It was voluntary. It was supposed to be something that kids had to aspire to accomplish. It was supposed to be challenging. And, it pretty much overshadowed two thirds of our vacation.
This is a snowflake airplane. If you want to amuse yourself, or you are an engineer, please... go ahead and look it up. Actually, let me help. Here is the first site that comes up on a google search. It is also the one we used. Please, jump forward past that nice, three sentence intro paragraph and begin to swim around in engineer-speak. The whole thing is written with a counter balance of incomprehensible measurements and terminology, and as an underlying, child-like glee. " Dihedral gore is1/32...maximum camber is 1/4 inch...tip chord, root chord," are we talking music? I know music! I also know Engineer porn when I see it. Henry wanted to bring his grade up. Actually, we told him.... WE told him... that he needed to bring his grade up. So he took on this extension project. Just to bring things into perspective, Henry is a science minded kid. Not this kind of science, but science nonetheless. Also, this teacher might be his favorite teacher of all time. His class is intense and awesome. But man... this project.
Henry needed so much help at every step. Just the language itself was massively daunting in the beginning, so we had to swallow hard and dive in. Then, bringing it from hieroglyphics to actuality...ugh. I tried to keep a good attitude, and about half the time I did. But this was intense! I graduated from UMASS Summa cum laude. I have three degrees. I built both the shed in my back yard and my chicken coop myself, and just from a picture I saw online. I built the entire upstairs of my house, and all of our downstairs shelving, cabinets etc (granted these were with heavy help from my father) but still... from scratch. I am not a slouch here. Really, I'm not. Whew... and did it fly? Did we get that amazing moment when it all came together? Well... not really. The wings broke off the first throw.
This thing was there, in the back of my head, all vacation. I still enjoyed vacation, its true. But... yeah. There it is. I am mentally exhausted. Henry worked so hard. I tried to keep the onus on him. He bent the paper clips into pigtail rings. He measured and cut the Styrofoam plates out into their perspective parts. But I had to be there, constantly checking, explaining, researching.... for days. Henry worked the entire day today on just the powerpoint explanation. Not kidding here, he started ten minutes after he woke up, had a 1 hour brake at lunch, and worked through his supper. I need a vacation... from my vacation... this probably isn't good.
I know tonight I am going to dream of flying... or more likely... crashing.
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