Kachow!

Any marriage breakdown is full of the "could have, should have, would haves" and I'm no exception.  There's a bunch of burning resentments that can drag you down if you let them.  Case in point - the ex taking the lawn mower to go mow the new girlfriend's lawn. ARE YOU FREAKIN' KIDDING ME?  Know how many times he mowed our family's lawn in the last five years?  ONCE.  You want to mow a lawn sunshine?  Come mow mine because you OWE me a BUNCH of lawn mowing and that be the tip of the BIGGEST iceberg since the Titanic.

You can see how quickly that sort of thinking snowballs, right?  I recently had something of an epiphany about this one.  I've got a limited amount of energy to spend in the wake of this separation.  I can pour it into anger and resentment over all of the things he failed to do or I can pour it into just getting on with doing those things myself and forging the life that makes me happy in his absence. Obviously I choose option B.

So first up was my little boy's bike.  My aunt gave it to him for his third birthday in the (vain) hope that it would prompt the ex into putting it together for him as a father-son bonding session.  Here's his bike right up until recently;

Sad, right?  So I assembled my not inconsiderable collection of tools and got busy.

Here's my issue with this sort of caper.  I've got the tools. I know how to wield them.  But oh my God instructions?  I have never been the "Insert Tab A into Slot B" type. It doesn't help that they insist on a one-size fits all instruction booklet to cover the nine different kinds of bike they make and you wind up with instructions like, "if your bike has a cam shaft differential prong you will need to rotate the locking pin 90 degrees before insertion. WARNING - If your bike has a fiscal foreign deficit prong and you rotate the locking pin 90 degrees instead of 60 before insertion your child's bike will explode the instant he sits on it taking his genitals with it and it will be ALL YOUR FAULT*."  And then there's the vague sketches that are meant to help you identify which model you have as opposed to just writing the model number on the fucking box in the first place and clearly marking the booklet with which instructions apply to which model.  I digress.

I gave up on page two straight after the identification of all the parts and decided to wing it.  20 minutes later we had a shiny metallic red bike and one very happy little Viking who insisted it was his "Lightning McQueen" bike, shouting "KACHOW!" while posing for photos with it.  Best.  Mother.  Ever.

* ACME Fuck You Co does not accept liability for any injuries that result as a direct result of your failure to pay the $200 assembly fee on your $60 bike you miserable cheapskate.  Best of luck.