Building Things and Growing Up

Building Things...
Scats are builders by nature. Clanpaw built this house we all live in as well as the house they lived in previously. When Attrition was little, Mom and Dad used to scavenge the dumpster behind Wal-Mart for broken electronics. They'd give them to Attrition and he'd fix them. Attrition always had cherry electronics (not jealous). When Squib got his first tool set, the first thing he did was disassemble the door knob (every Scat disassembles before they assemble--ugh).

Me? I build, too. Mostly lab equipment at first, but I just recently built this:

His name is Ren (and yes, there is a Stimpy for those of you who were still MTV devotees in the late eighties/early nineties). This is Ren's 1000 Watt power supply. Overkill, but the powers that be wanted higher wattage, so they got it. Here are more of Ren's guts:

He's "smart" so-to-speak and has LOTS of storage in his two 1T RAID drives (which are arrayed--THANK GOD FOR THAT! I'm tired of watching my workstation collapse and drag my data down with it! Despite the odd, tangled mess that are his insides, he's slick and my current fave of the two workstations. I was pretty proud after I finally got him together. Every single solitary piece was ordered separately and had to be installed and configured. Took me an entire day, but I LEARNED! Yay!

Not all our building/repair projects are so successful. The first collaboration between Attrition and myself was rather disastrous if you want to know the truth. He was driving an Isuzu trooper at the time and it needed a brake job. Soooo...we decided we were smart and could just get our hands on the book at the local O-Reilly's and fix them ourselves. And that is precisely what we did. The job

required bleeding the brake lines and though I cannot be sure, I think something went wrong during the process of replacing the brake fluid.

About twenty minutes after he left my driveway, he called to say that both rear wheels caught fire on the way to his house. Fortunately, he had a fire extinguisher in the car (it was a wedding gift) and was able to put out the fires. He limped it home (around the block) and had it towed and repaired, if I remember correctly.

I'd love to tell you that deterred us from repairing our own cars, but, well, no it hasn't. I think the next attempt will be tie-rods on my van. Wish us luck. Here's hoping the front wheels don't fall off after we try this...

Beanstalk is not much of a builder, but he's a definite appreciator of great architecture. And, like his mother he has a fascination with fountains. Who could blame him for that?

Squib is always building something. Yesterday it was an apartment complex:

He came up with it on his own. Then I asked where I was going to live and he came up with this:

This is my "retirement condo." Just don't ask me where he got that phrase. I certainly never taught him that. However, if he wants to build me a condo when I reach retirement age (which is probably when they bury me) I'll be glad to take it!

Growing Up

Watching your kids grow up can be awesome, hysterically funny, frustrating, and sometimes downright annihilating. Beanstalk lost his first tooth on Thanksgiving Day and I was reminded of all the pain that dang tooth caused him in the first place and almost cried. I'm sorta attached to those teeth. But the real hoot today goes, as usual, to SqB.

We only have showers, no bathtubs. So, I usually drag him in the shower with me 'cause he's too big for the sink and trying to bathe him from the sidelines is pointless. This morning, he looks at me very seriously and says: "Mommy? You don't got a wee-wee. But you gots TWO of THOSE (he points)!!" I'm thinking it's time for him to shower with his grandpa.

Who are these kids and where did they come from?
Scat