They had just started that week and when I took the dogs out for the last pee of the night, the peepers were really loud! Right across the road from us is this little pool with a boat in it. In the summer they use a pump to spray water out the back and standing on a pair of water skis on a clear platform, holding on to a ski rope, people can pose for photos as if they are water skiing. Actually, you need someone to sit behind the wheel of the boat to complete the illusion but you get the idea.
That little pool must be lousy with peepers! Holy cow! What a cacophony! I pulled my phone out of my pocket and called my mom. “Momma, can you hear them?” I asked holding the phone out but she couldn’t.
“Do you remember when my kids were little and they took the cassette recorder down to the wet area of the field and recorded the peepers for you?”
“Yes, and there was even a section on the tape were a raccoon snuffled around the recorder.”
“How about if I make you a CD of the peppers?” I asked her.
“I’d love to hear the peepers again,” she said and I could tell she was smiling.
That night I took my voice recorder down to the campground, set it to record and secured it to the underside of a fallen log with a bungee strap. I didn’t want a raccoon carrying it off.
The next morning I went down and retrieved my recorder, breathing a sigh of relief when I saw it was still there. After I undid the bungee, I checked the recorder and it was still recording. I shut it off without ever thinking to add a message to Momma. Doggone it!
I downloaded the peepers onto my computer and had three files. It was too long for one file so the recorder automatically went to a new file. Cool. I clicked the button and started the recording playing so I could see if we got anything and I’ll tell you what! I got a lot! I got twelve hours of night-time noises. Not only peepers but dogs barking, traffic noise, sirens and towards morning, the birds waking up and ducks coming into the pond. I didn’t listened to it all. It takes twelve hours to listen to twelve hours of recordings. Imagine that. But all in all I was pleased. How much of it did Momma want? I called her.
“Momma, there’s twelve hours here and I don’t even know if the peepers peep all night, but how much of it do you think you’d want?”
“I’d like to have all of it, if it’s possible,” she said.
Whatever my mama wants, if it is in my power to do so, my mama gets.
“Okay then, I’ll see what I can do.”
I put a blank CD into my computer and tried to transfer the soundtrack of the peepers to it. I thought computers were super smart these days and would put as much as it could onto one CD, pop out and tell me to put a new CD in. But does it do that? NO! File too large, the message said. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I got to looking at my recorder and saw it had a button for T marks. Tracks? I pulled the user manual up on the computer, cause you never get a printed user guide anymore, and started researching it. I discovered that my recorder came with a program all it’s own and with that program I could do a ton of stuff. One of those things is divide a soundtrack into sections of any length. How cool is that! I divided the track up into what I thought would fit onto a CD (a little trial and error here) and it really was easy after that. I ended up with eleven CD’s.
I promptly got them in the mail and a week later my mother gets them.
“The CD’s came today,” she told me on the phone.
I light up. “They did!”
“Yes, but I can’t get my DVD player to turn on.”
“Awww. What’s wrong with it?” I asked totally let down. I had been excited to have her hear the peepers she loves so much.
“I’m guessing it came unplugged. I haven’t used it in a while. When Marilyn (her caregiver) comes in, I’ll have her check it for me.”
It was another few days until that happened, but then, on one of our daily chats, Momma opened with, “Peggy, I just love the peepers!”
“You got to listen to them? It worked?” Dah, right? But in my defense I was a little worried a CD made on my computer might not work in her DVD player. Especially using a new program to create them.
“Yes, and it is so clear!” she exclaimed.
Technology has greatly improved since the days of the cassette recorder.
Speaking of Momma and things she wants, she asked me to finish my novella The Wyoming County Fair: A Day With Momma. She and my big sis helped me with the first edit of the story.
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Actually, honestly and quite frankly, Momma asked me to finish it in a round-about sort of way. She’s such a smart lady.
During one of our conversations Momma mentioned that she had wanted to read the story again but when she went to get it she couldn’t find the first five pages. Could I send them to her again?
Thinking back I knew that what I had mailed her was just the words, no photographs. “You’ve never seen the pictures, have you?” I asked.
“Nope, but I’ve got the pictures in my head.”
So I got to work on it. I started at the beginning and read the story, looking for typo’s, misspelled, missing or just plain wrong words. Once satisfied I started to insert the photos into the proper places.
You may remember, or you may not, that I have had issues with my letter writing program before. At first I was losing whole letters and had to start all over again. How frustrating especially after having spent hours writing.
But I am a slow thinker and things that are obvious to others just aren’t obvious to me. I’ll get there, I just take a different route.
My program would freeze up. Forcing a shut down was all I could think to do, then when I tried to reopen my saved project I got the message that the file was missing or corrupted. This happened to me several times before I thought to try my Undo button. I came to realize that it was a photo I was trying to insert into the letter that was causing the problem and I couldn’t understand why because if I opened a new blank project I could insert the same photo into it with no problem at all. So that’s what I started doing. I would copy my letter to the clipboard, open a new project, insert the photo and paste the words in. Then I would have to go back and insert all the other photos up to that point too. Pain in the butt, I know, but at least I didn’t have to recreate the whole letter. I only screwed this process up once, the very first time I did it and do you know what I did? Let me tell you. I copied the letter to the clipboard then I shut my computer down hoping to clear the error.
Yeah. I hear you laughing.
Once I rebooted the computer, opened a new document and hit the paste button…there was nothing there. Shutting the computer down cleared the contents of the clipboard. I could have kicked myself.
Sigh. Live and learn.
“Why don’t you just buy a new program?” my oldest, much adored sister Patti asked me once when she found out about my problem.
I checked into it but those programs can run into hundreds of dollars plus I like this program, so I put up with the occasional problem.
I have learned to save often and if at any point I get the message that the project cannot be saved I know I have my error. Then I have to go through the whole process that I described earlier. But what more normally will happen is I will be inserting a photograph and nothing happens. The picture isn’t inserted and the program appears to stall. I can’t tell you how many years this process has gone on before I realized that my project went from three pages or five pages or whatever it was to 32,757 pages. That’s what the problem was! However, knowing this hasn’t helped to solve the issue.
Because of this and considering the magnitude of my fair story, I wrote the story first, without photos because I didn’t want to take a chance on losing it, then I went back and inserted the photos into it. That is what I was in the process of doing when I stopped working on it. Now that Momma wanted it, I had to finish.
Halfway through, guess what happened?
“You got an error?”
You guys are so smart! Yep. I got my error. I’d have to copy the words to the clipboard and start a new document. I did NOT want to do that. Do you know why?
“Because it’s a pain in the butt?”
Yeah. It is a royal pain in the butt. More so this time because we are not talking about three pages or five pages and a few photographs. No siree! We are talking twenty-four photographs spanning nineteen pages. This would be a time consuming process because once I bring the photograph onto the page I have to size it and consider placement and page breaks. I can’t have a photograph spanning a page break. It won’t print.
Doggone it!
I studied the problem for a while. I opened a new blank project and the photo inserted into it just fine. I knew it would. I’ve done this before. It just wouldn’t insert it into the story where I wanted it. What if I copy it from the new blank page and try to paste it? I’ve probably tried this before but it didn’t stop me from trying again. It didn’t work. I still got the error. I could skip the photograph. I really wanted to use the photo and I really didn’t want to create the document all over again. What if I insert a text box and insert the photo into that? I don’t know how or why I thought about trying this but boy was I surprised when it worked! Great! I was happy. I’ll just keep the photo in the text box. That wouldn’t bother a thing since text boxes are invisible when printed. I formatted the photo and as I moved it, the program allowed me to place it in my story any place I wanted to. I didn’t have to have it in the text box which I then deleted.
Man! I wish I’d tried that years ago.
I finished the fair story and sent it out electronically. I printed a copy for our Golden Corral girl, Sue, and I printed a copy for my beloved Miss Helen. I haven’t printed one for me yet and I’ll print a copy for Momma and include it with this letter. I don’t know if I’ll print copies for those who only get the printed stories, it’s thirty-four pages long. I guess it will depend on how much interest is expressed in having a copy. Printing and mailing can get expensive.
I asked for feedback on my novella and a few of you have replied but this is my favorite comment and it’s from my friend Linda.
“I really enjoyed your story. It felt like I went to the fair myself. I also was disappointed that ‘we’ could not locate the peanut butter ice cream. But at least I got to enjoy the antics of a clown, go to a rodeo and enjoy some wood chopping. All from my seat at the shop. Thank you Peg. It was a great day at the fair.”
This weeks letter has turned out to be quite a project. Two days late and twelve pages long. On the bright side, it went a long way to catching up my story notes.
I have also changed my desktop photo which is now this pretty little purple flower.
Don’t groan. It’s spring. You’re gonna get flower photos. Get over it.
Lots and lots of love,
Peg and Mike
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