Woo hoo tires

So this is sort of a straw poll about a rather unfortunate incident that happened on Sunday evening.  We traveled over the pass to visit my father because he had surgery on Thursday.  It was all well and good, but driving back about 25 miles out of Seattle the right rear tire went flat.  It was unfortunate for a few reasons, but the first of which was we were traveling with an infant and it woke him up and was delaying our getting home.

Now I was able to change the tire and get the spare on, but we didn't want to travel far on it so we stopped at my wife parents that were only 15 miles away rather than complete the 50 or so final miles on the doughnut spare.  We borrowed their car and went home, and my father-in-law was going to take the car in to get the warranty work done in the morning.  We had bought the tires at Costco, and we have only driven about 30k of the 60k mile warranty.  I didn't want one odd sized tire, and asked that he make sure we get both rear tires replaced.  They charged me $40 for the damaged one, and $170 for the other and argued the whole time that it was a waste of money and made my in-laws wait a few hours for their trouble to boot.

Do you always replace at least two tires at a time?  It's a front wheel drive and everything I've ever heard (from my parents and consumer opinion) makes me think you should do two.  I thought it was important because they were already 50% done to not put just one brand new tire on.

What do you think was I wasting money or were the tire people being jerks?

Raising boys

Since the birth of my son, I've been in a curious spot trying to think long term about the things that I find important and want for him to learn.  One constant theme that I'm running into even before my son turned one is the gender stereotyping, and "norming" on those lines.  My parents, and In-laws both are projecting a good deal of boy roles onto him already with the toys they buy but the worst usurper is in my own household, my wife.  We lost a daughter at full term, and thus had a house full of pink things for baby girls.  Most of the items where functional, clothes bedding, ect.  When we found out that it was going to be a boy overnight most of that stuff was sold, or donated and a flood of blue came into our house.  I argued (and still argue) that the pink things, especially the things like bedding, and clothes that they only really wear for a short period of time and are just going to spit up on can be any color in the damn rainbow.  I think she needed the validation that it was a boy, I'm pretty sure my son was wholly unaware of both the color of his clothes and how people reacted to him in those clothes.  By casting colors as gender specific we are limiting him, and ourselves, and that seems ludicrous.  In a related sense, I also am trying to be mindful of what types of toys I buy him so as to not force the type of play that we allow him to engage in.  I think this article addresses the issue fairly well.

Another issue is respecting women, both their autonomy and their intelligence.  I suppose you can gather that I have some feminist leanings, and in that vein I wanted to raise a boy and hopefully a young man that has some appreciation for the amount of projection that women are subjected to, but also how marginalized they can be.  It wasn't until really the last few years that I've had my eyes opened to how pervasively American society has sexualized and marginalized women, but anyone that has been watching this years political cycle no doubt is aware of how politicized women's health and autonomy has become.  It's appalling that politicians think that they should be in charge of choices that a woman and her health care provider should be making.

And finally there is his own sexuality.  I don't remember how I found Goodmenproject, but this article on sex education is one of the guiding lights I have for conversations that are inevitable as he grows up.  Like the author of that article I was also left on my own, to guess and talk with other boys my own age.  I had a sex education class around grade 6, but even then I would not have been comfortable asking questions in that kind of group setting so aside from some of the biology they taught, not many questions where answered.  I was fortunate to live with a nurse so I was able to get some questions answered, but really how much do you want to talk to your parents about sex?  As such I had the typical boy vocabulary that marginalized any body that wasn't a cisgendered male, and that makes it hard to explore what your sexuality even is.  In essence it's dictated to you by gender roles you absorbed from society or your peer group.  I still have a hard time not saying fag (online gamer, it happens from time to time), but taunts based on sexuality are exactly where it starts, and I'm hoping to at least educate him on how harmful it is to.

being deaf

Gizmodo posted an article a little while back on being deaf.  Now the article is written by someone that was born deaf, and is in that 20 something age that is very angst filled anyway, but was pretty insightful none the less for me in my personal life.  My father is going deaf, rapidly.  It's not just a matter of certain tones going away, it's a matter of he's already lost over 80% of his hearing.

This is changing my family dynamic and reading the account of this young man's loneliness in a world that engages largely with our voices was very eye opening.  When there is a gathering of more than a few people, it is not uncommon for my father to not be able to keep track of what is being said.  His most common response is to retreat to his smart phone, that provides him with some entertainment.  It is also getting harder for him to hear on the phone, so he has taken to texting rather than getting frustrated with not knowing what you said.

The article is a little long, but interesting to see a different perspective on life and gave me clues on how to help my father interact with his world.

Rage inside my cage

That was the lest productive weekend I fairly sure ever.  My dad and I managed to get my tv mounted onto the wall, and after a few hours of looking at Ikea's website and measuring and remeasuring the living room we managed to get a decent idea of how the room should/will be laid out when it comes time for the living room upgrade.  No CNC work however.

I also got windows 7 onto my mom's computer and transferred all of her docs and pictures plus the nearly 4 gigs of legacy pictures that I recovered from the last time her computer died.  I've given her these pictures on cd's or a dvd to load into her computer several times and she has failed to remember to do it so she finally has an uninterrupted chain of digital photos since she started taking digital photos.  I also new have a snapshot on hand of all of her data as of yesterday.  I keep bare drives dedicated to keeping my family and in-laws data alive in the event of, well whatever.  I recovered from crashed laptops and failed desktops enough that it sits in folders on a external 500gb disk, each family has a folder.  I should setup a dedicated crashplan server for my family so I don't have to worry about it in the future.

The rest of the weekend was spent helping my brother and his wife get ready for their new house.  They bought a new construction (that I'm not a huge fan of either the location or the layout of the neighborhood) and are excited and nervous for the outcome.  My parents have built and sold more houses than any sane individuals should have (gotta love middle class upward mobility).  That is to say, they are good people to tell you about how the whole process works, and what you need and don't need in the process of buying a house.  My Sister-in-law is a little bit of a know it all (in her head) and was very nasty to my mother all weekend as she tried to give them some wisdom on various things about the process.  My mother also has a really good eye for design, and decorating (honestly not just because she is my mother) so I tend to listen to her about color palettes and pairing.  Her catching shit from her daughter-in-law is the back drop for this next bit of story.  Mom tolerates bullshit poorly and is not shy about an argument, but has really made an effort to not be on bad terms with my brothers wife who has a tendency to be a bit of a bitch.  Contrast S-I-L with my wife how goes the extra mile to make my mother feel welcome and included, and tries hard to not let mother's pushy nature get the best of her.  That is the dynamic we are working with here.

Mix in a lot of tired from all parties last night, and while the parents where waiting for me to finish the computer mother says to father some kind of snarky bs about having to be up early otherwise their Daughter-in-law won't let them see their grandchild and my wife lost it.  It was a minor snipe and really petty of my mother, but not out of line her general nature.  It just happened to be the last straw for my wife, she walked out of the room and wouldn't speak with my mother which unleashed some fucking tidal wave of crazy from mother about everyone is so mean to her and all she wants to do is steal some baby so she can see it whenever she wants and not have to see her (my Mother-in-law aka the other grandma that is doing the heavy lifting of childcare 5 out of the 6 week rotation we are on right now).  Followed by some incomprehensible sobbing about wanting her boys back and threatening to drive home (like 6 hours that night it was 9pm or so).  

So yeah, I went to bed angry and still apparently am.

Well that was a pretty solid long weekend

I don't remember the last time my wife and I accomplished less on a long weekend, or had as much fun as we did.  Non-parents won't appreciate this I'm sure so feel free to skip if you don't want to listen to me prattle on about an infant.

We took him to the pool for the first time where we met up with a friend that also has a son about the same age as Rowan for a play date.  I'm not sure that my boy was super excited about the water, but the pool was sort of cold (colder than normal any way) and there where lots of 6-10 year olds splashing about that seemed to make him nervous.  We spent most of the rest of the day with that couple, just chatting and entertaining babies.

The next day was nice enough we went to the park (sadly 54°F counts for nice here in the PNW) and played with Rowan on the swings. They had those little bucket swings for kids that are too little to swing on their own so he even got to swing on his own a little bit. Since he's a Winter baby he hasn't been outside a very often because it's been so cold this year so he just watches everything, when he gets outside. There is so much to take in when he is outside, he just stares wide eyed with his mouth open at everything swinging his head around trying to see it all. My theory is his mouth is open because he wants to put it all in there.

Finally on Sunday Rowan surprised himself and us by rolling over the other direction (it's normally 6 months before infants can roll front to back, back to front) and even though he has yet to repeat the feat, it's nice to see him tracking on developmental stuff.  He of course choose to do the hard way first (back to front) and can roll that way at will (he is on his stomach often when we pull him out of the crib in the morning), but seems to prefer the skydiver pose when on his stomach.  He's starting to get that if he extends his arms out forward he won't be rubbing his face on the floor, but the tummy time still just makes him angry something fierce.  That is about all we did on Sunday, but he is definitely going to be his fathers son and fights going to sleep as hard as he can.  We have to rock and walk and listen to Bon Iver, or The National and S. Carey.  It blows my mind the effect of a little soft alt. rock.