We're having a boy! And other terrifying thoughts I have lately

Since I'm not one of those modest "Oh, let's protect our privacy" Facebook users, most of our friends and family know by now that M and I are expecting a baby in June, and that it's a boy(!) Which is exciting! But also, for me, terrifying (for M, it's a secret sigh of relief, plus a good excuse to start preordering Legos on Amazon Prime). We have yet to do practical things, like set up a nursery, or take birthing/ parenting classes. Most of my current preparation comprises reading all the books that my sisters-in-law on both sides have given me, plus every parenting blog that exists, before letting my mind spin into a vortex of anxiety-filled thoughts. I see it as a type of emotional rehearsal, to let my mind wander through different parenting scenarios.

Here are the kinds of thoughts that float through my mind as a preggo, because I'm horrifying:

-Little girls play quietly in the corner with dolls and crayons. Boys do things like throw rocks in the air and try to catch them with their face. M and I have no training on how to prevent this from happening.

-At least on the upside, I don't have to worry about our firstborn posting a YouTube video of himself, with the title "Am I ugly?", as I hear that is one of the things insecure teenage girls have learned to do with the internet. Thanks, CNN, for the updates.

-I really hope our kid isn't bullied. If he is, we're enrolling him in Krav Maga classes. And then we're going to encourage him to join a (very geeky, academic) gang that helps protect other victims through hacking code and reverse social -media bullying. Or something.

-I really hope our kid isn't a bully. If he is, he's going to be spending his Saturdays putting together care packages for underprivileged families and learning real life lessons of compassion. Until he's eighteen.

-How long can I dress my kid like one of those hipster babies on Pinterest before he cuts me off from any decision-making for his wardrobe?

-I hope our son doesn't inherit my driving genes. (Asian + female = good luck everyone!)

-If our baby looks way more like M than like me, everyone is going to think I'm the nanny. I better get the Encinitas Mom Uniform -- a chevron-patterned maxi dress and/ or extra expensive Lululemon yoga pants, so they know that I'm the rightful owner of this kid.

-I hope our son doesn't inherit my temperament of spoiled bratty-ness and general ingratitude. Note to self: apologize to Mom and Dad for the last thirty-plus years.

-I hope that colleges and universities don't look the same 18 years from now. I hope we're enrolling our kids in think tanks and incubators, and that they do summer code camps and tech apprenticeships by the time they're young adults. I don't want my kids to graduate from college like me -the winning combination of a moron with no practical skills, but a completely intact sense of entitlement.

-No more watching birthing videos before dinner.

So, those are my thoughts lately. I think focusing on the abstract future helps keep me from more real, sobering, and emotionally-crippling thoughts about the things that can go wrong during pregnancy and birth. M and I spend a lot of time in prayer lately for our friends' and families' babies as well as for the health and well-being of our own. We've discussed parenting styles, and schedules, and the state of fatigue we'll probably be in. And we know we'll never feel prepared, but by the time this baby is born, I'll at least have THOUGHT of everything. Wish us luck!

P.S. I am now double this size. 

One Year of Marriage, and the Advice from Our Wedding

M and I have been married for one year. Lots of stuff has happened (real estate transactions, job changes, pregnancy, you know how it is with the first year of marriage), because we are delusional about our capacity for handling stress. Luckily, at our wedding, in lieu of toasts and speeches, we asked guests to give us much-needed marital advice to be read aloud from index cards, and it has really helped to resonate throughout our first year. I thought many of the cards could be helpful to others. And the rest were just fun for me to share publicly. Enjoy!:

Photo by Lauren Alisse Photography

Don't forget to continue going on dates! - John (M's happily married friend from Atlanta. Please stay warm out there.)

M, Never stop dating your wife. Surprise her & pay attention to detail. Don't wait for her to ask, beat her to it. - Adam (the pastor who married us) & Jamie (his very smart wife)  

Joyce, Don't expect M to read your mind, tell him what you are thinking, how you feel and what you like. Don't get mad if he doesn't know...he won't know :) It's your job to communicate - Adam & Jamie 

M loves scented oils. - Anonymous

M - Always take surf trips with the boys. Joyce - Always plan girls' nights out with your ladies! 1) It gives you time to miss each other. 2) Your friends love you too and want to indulge in your friendships! - Jen (Also, Jen, we need to go night snowboarding again, as soon as I'm not pregnant anymore)

M, I'm getting married in 7 months. So, can I get a copy of what you said about Joyce during the ceremony? I'll use my own words. Thanks! - Jason (M's longtime friend, whose now-wife planned the most Pinterest-worthy wedding I've ever attended. Their wedding invitation was a hollowed-out BOOK.)

Hi Joyce & M, Congratulations! When you come to Atlanta, leave your Monopoly Deal cards at home and take on your old man (M's) in EUCHRE. Warning - he cheats! Enjoy Hawaii! - Bill (long-time family friend)

Say I love you as much as you can. - Whitney (sound and easy-to-follow advice from a wise girlfriend)

M & Joyce, Always compromise out of respect and love, and remember, you will get out of your relationship what you put into it. Enjoy your life together. - Paul (long-time family friend)

Argue naked. - Many, many people (Should have followed this advice. All this time, I've been trying to get my way while wearing sweats, like a FOOL.)

Happy wife = happy life. - Anonymous

Joyce, Be careful when you talk to M in the morning OR when he's at the computer OR when he's watching TV. Trust me. Love you guys! - Mark (former roommate)

Hire a house cleaner! - Anonymous

M, Place your hand upon Joyce's....(pause)....shoulder. Let this be the last time you have the upper hand. - Jason (see above)

M & Joyce, Don't stop believing. - Journey  
P.S. Hold onto that feeling.

Every year on Aunt Joyce's birthday, Uncle M should make her breakfast in bed - Kailyn (M's niece)

They should go on dates. - Jordan (M's other niece)

Having lived with Joyce for 4 years, my advice to M is:

1) Start loving professional and college sports (Go Bears!)
2) Start (or continue) loving country music television
3) Keep lots of snacks at home 

- Anita (my college roommate. 2 out of those 3 things are still true.)

M, Remember that it is better to be happy than to be right - Ed (M's former boss, who is known for always being right.)

M & Joyce, remember JESUS. - Jim (M's physical therapist and fellow brother in Christ. His one-word piece of advice has been amazingly effective and time-saving for us, just FYI.)

Clothing is optional - Metz (wise friend)

M- Joyce is always right (seriously). - Jenn (even wiser friend)

For Joyce: Be selective about the things you nag him about.
For M: Joyce likes pickles (but you probably knew that). - Esther and Tarek (Esther is a friend since childhood who knows me well)

Remember what it was that made you fall in love with the other person whenever you get really mad at him/ her :) - Tim & Anna (cousin)

To M: Spend a Saturday at a coffee shop writing & attending open houses with Joyce - Holly (my dependable partner for attending open houses of real estate we will never be able to afford. This is what we do for fun.)

In marriage, differences are not a bug, they're a feature. Enjoy one another, and the new things the other can show you. Go Padres! - Caroline (in-house counsel for the Padres) and Adam (fellow software developer)

Joyce: I don't care if you're in labor. If it's overhead, let M go surfing.
M: If Joyce is in labor, don't go surfing. - Steve (my old co-worker at Outsource and fellow obsessed surfer. If M follows any advice, I hope it is this one. The End.)

What I've learned so far from 6 months of marriage

Those who have been married for seven months or longer should close their browsers right now, as it will spare you a lot of the silent eye rolling that is the natural response to the "wisdom" of the ignorant. This entire blog is attached with the very real disclaimer that I'm an idiot who unfortunately enjoys blogging my thoughts.

But for all my to-be-married friends, I thought I'd compile a list of pragmatic things that would have been helpful for me to know, despite all the great advice we were given. I'm sure this post will also serve as a marker for me to look back in ten years and laugh uproariously.

Anyway, in tribute to our recent six-month anniversary, here are the top things I've learned about marriage so far, from the wife's perspective:

#1. Crying to signal to your husband that you are upset has diminishing marginal returns. I don't know what happened when we got married, but I suddenly became more emotional than when we were dating. Unexpected tears would spring to my eyes and down my face whenever anything upset me, and I felt helpless about it...but I noticed that every time this happened, my credibility as a human was increasingly undermined by about ten percent. M's response began to evolve from one of grave concern, to normal concern, to patient resignation, to a strategic decision to ignore me, and hope that whatever upset me would resolve itself. In response to his response, I have been forced to practice putting my emotions in a kind of holding pattern while I mentally figure out what my problem really is and actually communicate what I think viable solutions might be. To be honest, crying was a lot easier, but I guess the latter way is more helpful long-term.

#2. Small things will suddenly seem a bigger deal than they are. And it is my job to mentally battle them back down to size. Every dissatisfied thought, no matter how innocuous, is magnified by the "and this is for forever" afterthought. I'm talking about small, offhand comments that M makes, that I decide over the course of a day have besmirched my character, and therefore my soul, and therefore his love for me. And meanwhile, this is what M is thinking to himself: "You know what would make this day better? Spicy mustard to go with my sandwich. I love mustard."

#3. Comparing who does more for the other is a pointless game. The division of labor in our household has been a lot more clear since, you know, I quit my job and stay at home and everything, but in general, I was surprised by how easy it is to mentally compare who loves the other person more by what they do for the other person. Before marriage, I, like yourself maybe, thought that we would just co-exist, hippie-like, in a sea of love with all its easy ebb and flow. No. It turns out that I am terrible at being a hippie, and I make mental lists. I have quickly learned, however, that there is no winner of this game, only losers. The one who feels they do more will only have resentment as a prize. It's easier to just trust that M wants me to be happy and vice versa, and if I really need something, to just say it. And the more I do for him, astonishingly, the more he is naturally willing to do for me. Like shaking the spiders out of the paint tarp that I should have put away weeks ago, and left sitting on the patio, even though M hates spiders as much as I do.

#4. Introverts need a lot of space to themselves. And I mean a lot. It's not that I'm not allowed to interact with M, but he is noticeably happier if I don't try to engage him in substantive conversation during the following times: before or during his morning cup of coffee, for the first twenty to forty-five minutes after he comes home from work, immediately before bed, while he's trying to watch anything he's interested in, while he's working on a coding problem and has earphones in, while he's reading, while he's focused on taking care of a task, or when he's about to leave the house to go surf. Other than those times, I have his full attention and can chat away happily.

I've also learned M's favorite new phrase with me: "My queue is full." This means he has five problems he's working on solving, most likely related to software, and I can't give him anything new to take care of, because his memory and stress levels are stretched to capacity. I come from a very "everything requires immediate action" sales-and-recruiting background, so I view this as a learning experience in dealing with engineers.

Our carefree engagement days, before we were hardened veterans of marriage.
(Photo courtesy of Lauren Alisse Photography)

#5. It's ok to enjoy being married. I don't know why, but when M and I were first engaged, only two or so people ever actually uttered the sentence, "You will LOVE being married!" Don't get me wrong, a lot of people were happy for us and expressed a lot of warmth and love toward us. But much of the actual advice about marriage we heard and read was about how much we'd learn and grow from the pain we'd cause each other, from the horrible emotional trauma that would go toward the ripping of the romantic veil in two and really being exposed to someone who saw all our flaws; how we would be refined in the fire of marriage and rise from the ashes through Christ-like (read: superhuman levels of) forgiveness. All during engagement, I braced myself for the horrors of marriage. I prepared myself to wake up one day in a sudden vise-like grip of depression and bewilderment, to question myself and M and all of our individual and collective decisions.

Maybe it's because we aren't exactly the most super romantic supercouple in the world ("It's ok for you guys to touch each other," is something we hear a lot at social gatherings), but so far, there has been no cliff-drop of expectations. I mean, yes, we are learning how to deal with accidentally offending one another, and it's unpleasant. But so far, and I mean every day, I have enjoyed being married. I look forward to the time when M gets home from work and walks through the front door, even though I can't talk to him for another twenty to forty-five minutes. I like how obliging he is in giving me random hugs. I enjoy watching him problem-solve with a beautiful economy of deliberate decisions, and how tolerant he is of my gleeful trial-and-error methodology. He enjoys that I remove all the small annoyances from his life, like oil changes for his car, dinner, laundry, stocking toiletries. We enjoy being in the same room together, either doing our own thing, or me forcing him to watch a documentary on Steve Jobs, and then engaging in a post-documentary discussion on product innovation and patent-based lawsuits (I can't stomach violent movies, so this is the remaining option for entertainment). I like that M saves his tender looks and affectionate gestures for when we are behind closed doors.

I wouldn't say marriage has been easy, but we recognize that we don't have kids, crushing debt, health issues, or other factors contributing to real tests of relationships, and I think we have a deeper appreciation for the strength of other, much longer-married couples. I'm mostly thankful that we have had the first six months for us to get used to each other and for me to learn to buy the right mustard.

Random library book about drawing leads to subpar drawings of surfers

Now that I work from home and am able to hear my thoughts, and the echoes reverberating around my thoughts, I spend a lot of time these days at the library trying to find ways to fill the quiet with ideas. A recent choice was a book on sketching, called Drawing From Within: Unleashing Your Creative Potential. I hadn't drawn since high school, since I haven't needed homemade posters since then.

Why did I check out this thing out? I cannot explain the random decisions I make when faced with a shelf of books. I've checked out books about child psychology (not pregnant), why women in their thirties are disenchanted with the goals of feminism, the shorting of subprime mortgage loans eight years ago, life advice from Katie Couric...If I were ever arrested and my library records subpoenaed, the FBI would be quickly thrown off the trail. But I am drawn (pun intended) to something in this latest art book. Maybe it is the fluid lines of the examples. Maybe it is the way the author dismisses frustrating rules that formal art education sets, and mandates the reader to only "have fun and draw." I like simple instruction. And I like disregarding rules I'm not talented enough to follow.

I call this one, "Mick Fanning gets barreled by wave, does not fall"

So, I did as the author advised and bought a sketch pad and some pencils, with erasers. It struck me immediately as a very odd thing to do. Think about it: when was the last time you bought a pencil? And these pencils still needed to be manually sharpened, which blew my mind. Anyway, then I got to drawing one evening, while M needed alone time to watch Battlestar Galactica (I don't mean to turn him into a geek caricature, but it is just so effortless).

"Thomas Woods enjoys pleasant outing"

But since my creative vision stops at checking out library books about art, I decided to just copy things out of the Surfing Magazine that M had left lying around on the coffee table. It was quite peaceful and cathartic, and for a moment, I imagined myself indulging in the path that so many take, the one of self-discovery and non-capitalism and diving into activities purely for the sake of nurturing my inner child.

"Kolohe Andino catches air, hides face behind his arm because it is so scary"

Although now that I'm done with the sketches, I don't really know what to do with them. It's obvious they have zero commercial value, even in that least regulated of marketplaces, Etsy. My dismay at the final, non-mortgage-paying product far outweighs my enjoyment in the activity. I guess my temporary Degas has vanished in the wake of my self-discovery: you can take the girl out of capitalism, but you can't take the capitalism out of the girl.

"Balaram Stack does something weird with his legs, stays on board"

"Ozzie Wright gets vertical, realizes the wave is down there"

"Duncan Macfarlane gets barreled, presumably likes that a wall of water is about to crash over him"

Date Night with a Developer

M has a very concise and clear list of things that make him happy: family and friends, food, surfing, games, solving problems, and being right. The End.

The things that make me happy are dependent on variables that change with other variables (for example, I paddled out with M the other day, and had a lot of fun despite being eaten by the waves. Will I do it again anytime soon? Probably not). So, for the sake of not spending hours in discussion, our date nights are usually centered on things that M has thought up, and hopefully my mood cooperates.

For the record, M is really good at taking me out on dates. He finds good restaurants, he holds the car door open, he grabs the check, he makes conversation by telling me about all the interesting things that happened during his day, he asks about my day, and then he is somehow both supportive and snarky (supportively snarky?) in his commentary. He is also touchingly offended when I forget about Date Night.

A recent restaurant pick. My husband looks kind of creepy.

But if we're all being honest, I'm asking a lot for you to be happy about how fantastic another couple's dates are. So below, I give you examples of our other date nights that might make you privately glad that you are not a part of this relationship:

One day, M came home with a raging headache, but this didn't stop him from letting me read aloud Slate Magazine's fictional war of attrition between Google and Apple. Despite being curled up in pain next to me, he still laughed at Google's Operation Ghostfruit to make Apple disappear from search results and the Apple Army made up of loyalists wearing bright t-shirts in primary colors. I got to share something I thought was entertaining for both of us, and he got to lay down and not have to talk.

I don't know who is responsible for this, but M heard about a cyberpunk-themed asymmetrical two-player card game called Netrunner and bought it immediately on Amazon. And then he made me play it. One player is the Corporation and the other is the Hacker. The Corporation protects its servers with "ice" and tries to advance its agendas. The Hacker tries to break the ice and steal the Corporation's agendas or deplete the Corporation's resources. M usually wins this game because it is hard for me to think while I'm also sulking. The one time I've won, I had to "kill" the Hacker by snaring him with a faux agenda, and I find killing my husband to be an unpleasant task. It's ok around this point to feel sorry for me.

Here we are, learning about the latest start-up, Vinely, which held a wine tasting at Mogl's offices. M isn't normally much interested in wine tastings, but this one was kind of geeky. They have you rate each wine according to sweetness, texture, etc. then figure out your wine "personality" based on an algorithm and assign you a wine of the month they think you'd like, based on your personality (not surprisingly, my preferred wine is something like "Welch's Grape Juice."). M also loves Mogl's concept and talking to other developers, and I got to see my other friends from the tech/ recruiting community, so the night worked out pretty well for both of us.

What's next on the table for us? Thanks to our friend Deron, who spent half an hour selling the merits of "Sharknado" to us ("You guys, at first the movie dips way below equilibrium satisfaction, and you want to die inside, and then it takes you through a roller coaster of emotions, but then the end comes and you're like 'Whatttt!!' and it is totally worth it. Trust me."), it might be this. Let me know if you want to join us, but I won't be offended, or surprised, if you don't.

A long overdue tribute

I think it should be pretty clear by now that I have no business writing a blog on marriage, seeing as I actually have no idea what I'm talking about. To be honest, I started out writing this thing as a public way to show developers that I was married to one of them and they could therefore take their suspicion level toward me, a technical recruiter, down a notch. The blog touches occasionally on my recruiting world in technology, but mostly, like me, is off-topic and rambling. Maybe in ten years, it will be a way for me to look back and be astounded at how little I knew about marriage at the time.

ANYWAY, to get to the point: M and I owe any real past and future success of our relationship to our parents. I am not just talking about being a bratty Asian kid--which I am--with parents who offer endless and arguably enabling support. I am talking about both M and I having examples, in our parents, of people who have chosen to stay happily married through decades, through living abroad, through the ups and downs of raising a family. We are talking about embarking on life together with no internet, no Pinterest for recipes, no cellphones at the time, no LinkedIn for job hunting and professional networking, no Facebook and Instagram for vague but continuous upkeep of friendships, no automated bill payments with online accounts, no WebMD to look up medical issues. Hardships, people.

My parents didn't even know English that well when they courted in Taiwan and made their way shortly thereafter to America. Somehow they have managed to both work full-time, raise three children, put us through college, and have a thriving and loving relationship with all their grandchildren. The fact that my mother was a Chinese Literature major and managed to become a computer engineer, then work on the Superconducting Super Collider in Texas before ending up in the Silicon Valley is mind-boggling to me. She is a woman who uses her smartphone and iPad to take pictures on her business trip...of flowers ("This is outside of Madison Square Garden!"). My dad is an electrical engineer who has served in the church pretty much his whole life. He was always our steady rock of cheer and wisdom, even when I backed the car out of the driveway and smashed a side mirror, even when my brother totaled his first car (we're Asian drivers), even when I told him I was going to move to New York and work in minor league baseball. I can never catch my parents on the phone because they are always in a prayer meeting, or visiting someone from the church in the hospital, or serving someone in some capacity. Our parents have shown tremendous and unconditional love to all of us over the years, and it's not like we were awesome and easy-going kids. There must have been plenty of junctures in the road when they considered disowning us or giving us away to the Korean family down the street, and yet they are still here, willing to pick us up from the airport. They have not had an easy time of marriage and family-raising,  and yet they have always chosen us as a family over any life they may have imagined for themselves.

Both sets of parents. Guess which ones are mine, and which ones are M's!

M's parents also spent some time in Germany living on a military base, as well as experienced moves from Florida to Atlanta. Like my parents, they had to adjust to new environments and learn the ropes as they went. When I first met M's family, I was immediately struck by how loving and respectful everyone in his family is. Everyone is soft-spoken and laughs a lot, and even the smallest grandchild, who is two, has better etiquette than some people I've met. One gets the feeling, this is just how things are in their household. It is also incredible to me that M's mother is able to juggle a dozen house guests, clean sheets, rides, mealtimes with endless permutations of casseroles, gift buying and wrapping, and entertainment during the holidays, all without the help of a smartphone app (or a clueless new daughter-in-law). M's dad, as my husband tells me, held a lifelong career as an executive with Coca Cola, and it had its share of headaches. I doubt he afforded himself the luxuries of Generation X/Y'ers' complaining ways, constantly asking himself, "But is this my passion? Am I happy? Am I changing the world?" (As for me, guilty as charged). He simply saw his growing family and shouldered the responsibility of supporting them, while M's mom was both a teacher and at home to raise M and his sister. I can see M in the way his parents treat each other: I've never heard a voice raised, and M's dad still opens the car door for his mom. They are also both very resourceful and will systematically go over their options, choose the best path, and figure out a way to take care of everyone - their family, their neighbors, their church daycare, whoever. Now I know where M gets it from.

I know a lot of people who were raised in less "traditional" family structures, or whose family life was a lot less stable than it could have been. Thanks to our parents' decisions to support their families, we're aware that we've been spared a lot of heartache and hard life lessons. M and I are very new at being a married couple, and our biggest challenge so far was probably the day we couldn't agree on the layout of our new couch. We are grateful for this, but we owe our biggest gratitude for the day the hardships come, because we have in our parents a compass for which road to take.

I choose my marriage

M's birthday happened recently, and to my relief, he finally entered my decade (good-bye, cradle robbing jokes! Until I hit forty...). To celebrate, we spent the weekend in San Clemente, where he got to surf Trestles and Cottons, and many of our friends joined us to either surf or help me watch car keys on the beach. We then walked around San Clemente (the whole main street of it) with frozen drinks, before settling in for our reservations at Hapa J's, a restaurant with amazing Hawaiian food. Seriously. Amazing. I ordered poke, spam masubi, AND short ribs, and if you think that was shared with a group of others, you would be mistaken. M ordered some appropriate portion of food, which I only vaguely remember through the haze of my food coma.  We spent the night in San Clemente, had breakfast at Honey's on our way back, and continued the celebration on his actual birthday at Brett's Barbecue.

M and the boys watching Trestles and sharing a Folgers moment.
(Photo credit: Allison Rudd and her iPhone)

Some might think the weekend staycation of food and surf was my birthday gift. My real gift, however, was quitting my job this past Monday; my last day at the office was yesterday. Since we've moved to Encinitas, my commute to work has been forty minutes to an hour each way. I leave before M gets out of bed. We eat dinner after 8. The house remains largely unpacked and disorganized, because neither of us has energy to do what needs to be done. We spend less quality time together, not only due to physical time contraints but because the time I spend with M is often spent in complaining about my new commute, typical workplace pressures and aggravations that get compounded by annoyance with the commute, and then the commute again.

I love recruiting, most days. It is not only fun for me to talk to smart people who make cool things, it is extremely satisfying to put deserving people in good jobs, where they're still happy a year later when I check in on them. I've made great friends at Outsource, and I'm grateful that my boss took a chance on me and let me leverage the sales training I learned in sports over to recruiting. I've had the opportunity to learn a lot about staffing from my co-workers, to train with the incomparably knowledgeable Stacy Zapar (the Most Connected Woman on LinkedIn) on social media recruiting, and to attend cool networking events.

But...our marriage has been suffering. I miss my husband. He misses the more enjoyable, less-complaining version of me, assuming there ever was one. So my birthday gift to him was to choose him over my current job, and to have my next job allow me to work from home, to have flexibility in organizing our household, to learn how to cook for real instead of looking into EZ Bake Ovens, and, above all, to be both available to and happy with my husband (because what good is one without the other?).

His gift to me has been to be loving and supportive unconditionally, to shoulder the mortgage and bills, and to allow me to pursue something with complete freedom and flexibility. Many people never receive a gift of this magnitude, and it's not even my birthday.

I'm consciously choosing a next adventure that I'm excited about, and that allows me to continue in the skills and knowledge I've garnered as a technical recruiter. I have an idea of where this next adventure is coming from, and there are wheels in motion, but nothing is on paper yet. Until then, I'm excited to simply see M while there's still daylight and everything.