Premiere Elements 14 - Gaps Created While Editing Video, Audio And Music

Evening All:

Maybe a bit hard to describe my problem but here goes...

I am at the end of a project and I am putting in some tight editing to tie it all together.  The final minute or so consists of Video Track 1 that includes tightly edited short video clips along with stills,  An Audio Track 1 unlocked so I can "fine tune" the position of the audio to where I want it in in the timeline and an Audio Track 3 with a music file dropped into the track.

When I make my video 1 clip edits and add in lets say a still image, the Audio Track 3 above it ( music has also been edited) opens a big wide gap in the Audio timeline. The Audio 1 track (unlocked) also does the same thing just below the Video 1 track.Trying to get these clips all synchronized is like herding cats and I wind up with timeline of that 1 or 2 minute period that is all full of gaps and small artifact slivers of the clips I am simply trying to pull together.

In other words, I simply need to insert, edit or add to ONE track without any change to the other tracks.  Did I explain  myself?

I have screen shots if it helps... any idea what I am doing wrong?  Thank you !