hope they’re tied, I no sooner think to myself when I see not one, but two dogs coming up the driveway towards us!

Oh shit! They weren’t tied. I hope they stop, is my next thought but I don’t take any chances. I scoop Ginger up, turn so they can’t see her and walk as quickly and calmly as I could back the way I came. I didn’t think running would be a good idea. I glanced back over my shoulder. They didn’t stop. They came barking right up on the road and the leader looked like he could have been a pit bull mix.

“STOP!” I shout much braver than I felt. “GO BACK!” They still didn’t stop and they didn’t go back either. I was scared. These were two big dogs, forty or fifty pounds a pounds a piece. If they decided to bite me to get to Ginger, I couldn’t have stopped them.

“Use your pepper spray,” a voice in my head says.

I reach in my sport bra and pull out a palm size aerosol of pepper spray, flip the lock off, aim it at the lead dog and depress the trigger. This is the first time I have ever pulled a personal protective device on anybody or anything and I didn’t know quite what to expect. What I got was a thin stream of liquid which fell short of it’s mark. The dogs stopped but continued to bark.

“GIT!” I said in the meanest voice I could muster, gave him another shot of pepper spray, which again fell short and I kept walking. Lucky for me, (or maybe they just weren’t the biting kind of dogs) they barked me down the road, but didn’t follow.

I really need to rethink this taking Ginger with me thing. I know she enjoys it and really hates when I leave her home, but I don’t want anything to happen to her and I don’t want to make myself a bigger target to dogs or bears by having her with me. In my minds eye I could see Ginger barking at a bear and really making him mad! No. That wouldn’t do at all.

Check out this sign in the parking lot of a McDonald’s in Tunkhannock, PA. I have never, in all of my travels, ever seen a sign like this before. It says;

McDonald’s parking lot rules. No loitering, food must be eaten inside of car, you must leave parking lot 15 minutes after purchase.
What do you think about that?

Father Joe, the priest of the church Momma goes to, died last week. He had a memorial service on Monday and Momma told me to take my camera and get a shot of the beautiful tapestry with Father Joe on it. It is beautiful, but I wondered (and forgot to ask) is this something that was pre-made, or made special after Father Joe died?

Let’s do October birthdays.

Floyd Gene Kraft, 1^st; Carmen Cosentino, 5^th; Carmella Sophia Kriebel, 5^th; John Daniel Bowers, 7^th; Andi Lyn Bowers, 11^th; Pilar Bowers, 12^th; Trevor William Soden, 16^th; Burton Louis Bowers, 18^th; Richard Robert Smith, 20^th; Bert Lundy Bowers, 24^th; Vincent Soden, 27^th; Billy Smith, 29^th.
Happy birthday!


Lots and lots of love,

Peg and Mike