Frosty Fillmore

There are some times as a parent when you really make you look in the mirror and be honest with yourself and to your kids. There is no manual about how to raise children, you simply take what you were taught, tweak things your own way and then try to do the best you can to impart some sort of global wisdom in small snippets. Hopefully these little morsels are profound enough to make an impression on a hungry young mind that there is some recognition and retention. Occasionally the same lesson that you served up comes right back at you like a late night snack from a questionable roadside tacoria.
 Often we try to talk to the kids about a number of things that they will face through out their school years, one of which is peer pressure. Knowing how to be your own person, stand up for what is right and follow your internal moral compass. Imparting on them how important it is not to bend to the whims and demands of your peers.

 So it was with a chuckle and a smile on my face that I was forced to eat a little crow the other night. I came home from work and did the usual, eat dinner, facilitate homework time, then get Anna to dance. At this point Jeff and I found ourselves with a few hours to do some sort of activity. Being the eager son Jeff happily dawned on his coveralls and we headed out to the bus shelter.Our goal?...to shift the rear axle position. It is definitely winter here and so we had heaters going all over the place.

 Jeff and I jacked up Fillmore, blocked it up so the tension was off the leaf springs. Then jack up the axle and remove the mounting blocks.

 Jeff then did some clean up getting them ready to re drill the pilot hole in the bottom so we could steal another 1.75" for drive shaft length.

After we had the holes drilled we started to put it all back together. As you can see it was a meager movement, but every fraction of an inch counts.

Even though we had heaters blasting away, laying on the cold gravel, and handling the icy metal of the axle components we were really cold. At one point Jeff responding to my murmuring about the cold asked me why we didn't wait for a warmer day?
My response was truthful and unfiltered, I said quite simply that I hadn't been working on Fillmore for a while and wanted to get things moving again, plus I had been getting some ribbing from my buddies that I hadn't had any activity on the blog as of late, and as such I felt I needed to get some things done.
A short pause from Jeff, before he gently said
 ( with a twinkle in his eye)   " You really shouldn't do whatever someone tells you to do....would you jump off a bridge if they told you too?"

We chuckled and snorted, thankfully the message was received.... and then I received it again. That was good humble pie.