Tea-infused peanuts? Anyone?

Just so you know, I'd rather be playing with my new copy of Dreamweaver, but I can't, because the fracking Dreamweaver installation wizard keeps asking me to insert Disk 1, even though there was only ONE disk in the brand new box and it is ALREADY INSERTED. This is irritating me to no end, Internet. This is what happens when you score your fancy new software off an Adobe employee instead of forking over the $800 like all the other poor slobs.

So I'm sitting here thinking, "Oh, well maybe I'll write up a Thoughtful and Insightful post about interracial marriage, which will help me form my thoughts for when we have to speak to the Almost Marrieds tonight about Family of Origin," but even THAT'S not working because there's nothing to be thoughtful or insightful about. In fact, all I can really think of is the giant vacuum-packed bag of tea-infused peanuts my mother-in-law brought back from her 40th junior high school reunion trip to Taiwan. Tea-infused peanuts.

A few weeks ago when I had nothing better to be anxious about (ha ha ha) I was laying in bed thinking about how I read waaay too many Chinese adoption blogs and how I, too, needed to be thinking about how to raise a Chinese child in America and who decided I was capable of that and waaaah. Finally Phillip was all, "For the love of God, could you calm down? All the tossing and turning is making it really difficult to use the laptop." (Because the last thing we do before we fall asleep is check our email, no lie.)

I guess to be super honest, I'm not really worried about it. It's more like I think I should be worried about it, so I try to think up all the conceivable things I should be worried about, and then I test myself to see if I'm properly nervous enough. (And I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder? NO WAY!) I have spent a ton of time thinking about what our family will look like (ie: not at all like me) but then Phillip completely twisted my brain. "It wasn't that hard looking different," he said, when I had pestered him so long he finally had to respond. "It was the cultural part. People not understanding things we did at home or why my parents acted a certain way or why they expected certain things of me."

And then my brain exploded. My kid is going to be third generation. I don't know any third generation kids. My kid will have the looks and none of the culture. I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DEAL WITH THIRD GENERATION.

Fracking Dreamweaver.

Anyway. Not like I'm going to talk about THIS with the Almost Marrieds. I think I just assume people want to know about the interracialness, but whatever, I live in Seattle, it's not like it's a novelty. Someone needs to get over herself already.

Probably the biggest thing we took from our families of origin is our respective views on what it takes to be secure. We rarely fight about money. We fight about future money. As in, one of us thinks you only need enough money to buy food, pay the mortgage and fund the four-week backpacking trip. The other thinks you need enough money to buy food, pay off the mortgage, upgrade the car, pay the tuition bills of the unborn children, and have enough left over for a catastrophic illness emergency fund and a PlayStation2. You guess which of us ascribes to which statement.

But I have a hard time saying this is a white/Asian thing. In our case, it may definitely be so. Without going into too much detail, I'll just say that Phillip's parents escaped the Communists and my parents escaped, uh, their own parents. I would think this informs your financial comfort levels to a fairly significant degree, don't you? Which isn't to say that Phillip's parents are scary stick-wielding proponents of backbreaking work and my parents are pot-smoking flower children (haaaa! Katie? Becca? Are you dying of laughter?), but you know. It's different. Phillip's parents were worrying about what college he'd go to when he was in elementary school. My dad told me I should go to community college first and transfer to university afterwards to lessen my debt. So you see. Different. However! There are heaps of white people working 80 hour weeks and sending their kids to private school and I know my share of Asian-Americans who'd totally quit Microsoft without blinking if their rock band ever got some notice.

I hardly think me marrying a Chinese guy means I have more experience with Families of Origin. So basically we're going to stand up there and look like idiots. "Uhhhh..."

Oh holy hell. Turns out you should delete your trial version before you install the real thing. What was that about being an idiot?

Frankly, I wish we did have some issues. Like my friend who had to deal with adding Korean everything into her gigando Montana backyard wedding, because she got a crapload of lovely jewelry out of that deal. My easygoing Westernized in-laws didn't give a rip, so I only got a twelve-course dinner consisting of jellyfish and sharkfins. Is that fair?

I'm off to pretend I'm a web designer. Hee.

Comments

[orangepaas]

our kid is going to be third generation too -- at least on my side. Makes me want to practice my spanish or *something*. I look forward to seeing how we both make sure they know something about where they came from!

[Jenny Ryan]

You had to eat shark fins at your wedding? DUDE!

[Jen]

I've made it into the blog twice!!!!