Lulu is a smart one. Inside the house, Lulu pretended her paw was injured and cried to Mom which got me major points. Mom thought I was saving Lulu from Mr. Snuffles. Good thinking on Lulu’s part! In the meantime, the backyard was a complete mess. Mom told me that I needed to apologize to Old Lady Sally for spraying Mr. Snuffles and getting him all dirty. That was the neighborly thing to do. I also needed to help clean up the garage and the backyard once everything dried out. I begged Mom to let me spend a few hours first fixing my robot because it was due in school tomorrow.
"First go over to Sally’s house and apologize about her cat," Mom demanded. "Then you will have time to work on your project while the backyard dries. Later this afternoon I want you outside cleaning up your mess!"
"But Moooom!" I pleaded. "You don’t understand. I need way more time to fix my robot. It’s ruined!"
Mom said I should have thought about that before I ruined the flowers in the garden and created a mess. After I left the kitchen, I headed over to Old Lady Sally’s house to apologize. Old Lady Sally has white hair, almost as white as Mr. Snuffles. She had an apron on when she opened the door. She looked a little mad at me but I did my best to smile a lot when I was apologizing. In the background, I could see Mr. Snuffles cozied up in blankets. He glanced over at me and pretended to still be in distress.
It was time to get back to work! I went into the garage to assess the damage to Robee. I tried to see if anything was salvageable from my project. Lulu came with me for moral support.
"You can do it, Peaches!" Lulu exclaimed.
"I’m not so sure Lulu, it’s pretty destroyed." I said, sniffling a bit, trying not to cry. "I don’t know if I can rebuild it because a couple of these plastic pieces are completely broken now, especially the pulley wheel that made him move around. This project is due tomorrow morning. I can’t possibly redo this in a few hours. It took me a whole week to make this!" I cried.
"Now, there, there my sweet Clo-Clo," comforted Lulu. "I am your tinker-binker-ing assistant!"
"TINKERING!" I told her, extra annoyed now with her joke.
"Yes, I know. But like I said, tinkerbinkering sounds more fun!" smiled Lulu. "Don’t you have a box here in the garage of your old toys?" Lulu asked.
"Yes," I replied meekly.
"I think you can use some of those as parts to replace the broken pieces," Lulu announced. "Remember that little race car that runs with the remote? The one that scared me when I was a puppy? I think you can use that instead of the pulley!"
The little fire in my belly started to get me excited again. Did my little dog just have the best idea ever? Yes! I could fix Robee structurally, and remake him into a wheeled robot with my old remote controlled car. I started to get to work on it right away. I got a small box and went through my old toys, from stuffies to board games to find any kind of piece, big or small, that might work to fix my robot. Right before lunch, I was finished.
"Lulu, what do you think?" I asked nervously.
"Whaaat? You woke me up from the most beautiful dream," said Lulu. "I was flying on top of a cloud eating a delicious hamburger!"
"Lulu! Get serious!" I demanded.
Lulu did a full body shake and started to look at my creation. She tilted her head to the left. She tilted her head to the right. She walked all around the object in a circle.
"So…" I asked. "What do you think?"
"Peaches! It’s even better than the first one," said Lulu. "I don’t know how you think of these creations!
I couldn’t believe it myself. The inspiration just came to me. I used my mini tablet to take pictures as I was fixing Robee so that I could remember all my steps in case I had to go back and rebuild something. Instead of the pulley Mr. Snuffles destroyed, my old remote controlled car worked perfectly to zoom and move the robot around. It still worked a little bit too! I salvaged Robee’s main body – a plastic container which I glued together a bit and painted gray over it.
That fit perfectly on top of the car. Instead of another plastic container, the robot’s head was an old Tin Man stuffie from The Wizard of Oz I had since I was two years old. I cut it off and glued it onto the container body. I used nuts and bolts and glued them all over the plastic container and car to look like buttons and switches. I painted them different colors to look like they were lighting up. For the robot’s arms, I cut a mini slinky in half. I thought it was cool that the arms would move up and down when the car moved. "I’m going to call this robot Digit," I said. "It’s really like a whole new robot. I think it makes sense to give it a new name."
"Absolutely," Lulu said. The she started to sing, "De-De-De-Di-git. Di-git. Di-git."
"Lulu, stop!" I laughed. "We are not rapping now."
Phoebe and Sabrina ended up coming over that afternoon thinking we had our club meeting. I had completely forgotten about it since I had to fix my robot. I showed them Digit and they both loved it!
"Wow, Chloe, you are such a good builder," Phoebe said.
"Yeah, I like how Digit can zoom by," Sabrina affirmed. "Alex has nothing on you!"
I wasn’t so sure. I didn’t know what Alex was making so I started to feel nervous again. Like true best friends, Phoebe and Sabrina ended up helping me clean up the backyard mess. We spent the rest of the afternoon, sweeping and throwing away all the dead plants and leaves that were scattered all over. Then, they would cheer me up by cracking funny Mr. Snuffles jokes and we would all end up laughing. Lulu was watching us and sunning herself by the back door. I could tell she was laughing too with her cute little tongue hanging out.
Read More in Chapter 7: The Big Presentation