This is just a quick post to rant about some things.
So, some time back my wife and I splurged hugely on a Phil and Teds stroller. And not just any Phil and Teds, but the top of the line Vibe stroller and extra seat to accommodate both boys, of which we only had one at the time, but we were preparing. That's the one thing that we went all out on. Even some of the extras to go with it, which most strollers just include, but not the P&T ones. Such as a $25 cup holder and a more than $50 plastic rain shield. Really. Twenty five big ones for a cup holder. One. For one cup. And it keeps coming off the stroller. Really.
And that's not the worst part. The stroller came in with a bunch of scratches. The retailer would not exchange it, and Phil and Ted's said we could send it in to them at our expense and they might ("might", see?) try to paint over the scratches. Let's keep in mind that this is a stroller, but it's also a stroller that cost more than what my car is worth! And they "might try" to fix it!!! At my expense! That was not the worst of it.
I did not send the stroller back, because although the cosmetic damage annoyed me it just wasn't worth the expense of sending it back to them. Although every day that I look at a whole two weeks of income on three wheels I cringe. Here is what really ticks me off: the stroller broke.
Yes. It's that simple. It broke. We still have a relatively cheap super-light stroller that's worked just fine for 2 1/2 years, but our uber-expensive cadillac of a stroller lasted less than one year without dying. We have disposable cups that we've managed to keep longer than this stroller!
To their credit, Phil and Teds did repair the stroller and they even sent us a loaner stroller while ours was being worked on (of course, it was pink and I really didn't want to push the boys around in that). Not that there is anything wrong with pink camouflage patterned strollers, but that one just wasn't my cup of tea. They did charge me for shipping, but at least eventually they fixed the stroller. When it works it works great, much more conveniently than any other stroller we could find, but for the price we really did expect perfection.
And a cup holder.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Friday, April 22, 2011
Mexican Dad
It's Not Easy Being Brown.
Actually, it isn't that it's hard, but it can be confusing. We Hispanics of Mexican descent have an ingrained culture that's hard to fight against. And it starts off with having to define ourselves as "Hispanics of Mexican Descent". Not only is it a mouth-full, it makes my fingers tired from typing it and it has already turned my attention away to more fun things. Yet I plod on. Do you really need anymore background on me? You probably do, but you're already bored so I'll skip it.
Here's the main point, we Mexican-Americans are a complex bunch, not a simple monolithic group, but we do share some common characteristics, which are almost entirely negative. Isn't that sad? We don't share the good stuff, we keep that closed in within our families or people we know, but the bad stuff that we struggle against is all over. I actually was raised in Mexico, and I went to public schools in a poor part of the Third World. I wasn't poor, thanks to my Dad's hard work, but the places where we lived were definitely not nice. Lots of dirt and dirty children and shacks made of scrounged materials with dirt floors. My schools had no AC's, libraries, cafeterias, or playgrounds. But we always had desks for everyone and real glass windows. I bet you hadn't thought of that as a luxury! And yet, when I compare the education I received down there with what I see other kids getting here in the good ol' USA, I thank my lucky stars for my schooling. Seriously. And I'm not knocking American schools, they're not bad, it's just that my schools were so much better. And why is that? To me, it's because I received an education grounded in the classics. We read the Iliad in junior high, we covered Jules Verne in elementary. We discussed political theory more deeply in seventh grade than my college professors would dare to try. We had no school band, no senior trips to Italy or the Caribbean. There was only school all the time. We received a mixture of lecture and discussion, with lots of thought provoking questions thrown into all classes. And there is the point. We were forced to think all the time. We weren't given answers, but we were expected to come up with them on our own. I think that the greatest difference, though, as far as basic schooling went, was the level of "culture" we were exposed too. And I mean culture in the sense of Art, not in some ethnocentric way. We were exposed to paintings by different artists, lots and lots poetry, and the occasional piece of music on an old record player.
But, and here's the cultural problem that is a "cultural" item with an ethnocentric view, we Mexican boys we're also taught to be the strong ones, to be aggressive, to be "macho". Macho, by the way, simply means male in Spanish. We were taught good manners right along with disrespect. We should open doors for ladies, but only because they're too weak to do it on their own. You must pull our chairs at dinner, but only because women are clumsy and can't sit on properly. On and on. So it's hard to get past the sexist and racist and classist ideals that were drummed into our heads systematically. I want to pass on the good bits to my kids, but how can I tell the good bits apart from the bad bits? They're all mashed together all the time. It's not hard to separate them when I can sit and consider, but teaching them good, moral behavior on the fly is tough. And I've not even touched on teaching them the language yet. Spanish is tough to learn without a whole lot of early exposure. And we don't speak enough of it at home for it to be natural to the boys.
But being aware of the problems is the first step to solving them. Or at least to ameliorating them.
Actually, it isn't that it's hard, but it can be confusing. We Hispanics of Mexican descent have an ingrained culture that's hard to fight against. And it starts off with having to define ourselves as "Hispanics of Mexican Descent". Not only is it a mouth-full, it makes my fingers tired from typing it and it has already turned my attention away to more fun things. Yet I plod on. Do you really need anymore background on me? You probably do, but you're already bored so I'll skip it.
Here's the main point, we Mexican-Americans are a complex bunch, not a simple monolithic group, but we do share some common characteristics, which are almost entirely negative. Isn't that sad? We don't share the good stuff, we keep that closed in within our families or people we know, but the bad stuff that we struggle against is all over. I actually was raised in Mexico, and I went to public schools in a poor part of the Third World. I wasn't poor, thanks to my Dad's hard work, but the places where we lived were definitely not nice. Lots of dirt and dirty children and shacks made of scrounged materials with dirt floors. My schools had no AC's, libraries, cafeterias, or playgrounds. But we always had desks for everyone and real glass windows. I bet you hadn't thought of that as a luxury! And yet, when I compare the education I received down there with what I see other kids getting here in the good ol' USA, I thank my lucky stars for my schooling. Seriously. And I'm not knocking American schools, they're not bad, it's just that my schools were so much better. And why is that? To me, it's because I received an education grounded in the classics. We read the Iliad in junior high, we covered Jules Verne in elementary. We discussed political theory more deeply in seventh grade than my college professors would dare to try. We had no school band, no senior trips to Italy or the Caribbean. There was only school all the time. We received a mixture of lecture and discussion, with lots of thought provoking questions thrown into all classes. And there is the point. We were forced to think all the time. We weren't given answers, but we were expected to come up with them on our own. I think that the greatest difference, though, as far as basic schooling went, was the level of "culture" we were exposed too. And I mean culture in the sense of Art, not in some ethnocentric way. We were exposed to paintings by different artists, lots and lots poetry, and the occasional piece of music on an old record player.
But, and here's the cultural problem that is a "cultural" item with an ethnocentric view, we Mexican boys we're also taught to be the strong ones, to be aggressive, to be "macho". Macho, by the way, simply means male in Spanish. We were taught good manners right along with disrespect. We should open doors for ladies, but only because they're too weak to do it on their own. You must pull our chairs at dinner, but only because women are clumsy and can't sit on properly. On and on. So it's hard to get past the sexist and racist and classist ideals that were drummed into our heads systematically. I want to pass on the good bits to my kids, but how can I tell the good bits apart from the bad bits? They're all mashed together all the time. It's not hard to separate them when I can sit and consider, but teaching them good, moral behavior on the fly is tough. And I've not even touched on teaching them the language yet. Spanish is tough to learn without a whole lot of early exposure. And we don't speak enough of it at home for it to be natural to the boys.
But being aware of the problems is the first step to solving them. Or at least to ameliorating them.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Long Time coming.
Don't be mislead by the title. It's going to be a long time between posts. No surprise at all, really.
So what's new? Lots of things since the last post. As you'd imagine. Because, if you've read any other posts, I've got two young boys. They still change every day. It's not as if I can simply say "Yeah, the other one already did that" and then move on. It's a surprise every time.
Monkey #1 is just talking up a storm. I'm amazed at the level of conversation he can hold up. Seriously. I knew English majors at Pan-Am who didn't have his command of the language. Monkey #2 is quiet, but he'll point to things and say what they are every once in a while. It's amazing, as I've already stated in this very same paragraph.
How can they move up the intellectual ladder so fast while I keep falling behind? It's not even as if I'm static while they move. I can actually feel my brain atrophy as the days go by. I can't read as fast, I can't retain information, I can't even imagine as well as I used too just 10 years ago, let alone 15. But the boys are just rocketing. So I can't even claim credit for that. It must be their mother.
As for me, well. . . just don't expect any more posts for a while. Not that anybody would. Nine hours of college classes and the job and the boys and the wife pretty much take up all my time. Even if the classes are easy enough they still suck up tons of time. The job takes up a lot of that, too. I'd take more classes if I could choose between those two, though.
The job did send me off to the Third World for a week, so that was sort of nice. It was actually really, really cool most of the time, when I didn't focus on anyone else other than me. This was a business trip, right? Not just fun in the sun. So I got to eat in restaurants that cost a weeks' pay for a meal, and stay in hotels that I could never hope to afford, while being chauffeured past shanty towns (favelas, if you're interested). But the place is an ecological disaster, worse than what you see on TV, and they don't really care. Or maybe they care, but they just don't have the desire to change things. They're in a hurry to catch up to us, and when they do they'll find that it's going to cost them a whole bunch to fix the damage they've done. But that's a problem for another Generation so they'll continue to pollute and destroy and so on and so forth. Not that I'm concerned about the environment simply for the environments' sake. I'm an industry that exploits nature so I've made my peace with that, but you have to protect it a bit because it's more expensive to fix problems later on.
I want to put more pics of the boys up, but my wife hates any images of us online. I don't like any of me, but I figure the boys are going to grow up in a connected world so they won't know the difference at all. By the time they start thinking about their relationships to people other than just mom and dad web relationships will be perfectly normal. But for now I'll respect her opinion and leave it at the two previous low-rez images.
So what's new? Lots of things since the last post. As you'd imagine. Because, if you've read any other posts, I've got two young boys. They still change every day. It's not as if I can simply say "Yeah, the other one already did that" and then move on. It's a surprise every time.
Monkey #1 is just talking up a storm. I'm amazed at the level of conversation he can hold up. Seriously. I knew English majors at Pan-Am who didn't have his command of the language. Monkey #2 is quiet, but he'll point to things and say what they are every once in a while. It's amazing, as I've already stated in this very same paragraph.
How can they move up the intellectual ladder so fast while I keep falling behind? It's not even as if I'm static while they move. I can actually feel my brain atrophy as the days go by. I can't read as fast, I can't retain information, I can't even imagine as well as I used too just 10 years ago, let alone 15. But the boys are just rocketing. So I can't even claim credit for that. It must be their mother.
As for me, well. . . just don't expect any more posts for a while. Not that anybody would. Nine hours of college classes and the job and the boys and the wife pretty much take up all my time. Even if the classes are easy enough they still suck up tons of time. The job takes up a lot of that, too. I'd take more classes if I could choose between those two, though.
The job did send me off to the Third World for a week, so that was sort of nice. It was actually really, really cool most of the time, when I didn't focus on anyone else other than me. This was a business trip, right? Not just fun in the sun. So I got to eat in restaurants that cost a weeks' pay for a meal, and stay in hotels that I could never hope to afford, while being chauffeured past shanty towns (favelas, if you're interested). But the place is an ecological disaster, worse than what you see on TV, and they don't really care. Or maybe they care, but they just don't have the desire to change things. They're in a hurry to catch up to us, and when they do they'll find that it's going to cost them a whole bunch to fix the damage they've done. But that's a problem for another Generation so they'll continue to pollute and destroy and so on and so forth. Not that I'm concerned about the environment simply for the environments' sake. I'm an industry that exploits nature so I've made my peace with that, but you have to protect it a bit because it's more expensive to fix problems later on.
I want to put more pics of the boys up, but my wife hates any images of us online. I don't like any of me, but I figure the boys are going to grow up in a connected world so they won't know the difference at all. By the time they start thinking about their relationships to people other than just mom and dad web relationships will be perfectly normal. But for now I'll respect her opinion and leave it at the two previous low-rez images.
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