This past weekend was a project weekend. The red-eared slider I rescued when he was the size of a quarter has since outgrown his thirty-gallon tank. Without the room to put a bigger tank inside, I went the other route. Build a tank outside. Now, I could have simply bought a pond setup complete with faux rocks and a cascading waterfall but that isn’t much of a project, is it? No, I decided to do it all myself.

I went to a feed store and found an oval 100 gallon stock tank. Pretty straight-forward. Fill it up with water and drop the turtle in. But he also needed a place to bask in the sun. So I built a floating dock out of some wood flooring scraps we had in the garage. Simple. Then the real project began…I decided I would build the filter from scratch.

It’s a dangerous thing, the Internet. When researching filters I came across, “Do it Yourself Filter from a Five Gallon Bucket.” Do- it-Yourself and five gallon bucket in the same search result?! The filtering material was made from 99 cent store scrubbing pads.  My inner McGuyver awakened. I dreamed about it all Friday night and was at the hardware store when they opened first thing Saturday morning. I had sketches and measurements stuffed into my pockets. My wife, frightened or understanding, kept the boys clear. Over the next two days I glued and caulked PVC together. I fired up my power tools. I failed, redesigned, and went back to the hardware store five different times. By Sunday afternoon, despite a few leaks that had to be re-patched, I considered my DIY filter design a success.

This morning I’m back to play-cooking with my sons. They are serving pancakes and juice. My point in all this is that despite the rewards of caring for my sons during the week,  I still crave projects like these. I think they are a healthy extension of a stay at home dad‘s job. This weekend was about having a short term goal and seeing it through.  I admit it was nice not yelling at my boys to put down the hacksaw or stop pouring sand into the tank.  When my boys are older and calmer I’ll certainly share some of my destructive construction skills with them. But this was more about the sense of accomplishment–even with something as goofy as a DIY turtle tank.  I feel rejuvenated. And the turtle seems happier too.