Show your work!!

(Yes, Honey, this one's for you.  You're welcome.)

So, in a flash of inspiration, we (er.. my husband ) solved a problem that has been nagging at us for over a year:  How to finish off the sandbox.  We purchased shade fabric last year, when we built it, but we couldn't come up with a design that would allow us to easily attach the fabric during the summer months, and then remove it during the winter, and have a framework that would support the fabric and not allow it to droop.  We were stumped up until Saturday morning, when we decided to Google images of pergolas and Dean saw a design that used a pyramid shape as a framework for the roof.  Ah-ha!!

So Dean ran some figures and we made ANOTHER trip to Home Depot to get more lumber for the composter because the MOTHER of all composters clearly does NOT have enough heft to it yet.

Dean cut and measured and cut and measured all day.  And I stained and stained and stained all day.  (My mother asked me *why* we are making the composter 'look pretty'?  It is wood, and will be filled with yucky, wet stuff.  It's gotta be relatively waterproof.  And yes.  It needs to look pretty.  Because our yard is ugly and it needs at least something nice to look at in all its dead-grass, weed-haven vastness!

Saturday came and went and on Sunday morning I went to check something on the computer.  It was still on Dean's login and there it was: trig calculations for the pyramid roof.

(gasp!)

(CHEATER!!!!!!)

Dean came in at just about that moment and I turned on him immediately...

"I thought you were some sort of math whiz!  And here you are, using the COMPUTER to do the math for you!"  (add in a you-were-totally-awesome-up-until-now glare...)

Dean replies with absolute indignation, "I was just checking my answer!  (he turns and goes back into the garage and comes back with two white boards with math calculations all over them)  Here you go - see!  I showed my work!"

Indeed he did.  It even looks pretty.  And in color!

So, I have to take it back.  My husband does show his work.  And it shows up in places like this:

Please forgive me for sounding like Baljeet.

Now, originally, this whole missive was going to be about how much math we have used in our landscaping, gardening, building efforts as of late.  Jordan got to be here for some of it.  He helped plot out a circular bed for me.  We were talking about properties of circles at the time, so it gave us an excellent opportunity to discuss radius, diameter and circumference.  Dean pounded a peg in the middle, and I told Jordan that I wanted it 6 feet across.  So Jordan figured out that he should measure and attach a 3 ft long piece of string to the stake, and - walking around in a circle - mark out the perimeter of my circle so we could see where we needed to remove grass.  I wish Jordan had been here to see the pyramid beams as well - although trigonometry is way above my head.  When it comes time, I will be learning right along with him.

I have a feeling our teacher will demand that we show our work....