Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4 We had been working on our blueprint for almost an hour and had finally finished something that looked like a face. Well, it didn't look like a human face—more like a combination of a fish and a kangaroo, if you can imagine that. "Stanley's kind of ugly," Frankie commented. "But in an adorable kind of way," Ashley said. When we started to design the body, poor Stanley got even weirder. He had a long chest, and wheels for legs. The wheels turned out to be square because I used the ruler to draw

them. I didn't think about the fact that rulers only go in straight lines, not in circles. Sometimes I don't plan ahead. My dad always says, "If you fail to plan, then you are planning to fail." He says that almost every night when it's bedtime and I still haven't finished my homework. Frankie and Ashley didn't mind the square wheels. "We know what you meant," Frankie said. "Everybody knows that in real life, wheels are round." Of course that's exactly when my know-it-all sister, Emily, walked into the dining room and shot a glance at our robot design. "I bet Hank drew those square wheels," she said. "He doesn't even know what a wheel is." "At least I don't have a scaly iguana with a mile-long tongue

riding around on my shoulder," I shot back. Katherine looked me right in the eye and hissed. Then her little legs pushed off Emily's shirt, and she flew through the air, landing smack on top of our blueprint. "Hey, Emily," Frankie said. "Tell your lizard to move. We're doing serious work here. We've got a sock-picker-upper robot to build." "Katherine is very curious," Emily said. "I'm sure she just wants to get a good look at your robot plans." "Are you saying your lizard can read?" Ashley asked. "Who are we to know?" Emily said. "They're very intelligent creatures." "Well, your intelligent creature just pooped a pile of green stuff all over Stanley," I said. Emily broke into a big smile and reached out to pick up Katherine. "Good girl," she said. "You remembered to use the paper." Turning to us, she added, "I told

you she is very intelligent." "Well, so much for our blueprint," I said. "I'm not getting anywhere near it now." "That's okay," Ashley said. "We all know what we have to do to build Stanley. Let's go find the parts." "We can start in the kitchen," I said. "There's lots of cool stuff there." As we got up from the table, Emily started to follow us. "Sorry," I said to her. "This is for humans only. So I guess that leaves both Katherine and you out." "Fine," Emily said. "We have better things to do, anyway. Katherine and I are going to the bathroom for our afternoon toothbrushing session." "Great. Maybe you can potty train her while you're there." "Maybe I will," Emily said. "Then she'll be ahead of you." That did it. We left and went into the kitchen. My dad was sitting at the table, with

two ice-cream sandwich wrappers next to his computer. "How are the plans coming?" he asked. "Katherine had an accident on them," Frankie explained. "So we're moving right into the next stage: building Stanley." My dad raised his eyebrows and chuckled. "It's nice that you named your robot after me." A big smile broke out across his face. I wondered if this was a good time to ask him if we could move my bedtime a half hour later. But there wasn't time, because Frankie and Ashley already had all the kitchen drawers open. "I think we should use spoons for Stanley's arms," Frankie said. "Yes," Ashley agreed. "Spoons will be good for picking up socks." "Don't use our good silverware," Dad said. "Your mother will be very upset if two spoons are missing."

I searched around in the drawer, and at the very back found a baby spoon with a pink polka-dot handle in the shape of a kitten. "I remember this," I said. "It was Emily's kitty cat spoon. She couldn't say spoon, so she called it her 'oon. That was when she was still cute." "Let's use it," Ashley said. "We want Stanley to be colorful and cute." "Well, he won't be so cute if he only has one arm," Frankie said. "And it looks like you Zipzers are out of baby spoons." I opened the drawer my mom calls the "one of everything drawer." It's where she puts stuff that doesn't have a place anywhere else. There's one battery, one hammer, one chopstick, one rubber band, and one instruction book on how to use the icemaker. Luckily, there was also a baggie filled with plastic forks that came with our takeout Chinese food.