Archive: Hitched

Today is the last workday of May’s Mission: Put Together and I can hardly believe it. Stay tuned for a wrap-up post on Monday that will feature interesting trends, lessons learned, and the future of M:PT!

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Operation Pink Herring asked:

So, when are you going to start having babies? (JUST KIDDING!)

The long answer is the following, but the short version to this question, which I know was asked in jest, is that I don’t know.

One of my closest friends from high school is having a baby any second now, and the whole idea is sort of blowing my mind. It’s not that she got married after I did, and I feel pressure. It’s not that she and her husband shared the news via Christmas card, and my jaw just about fell off from its sharp descent to the floor. See, she and I were always the ones who consoled our lack of boyfriends by saying that we were “the friend type, not the LOVER type” (my yearbooks hold proof of this rally cry), and even though we were the first ones to walk down the aisle, I still think of her that way. I think my friend and her husband will be great parents, and I had lots of fun picking out books to send for the baby shower present. It’s just that getting e-mails with updates on the baby, deadlines for the weight/date pool, and pictures from the “belly photo session” makes me severely uncomfortable, as though I am privy to something entirely too intimate for my eyes. Just let me know when the baby’s here, I want to say. Then I can be 100% congratulatory and 0% uncomfortable! I will mail off the baby card I have waiting in the wings, click through however many pictures I receive, and send them something tiny and orange, in tribute to my high school’s horrendous colors.

All of this is to say that, for now, I am perfectly happy living vicariously through my friends’ kids. I can give borrowed kids candy and noisy toys that require batteries without suffering the ill consequences! In the worst-case scenario, I simply give back the kids at the end of the hour/day/week and chalk it up as an effective form of birth control. Excellent.

On a serious note, if I came to the point where I wanted to extend our family, my first choice would be adoption. My mind can not wrap itself around creating new children when there are so many who need homes right now. (I am also extremely squeamish at the idea of being pregnant or giving birth, but let’s not dwell on that.) Part of my motivation toward the adoption end is that I identify strongly with orphan Chinese girls. At the risk of being melodramatic, it’s forefront in my mind that I am a second daughter, and if my parents had had my sister in China, I may not have been a very desirable second child. I want these girls to have parents, and whenever we can afford it, sponsoring adoptions is high up on the to-do list.

It’s not that I am against children or people having them, but I really like just being married. I don’t believe that a marriage is simply a vehicle to have children — a means to an end — so until we feel like we really want to be parents, we’re fine with the status quo.

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Janet asked:

Do you have your future babies’ names picked out?

Background information:

• I have a semi-unusual name that I disliked for the majority of my childhood and adolescence, and even now, I am more resigned to it than anything else. It was rather liberating to have a nickname in high school, since everyone could pronounce “RA.”
• Our last name is really hard to spell over the phone and almost impossible to say correctly at first glance.
• JG tells me horror stories about struggling on the first day of school with name pronunciation. Afterward, at home, he reads off some of the more remarkable ones, and I try to guess the sex of the student. I am rarely correct.

That said, I stray to the traditional (AKA boring) side of the name spectrum so as to avoid similar situations for any future offspring, who will be unfortunately saddled with our seemingly-difficult last name. JG likes the option to shorten names for a nickname, and I prefer names that are relevant for a whole lifespan. So! Our picks for first and middle names would be Elizabeth Rose for a girl, and Daniel Clay for a boy.

Previously: Lent, hypothetical actions, superpower, television, favorites, hypothetical money, decisions

JG and I have been together for over five and a half years, and he he has only recently realized that when I say, “I feel like a chunky monkey,” it doesn’t mean that I think I actually am one or that he should simply say, “No, you’re not.” Last night, JG’s progress showed itself in full force.

The scene opens with RA standing in front of the full-length mirror in gym shorts and a hoodie, frowning.

JG: (from bed) You do not have thunder thighs.

RA: I guess not. But they seem out of proportion.

JG: Running would trim you down if you had anything to lose.

RA: My calves look better, I think. So that’s good.

JG: Do you really think you’re fat?

RA: (coming over to the bed) Not really. But I feel like a heifer right now.

JG: Well, I think you’re pretty. Do you know why?

RA: Because I am pretty?

JG: Yes! I would not have married an uggo!

RA collapses in laughter. End scene.

I must disclaim that “uggo” is not in any way part of JG’s normal vernacular, and he would never, ever say that about anyone. He only used it to make me laugh, but what can I say? He knows me.

Sherry asked:

What made you decide to get married, as opposed to just living with JG? I guess my question stems from the fact that I am also a twenty-something married person, and I know why I did it. But I’m always interested to learn why other people take the plunge.

It’s interesting for me to consider this question because living together before getting married was never really up for discussion. In a lot of ways, I can see how it can make sense in that there are no legal ramifications in terms of property division in case the relationship turns sour, and I know that others might have a dim view of marriage as an unnecessary social construct. However, JG and I didn’t consider the option of cohabitation, and our religious beliefs were a big motivator behind that. Basically, we wanted to be married when we starting living together, so until our wedding, we just didn’t. JG spent the month between graduation and our wedding living out of suitcase at his parents’ house, and I held down the fort at the apartment I’d had for the previous six months.

I suspect that this explanation begs the question of why we got married right after graduation. My parents asked us to consider waiting for a year after college to get married, and then jobs and finances would be in place, and we might be in a better situation to start off. I already felt like being engaged for ten months was pushing my internal timeline, and JG and I had been together for two years when he proposed. To wait another year after that before getting married seemed like such a needless hurdle when we knew we wanted to be married, ultimately. It also didn’t seem prudent to pay for two different rent payments for a whole year when we could get married, live together, and save that money. Our apartment was on the cheap side of a low-cost town, but had we waited a year and JG got his own place, we would have wasted over $8,000, which would not have included the cost of driving to see each other. For JG and me, the numbers did not make sense to wait for a year, and besides that, we really wanted to be married. So we had our wedding a month after he graduated from college, bought a house two months later, and the rest is history.

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Laurel asked:

How did you choose your college? What did you like and dislike about the school you chose? (You may have already answered this, but I think it’s an interesting topic.)

During my senior year of school, I applied to seven colleges. Between the application fees, the essays, the visits, and my normal school life, I don’t know what I was thinking. I couldn’t apply early decision to any of them because they all had binding contracts, so I had to sweat it out until spring, when the results came in:

• Accepted: 4
• Wait-listed: 1
• Rejected: 2

Looking back, I realize that I had a rather unbalanced combination of reach, safety, and moderate-range schools, but it was fine with me to have half of the decision made for me. Of the schools that accepted me, I easily eliminated the University of Connecticut (more like University of My High School) and Virginia Tech (more financial aid, please), which left me with two remaining choices: the University of Rochester and the University of Delaware. They were my top two schools during the application process, so that was reassuring.

I had visited Rochester and Delaware during the summer before my senior year, and I thought that Rochester had a slight edge. It was more prestigious, I had an option of a 5-year master’s program in chemical engineering, and I liked the idea of being up north. Delaware was a more laid-back campus, but it had a history of undergraduate research and studying abroad, plus a good marching band. Unfortunately, I could only afford to go to Rochester by taking out massive student loans, including work-study, and Delaware would be no problem in that area. I went back to both schools during spring break of my senior year to make the final call.

During my second visit, Rochester seemed strangely cold and pretentious to me, which was partially due to the gray weather that is so common to the early spring. Maybe it was just my tour guide or the panel I attended, but there was an air that I should need to deserve to go there. If I decided to go elsewhere, Rochester would find another willing student who would. They didn’t want me, they just wanted a warm body. On the other hand, Delaware was lovely and bright. It was a beautiful day, and I soaked in the Jeffersonian architecture as I walked along the brick pathways. I talked with the honors chemistry adviser during lunch, and I was paired up with a chemistry major who was in the band. I felt like Delaware was pursuing me as a person, not just as another freshman to fill in the ranks. Granted, I think the honors program played a huge part in my recruitment by making sure that I was slotted into advantageous conversations, but it worked. I loved the campus, the professors I met, and my prospects for research and travel. Delaware was a good fit in terms of cost, and it was five hours from home. Perfect.

I had a great time in college. I switched up my major, made lots of friends, had excellent professors, and — oh, yes! — met my future husband. At times, I was frustrated with the idiotic antics that seem to come with college students, and I had one amazingly bad professor, but my experience was overwhelmingly positive. The university has wonderful memories for me, and it trips me up when I go back and things are not quite as I left them. I’m so glad that I went to Delaware and I love to go back to campus, whether it’s to catch football games in the fall, eat at our most-loved downtown restaurant, or seeing our favorite a capella group. Even though it took me a long college search to figure it out, I’ve been a Blue Hen all along.

#17, 18

Previously: Lent, hypothetical actions, superpower, television, favorites, hypothetical money

Aside from our structured kitchen procedures, the admission that tends to elicit the most surprise is that we each take care of our own laundry.

Gasps all around!

When we were brand-newlyweds, I had a laughingly romantic vision that combining laundry would be symbolic of joining our lives, the amalgamation of our domestic existences. We schlepped our inaugural married loads of laundry down to the basement of our apartment building and got ready for marital bliss. I was unprepared for the conflict that arose. Fabric softener was apparently not a given. Folding styles differed between upbringings. The concept of only half-drying and then hanging up to dry completely was unclear.

Rather than the harmonious blending of whites and darks I had envisioned, we had a clash of foreign laundering styles, each completely mysterious to the other but intuitive to the owner. It was clear that combining this chore would necessitate communication, teamwork, and patience, not to mention a dash of trial and error.

Instead, we took the realistic approach and returned to our corners. Each of us had managed to get through college on an individual laundry basis, and we saw no reason to fix what wasn’t broken. Since I re-wear a lot of my clothes before washing them and I can fit more articles of clothing into the washer and dryer, I’m on a semi-regular bi-weekly schedule. On the other hand, JG does a load of wash once a week to keep up with his teacherly ironing duties. JG usually tosses in the towels if he has half a load left over, and the only common rule is to clear out the dryer and the drying racks for the next person. Since JG and I adopted this division of labor the second day after we got home from our honeymoon, I unfortunately have no advice on how to persuade a significant other to take it up. It just makes sense to me: we each wash what we wear, and we do our best to split shared items down the middle.

Of course, if something goes wrong in the laundry process, I am solely to blame. When I leave lip balm in a pocket and pull out shirts from the dryer with greasy spots, it’s my fault. When I forget to pre-treat a shirt from a weekend climbing trip and find foliage stains dried in for perpetuity, I can only heave a sigh.

Ah, well. At least I don’t have to deal with JG’s tall clothing clogging up the dryer or my clothes mysteriously shrinking. We each have clean clothes when we need them, and no one is unduly burdened. It works for us.