Microblog Memes

My extended family operates thanksgiving as a potluck. My uncle hosts, he cooks several of the dishes served, one of my (female) cousins cooks the turkey itself, somehow it became traditional that I (male) carve it though. My father makes a pineapple punch, my mother makes the sweet potatoes, I often bake a pie of some kind.

Cooking, laundry, dishes, those don't seem to be gendered tasks in my family. In all but the bachelor's homes it seems women do the vacuuming, because the women seem to give more of a shit about the state of the floor. For most of my life lawn and leaf jobs were Male with a capital M, though my mother has started helping me rake (I live next door to my parents in what was my grandparents house, we share kind of an extended property) as kind of a reason to exercise, and one of my cousins took over mowing their lawn when my grandfather passed away.

Vehicle maintenance falls to the men as well, only one woman--my navy veteran cousin--would so much as touch anything with engine oil on it. Construction, house repair and basically anything else that involves a saw also tends to fall to the men; my mother refuses to climb ladders, I've never seen one of my cousins holding a hammer, meanwhile my father and I built our wood shop, and roofed my house.

Computers and gaming: A lot of my family games in some way or form. There are some gender stereotypes on display, one of the few games I've seen my aunt play is The Sims. My mother likes adventure and puzzle games, she's currently big into BluePrince. My father tends to be an arcade classics guy. OG gamer, he bought Space Invaders for the Atari 2600 on launch day and he and his best friend stayed up all night playing it. I've gone through phases with fighting games, FPS, simulators, etc. I'm the family computer hardware enthusiast. I think my father could build a PC, but the last time he did so was in the 1970s when he and his friend soldered together an Altair 8800 kit. Everybody else kinda refuses any chance to learn.