Films and Flat Tires

Answering questions on video for a book trailer sounded good until I actually had to do it. Then came the great task of trying to find a place in the house that had good lighting. I mean, I didn’t want to look any paler than I already was, or have the dark circles under my eyes look any darker than they already were. It was hard.

Finally I settled in my sewing room. But the wall behind me was boringly bare. So I decorated it with colorful paper flowers and fairy tale pictures, and then went to wash my hair.

When I was done washing my hair the sun had moved, the lighting was different, and I had to move my decorations to a different wall in the sewing room.

I also had to run through my questions several times, because I kept talking too slow or rambling on and on. But finally, finally I had a version that was acceptable.

Then I couldn’t transfer the movie onto my computer.

After much sweat, tears, and desperate calls to my brother Matt, I finally figured out it was the tape that was messed up. So the next day I went to Walmart, bought a new mini DV,  and went back home to re-take it.

The lighting wasn’t right in the sewing room. I tried it outside on my back porch thing, wheeling my scooter out of the way, but there was too much wind noise. Then I tried my sunporch. If I took the cushion off the couch so I had the back of the couch behind me instead of the wall, the lighting was good enough. I got an acceptable take of myself answering questions.

By then it wasn’t long until I  knew my family would be arriving, so I hurried around doing last minute cleanup. Oops, my scooter was still in the awkward position I left it in when I was trying to film outside.

I tried to move it.

It wouldn’t budge.

What? Oh dear. Both tires were completely and utterly flattened.

Thankfully it was only about a half hour later that my family parents arrived. So I wasn’t without transportation for long. Still, what on earth had happened to make both my tires just all of the sudden go flat?

We didn’t discover the answer till today, when mom went for a walk in my back-backyard. I have a backyard, and then a garage, and then another backyard after that, so I suppose it’s my back-backyard. And when she came back she said, “you know Emily, your back-backyard is full of little hidden thorns you can’t really see.

“Oh,” I said, “I drove my scooter around there yesterday.”

Sure enough, there were little thorns in my scooter tires. And so ended the great flat tire mystery.