Camera-less

Well folks, here I sit—camera-less, and consequently, on the brink of a nervous breakdown. For two solid weeks, no less. That’s 14 whole days in rural America with animals, unpredictable weather, and the daily potential for YouTube-worthy chaos... and I’ve got nothing but a dusty old cell phone to capture it.

DH left for work Monday, which is normal. What’s not normal is that he packed up both my camera and my video recorder like he was prepping for an award-winning documentary. He's heading to Washington, D.C. for the 8/28 Restoring Honor Rally, and apparently, restoring my sanity wasn’t high on his list of priorities.

Now, I do technically have a phone with a camera. But let’s be real—it’s more of a “dumb phone with delusions of grandeur.” It takes photos that look like they were snapped through a potato. And worse, I have no earthly idea how to get those photos into the computer. I don’t even know if it uses a cord, a cloud, or smoke signals.

In my moment of desperation, I turned to my grandson—resident tech guru and the reason I didn’t beat the cordless phone system into submission with a hammer. He’s the one who figured out the DVD player, the TV with three remotes, and the defrost feature on the microwave. I figured if anyone could help me, he could.

Nope.

He took one look at the phone and said, “Yeah... I got nothin’.”

What. Do. You. Mean. You. Got. Nothin’.

This is the same kid who once built a gaming PC from scratch and programmed the thermostat to automatically turn up the heat at 6 a.m. But even he can’t drag a picture off this dinosaur of a phone.

To be fair, cell phones don’t really work out here unless you climb a tree, hold a metal bucket over your head, and whisper sweet nothings to the nearest satellite. So I guess I can’t expect him to work magic with a device that might as well be powered by hamster wheel.

So here I am, technology-challenged and stuck in what I can only describe as Polaroid Purgatory. If someone were to ride a goat bareback through the garden while wearing my Sunday hat and singing Yankee Doodle Dandy, all I could do is tell you about it. Which, let's be honest, is so last century.
(And let's be really honest—around here, that's not out of the question.)

If anyone out there in the digital ether knows how to coax photos out of an ancient cell phone and into a Windows computer without having to sacrifice a floppy disk or fire up a dial-up modem, I’m all ears.

At this point, I’d even consider mailing the phone to someone and having them fax the photos back to me.

Because let’s face it—Murphy’s Law of Farm Life clearly states:

If you don’t have a camera, the pig will dance, the goats will juggle, and the barn cat will give birth to kittens on top of your best lace tablecloth... while wearing a tiara.

And I’ll miss it. All of it.

So until my camera returns, I’ll be documenting life the way our forefathers did—by shouting across the yard, "Hey! Remember this later in case I forget!"

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