Men are from Mars

Years ago my wife and I were out one evening walking the dogs. All the while our son Jeff who was 5 at the time was zipping around us on his bike. He would pedal as fast as he could only to slam on the brakes and skid the back tire out to the side, sometimes the skid was so fast he had to lean way over to one side to counter balance the forces trying to fling him up and over his bike frame. At the time, I frankly barely noticed his shenanigans, it just didn't register. Where as my wife became increasingly distracted and anxious as the complexity of his stunts started to increase and his inner Evel Knievel showed through. Eventually as Jeff hurled himself down the side of the ditch to hit a  haphazardly made plywood jump that had "emergency room stitches" written all over it, Michelle couldn't take it any longer. She screeched out a futile yelp of last second protest as Jeff became airborn. Only after he landed his death defying trick did she turn to me with eyes wide with bewilderment and a face flushed with what I still don't know was anger or the final stages  of her mamma bear fight or flight reaction, she asked as sincere as I have ever seen her...

"Why does he do that?"

To be honest I was puzzled by the question, and before I could think of filtering my answer I blurted out "Why wouldn't he do that?" I tried to clarify by adding " the only reason he wouldn't do that is if he was 98% sure he would die in the process, anything less than that, as far as he is concerned, the odds are in his favour"
As you can probably guess...that didn't help. She simply shook her head and walked off muttering something along the lines of " I just don't understand you guys"
My point is that often we, as the XY genetic carriers, think and act very differntly than our XX counter parts.
For example....

These are seats from a 2011 Escalde. Unfortunate for the Escalade it met it's demise in a significant collision, but the good news is the rear seats were untouched. A very simple removal of four floor bolts and the chairs were easily removed and simply could be set down in the appropriate place in Fillmore and just like that we had passenger seats. Or so Michelle thought...

I had other plans. Looking at the set up, the seat bottoms were in too much of a reclined position, too low to the floor, and there was potential for better usage of the space underneath the seat. So Anna and I started to plan and fabricate a new seat base. First step strip away the old base...on the kitchen counter...while Michelle is out shopping...and try not to scratch the counter top(Ooops!)

I am always one to learn from my mistakes. This time I had to call  the kids to come out  and  learn from my mistake. This was a doozy. Even I had to laugh at this one.

After measuring and re-measuring, dry fitting the pieces, I was a little excited to actually put it all together. These welds were going to be so easy I could taste it....But after I was done, and took my blinders of progress off.....It became apparent of my catastrophic fail. This is what it looked like.

This is what it looked like after I realized my mistake, cut the welds and welded the legs on the correct side of the cross bar.

After many hours of cutting and welding and measuring and cutting and re-welding. Here is what we have! This will allow the forward facing seat to have a storage drawer underneath which will also double to increase seating area for a meal, and allow for the seats to be converted into a small bed.
When I excitedly explained all of this to Michelle, she once again looked up at me with that puzzled flushed look and asked me again...."Why? Why cant you just use the seats as they are?"

Because Men are from Mars my love, Men are from Mars.

Now for my annual progress disclaimer. This time tomorrow I will be in Manitoba for 2 weeks with the kids. So Fillmore is officially put to bed until August, at which time the plan is to continue to make progress!!!