Beast

What do you do when you have a huge nail in your tire and it won't hold any air?  Well, you've got to get it off the car.  What do you  do when your husband works a lot and doesn't have time?  You decide that you can take care of it for him.  I'm sure there is an instruction manual, how hard could it be?  It wasn't too bad.  My biggest worry was damaging the car.  

I've been trying to make a man out of my son and asked him to help me out.   The thing is we don't work very well together.  His stipulation was "you have to find the manual and actually use it!"  I have a bit of a reputation for not wanting to look at instruction manuals.  I was ok with that since I have never changed a tire solo and it's been 20 plus years since i've done it.  

Jared kept getting mad and walking away.  He has no trust in my abilities to read or do anything. I remember being a pain in the but teenager that thought I knew everything, but was I that bad?   Is it worse because I'm a girl and girls don't know anything?  I don't know.  Anyway, there are very specific parts of the frame you can place the jack and he disagreed with where I put it even though it matched perfectly to the manual.  He wasn't going to witness my destroying Dad's car. He walked away again over what tools to use and how to get the tire off once the nuts were off.  Seriously keeping him on task was more exhausting than changing the actual tire.  Especially because when he walked away he took off his shoes and went all the way upstairs to his room with his headphones on.  This happened 3 times.  

I did most of the job myself.  I had to jump on the tool to get the nuts loosened because I wasn't strong enough and Jared was back in the house again.  When I got tired with the jack I made him come back out and crank on it....it's really bad for my neck and shoulders.  I told him that he needed to learn to do man things because girls would expect that of him.  He was going to have to be the one to change the tire on his car.  His response.  "There won't be tires on cars when I'm married."  Do you drive now?  Are there tires on that car?  Well, then, get your butt up and come change this tire with me!  Good grief!  Serenity now.

Then came taking off the tire.  It wouldn't budge.  He insisted that there was something else that needed to come off which was preventing it from just falling off.  I knew this wasn't the case and decided to try youtube.  Well, their tires were just falling off so the one piece of wisdom that I did manage to get from Jared was to check for a specific video about our car.  Bingo!  The tires don't like to just fall off so you have to kick them.  Success!  I was feeling like a beast.  Girl power!

Our last fight regarding this whole process was the spare tire.  When we put it on and lowered the car the tire looked too flat to me.  We debated on proper inflation levels and what "max" means.  In the end I ended up just throwing the damaged tire into the back of my vehicle and taking it to see if it could be repaired.  We went from 1 place (nate had check on Sat when we knew there was a problem) wanting 500 and then when questioned went down to 380 for a new tire (saying it couldn't be repaired) to me taking it somewhere else on Mon who promised that if a new tire was needed it would only be 250.  After about 30 minutes the guy returned with my tire plugged and patched and ready to roll.....free of charge!  

If I were a super beast I would have come home and put the tire back on for the hubs, but I'm trying to know my limits when it comes to my body.  Besides, I didn't want to deprive Nate of having the experience of Jared help him reverse the process we had done earlier :0)

The thing that kept running through my mind during this process was something my dad used to tell my every time he made me do something for myself.  Whether it was changing my own tire, or oil or anything else like that he would always say "never rely on a man to do anything you can do because he might not be around." I would add or willing or able.  Thanks Dad for showing me how to be self reliant and teaching me that I can do anything.  Hopefully I can instill that same attitude in my children.