Interview, Part 2

My interview, posed by Nancy Pearl Wannabe, continues today!

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You use initials for both you and your husband. Did you originally do it to keep your identities secret, or do you really refer to each other as RA and JG?
Both, kind of. We really do call each other RA and JG, though more so in writing (i.e., e-mail, IMs, cards) than aloud. I’ve been called RA for so long that it’s completely natural for me to answer to it and sign it to e-mails, so when I thought about starting a blog, it was a natural choice for an alias. I never considered using my real name because I’m so fond of this nickname. In the infant days of my blog, I wrote about a week’s worth of posts with JG’s real name, but I ended up switching over because he wasn’t a huge fan. Since JG is high school teacher, online anonymity is pretty important. Also, I have a unique name and I’m Asian, so I kind of stick out in the realm of public school teachers’ wives, and you never know what kids (or their parents) will dig up online. Until I got my camera, I hemmed and hawed about posting pictures on the site at all, but I’m comfortable with the decision to stick with initials in writing and refrain from publishing pictures of JG online. I hope it doesn’t come off as aloof and mysterious, but I think it’s for the best. (#34)

You and JG got engaged and married when you were relatively young, and you seem very confident in your relationship. Do you have any words of advice for other couples out there who might be wondering if marriage is right for them?
Ooh, tough one, NPW. When JG and I were going through marriage counseling, our pastor asked us if we thought the other person was the only person with whom we could have created a long-term, loving, so-called successful marriage. Of course, with our eyes full of stars, we both emphatically said yes. But, ha! Trick question! Our pastor gently taught us that compatibility is dependent on circumstances, but the commitment that’s necessary for a successful marriage needs to be stronger than that. If we were counting on being “right” for each other, what would happen when we seemed wrong for each other? When we would inevitably say hurtful things, be inconsiderate, and act selfishly? Or, superficially, when I want to tour a city on vacation and JG wants to lie on a beach? What, then? Well, then commitment, sheer determination, or stubbornness (whatever you want to call it) kicks in. Sometimes, even though I love JG, I don’t like what he says or how he acts, and I’m certain that it goes the other way, too. Because we’re just flawed human beings, trying to cobble together a strong relationship, our commitment to each other has to override our unavoidable gaps in compatibility. It’s not to say that we’re completely incompatible; we just don’t depend on that sense of being “right for each other” to carry us through.

For any couples who are wondering about marriage, I would pose the question: does your commitment to each other outweigh your compatibility with each other?

I was intrigued to read about your gymnastics days when you were younger. Do you ever regret all the time you spent training when you could have been pursuing other interests, or do you think it was worth all of the effort?
When I was six, my mom signed me up for a recreational gymnastics program after I was bouncing around the house in imitation of the gymnasts from the 1988 Olympics. I started competing at age 9 and continued until I “retired” at age 13, and parts of my fledgling gymnastics career were awesome. I was constantly learning new things and challenging myself, and I got to play in a foam pit and a trampoline on a regular basis, so it wasn’t half bad for a ten-year-old. However, parts of the competitive gymnastics world that I would put in the category of “not very good for a ten-year-old” include:

• Dealing with pressure to make it to Olympic trials, even though I’d be pressing my luck at the ancient age of 17
• Knowing that the back-up plan to going to the Olympics was to get a full ride to Stanford and therefore do gymnastics until the age of 22 so that my parents’ investment of time and money wouldn’t have been for nothing
  
• Going through conditioning sessions so intense that I was unable to climb the stairs to my bedroom
• Climbing up and down forty-foot ropes and crying all the while because I was just so tired

Gymnastics is getting a lot of bad press recently, what with the reported numbers of kids going to the emergency room, and I don’t want to add to that. Kids pick their activities, and rather than soccer or softball, my choice was gymnastics. Every sport comes with a certain amount of risk, and gymnastics has physical and mental risks due to the type of skills involved and the concentration necessary. I want to be clear that gymnastics did not give me an eating disorder, train me to fight past the pain, or stunt my growth. It was tough, yes, but definitely not forced on me.

I would not encourage my hypothetical daughter to participate in competitive gymnastics (as opposed to recreational), and I regret that I was really stressed out as a pre-teen because I felt so much pressure. However, I am glad that I learned how to discipline my mind and train my body to do drills, although I’m not sure that I needed to learn those lessons at such a young age. Today, my gymnastics days provide me with a full understanding of conditioning exercises that use the body as resistance, in addition to a wide variety of stretches. In climbing, I owe my balance, flexibility, and muscle control to many hours on (and trying not to fall off of) a balance beam. If I had started climbing the year I stopped doing gymnastics, I’d be a beast. I’m just saying. (#7)

I often admire how organized and efficient you are. I feel as though you enjoy the actual organizing part as much as the end result and I am jealous. Nevertheless, do you have any quick tips for people who don’t love organizing things but would love to have a recipe binder as cute as yours?
You’re right — I do love the process of organization as well as the finished product. For me, the main challenge in organization is to fit the system to the objective: form follows function. If it looks cute while it functions, then that’s a plus, but function comes first. So, if we look at the recipe binder as an example, I had to make sure that I could flip through new recipes and store tested ones with ease. After I figured out how to do that, I added the labels and color-coordination to please the smaller, aesthetically-minded part of me.

If you’re not as hyped up about organization as I am, I would still recommend that you answer questions like, “What do I want this thing to do?” and “What is the easiest way for me to use this every day/week/month/year?” Then, armed with your objectives, go to a Container Store or Staples and try stuff out to see what you like. There are so many tools for accomplishing any number of storage or organizational tasks (in lots of pretty colors, too!), but you need to know what you want to accomplish before the tools will work for you. Give you new system a month or two to settle in, re-evaluate the effectiveness by using your objectives as a metric, and tweak accordingly. See? Wasn’t that fun?

As a fellow word nerd, I definitely have a few words I dislike intensely. “Panties”, for instance. What are a few words you can’t stand using?
I am with you on that one, NPW. I had a hard time with this question because I found that I simply avoid using words that are distasteful to me. There is a class of words, however, that I hate physically pronouncing: words that are linguistically percussive. All of the phonemes end up on the tip of my tongue and the back of my teeth, and I hate that feeling. You will not hear me saying words like “dirigible” or “Schenectady” if I can help it. “Connecticut” only gets by because I’ve been saying it all my life, so it doesn’t clang in my head as much. It’s weird, I know.

If you were forced to give up one of your favorite desserts forever, would you give up Twizzlers or root beer floats?
Oh, hit me where it hurts, why don’t you? I would give up root beer floats, if I could still eat the components separately. I just can’t imagine giving up Twizzlers, my perfect movie food. They don’t melt or make noise to grab them, and if you accidentally drop them, there’s no ominous scattering noise of your snack sliding underneath all of the seats in front of you. And I love me some Pull-n-Peel. Yes, indeed. (#72, 73)

If you were playing host to someone who had never visited your town, what would be the first thing you wanted to show them?
Depending on the time of year and the time of the day, I would take folks to walk around Longwood Gardens. It’s the most touristy thing in our area, but it is so fascinating to see how the gardeners cultivate all of the amazing exhibits. If this visitor was only in town for dinner, we’d hop over to the Half Moon for a Belgian beer or a moontini, crab nachos as an appetizer, and bison burgers, if I could convince my guest to take the plunge into wild game.

If you were going to write the story of your life, what would the title be?
Uh. For lack of a smart-sounding title with a colon and a subtitle, can I go with “Definitely RA”? This assumes that I will have amassed fame and fortune with this here blog, I suppose.

If you had to pick one movie to watch once a week for the next ten years, what movie would you pick?
I’m always ashamed to admit this, but I am not a movie person at all. I like watching them and I usually enjoy them, but I don’t seek them out. Can I just pick the A&E version of Pride and Prejudice for its sheer length and book-like quality? Because I would rather read than watch a movie.

If you could go back in time and give your 10 year old self some advice, what would you say to yourself?
Grow out that ridiculous bowl haircut! You are cute, but the hair is not.