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So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.


The Profile


Zanzibar
Age. 39
Gender. Female
Ethnicity. that of my father and his father before him
Location Altadena, CA
School. Other
» More info.
The World









The Link To Zanzibar's Past
This is my page in the beloved art community that my sister got me into:

Samarinda

Extra points for people who know what Samarinda is.
The Phases of the Moon Module
CURRENT MOON
Croc Hunter/Combat Wombat
My hero(s)
Only My Favorite Baseball Player EVER


Aw, Larry Walker, how I loved thee.
The Schedule
M: Science and Exploration
T: Cook a nice dinner
W: PARKOUR!
Th: Parties, movies, dinners
F: Picnics, the Louvre
S: Read books, go for walks, PARKOUR
Su: Philosophy, Religion
The Reading List
This list starts Summer 2006
A Crocodile on the Sandbank
Looking Backwards
Wild Swans
Exodus
1984
Tales of the Alhambra (in progress)
Dark Lord of Derkholm
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The Lost Years of Merlin
Harry Potter a l'ecole des sorciers (in progress)
Atlas Shrugged (in progress)
Uglies
Pretties
Specials
A Long Way Gone (story of a boy soldier in Sierra Leone- met the author! w00t!)
The Eye of the World: Book One of the Wheel of Time
From Magma to Tephra (in progress)
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Harry Potter 7
The No. 1 Lady's Detective Agency
Introduction to Planetary Volcanism
A Child Called "It"
Pompeii
Is Multi-Culturalism Bad for Women?
Americans in Southeast Asia: Roots of Commitment (in progress)
What's So Great About Christianity?
Aeolian Geomorphology
Aeolian Dust and Dust Deposits
The City of Ember
The People of Sparks
Cube Route
When I was in Cuba, I was a German Shepard
Bound
The Golden Compass
Clan of the Cave Bear
The 9/11 Commission Report (2nd time through, graphic novel format this time, ip)
The Incredible Shrinking Man
Twilight
Eclipse
New Moon
Breaking Dawn
Armageddon's Children
The Elves of Cintra
The Gypsy Morph
Animorphs #23: The Pretender
Animorphs #25: The Extreme
Animorphs #26: The Attack
Crucial Conversations
A Journey to the Center of the Earth
A Great and Terrible Beauty
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Dandelion Wine
To Sir, With Love
London Calling
Watership Down
The Invisible
Alice in Wonderland
Through the Looking Glass
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
The Host
The Hunger Games
Catching Fire
Shadows and Strongholds
The Jungle Book
Beatrice and Virgil
Infidel
Neuromancer
The Help
Flip
Zion Andrews
The Unit
Princess
Quantum Brain
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
No One Ever Told Us We Were Defeated
Delirium
Memento Nora
Robopocalypse
The Name of the Wind
The Terror
Sister
Tao Te Ching
What Paul Meant
Lao Tzu and Taoism
Libyan Sands
Sand and Sandstones
Lost Christianites: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
The Science of God
Calculating God
Great Contemporaries, by Winston Churchill
City of Bones
Around the World in 80 Days, by Jules Verne
Divergent
Stranger in a Strange Land
The Old Man and the Sea
Flowers for Algernon
Au Bonheur des Ogres
The Martian
The Road to Serfdom
De La Terre � la Lune (ip)
In the Light of What We Know
Devil in the White City
2312
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
Red Mars
How to Be a Good Wife
A Mote in God's Eye
A Gentleman in Russia
The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism
Seneca: Letters from a Stoic
The Juanes Module


Juanes just needed his own mod. Who can disagree.
Practicing Crucial Conversations
Friday. 6.4.10 8:45 am
So I've been reading a book recommended by my mom (hi mom!) called "Crucial Conversations". The idea behind the book is that you should be able to have any conversation with anyone about anything, as long as you do it the right way. The key is to not let your emotions be your master, and to listen carefully and watch for cues from the other person. After all, a "crucial conversation" is defined by when the stakes are high and emotions run strong.

They divide people into two catagories, people who become angry and defensive during crucial conversations (violence), and people who shut down (silence). I usually shut down and withdraw from the conversation, mostly because I know that if I do say what's really important to me, my voice will shake like I'm about to cry. Usually because I am.

So the other day I ran into my first opportunity to practice my Crucial Conversations skills. I was over at my Angle's house helping her move. She and her roommates had to move at different times, so they promised to clean out different parts of the apartment so that the last people weren't left with all the dirty work. The roommates that had left before were supposed to have cleaned the kitchen... but they forgot one big thing, which was the REFRIGERATOR. The refrigerator was FILTHY and full of out-of-date food. My friend looked at it in despair. I offered to clean it for her. Gross, yes, but that's what friends are for, eh?

She picked out a few things that were hers. There was still one roommate left, but she hardly ever used the fridge (she had her own mini-fridge) and Angle didn't see anything that she recognized as hers, so she told me to just toss all of it. After all, it was mostly condiments, and they could be replaced. There was salad, which looked a little off and was cheap, and lots and lots of yogurt, much of which was out of date.

So I took a trash bag and filled it up with jars and containers, not bothering to dump anything out. Then I wiped down the entire fridge and started over with the freezer and a different trash bag. I dragged the entire incredibly heavy bag down to the curb. I was a hero.

Her other roommate came back. I proclaimed what a hero I was and showed her the empty refrigerator. She was FURIOUS.

"WHERE IS ALL MY STUFF?" she said.

"Um... what stuff?"

Man, she was furious. "My SPINACH... my... ARRRGH I really wish you HADN'T DONE THAT!!!"

I was a little offended. How much stuff could she really have had? How much would it cost to replace spinach? It's not like someone could have made a meal out of what was left. And what about, "Hey, thanks for cleaning my incredibly filthy refrigerator that didn't even belong to you--- you are a HERO!!" ???

All these things went on in my head and in a small side conversation I had with Angle. Reluctantly I thought of the things I had read in the book. She was reacting with violence. I was reacting with silence (and a little bit of muttering under my breath). Niether of us was really talking to the other. So how to fix? First I had to think: what did I want for this relationship? Well, I wanted us to end things on a good note, because I wouldn't be seeing her much longer after she moved out and we used to be fairly close. Second, I had to think: why would a reasonable, rational person act the way she just did? I deduced that there must be other stuff going on with her right now, and there must have been something more important in the food I threw away than spinach.

She came back in and I apologized for throwing away her food. Legitimately I could have blamed it all on Angle, who told me to throw it away, but it is always better to apologize and it was no more Angle's fault than mine. I told her that I didn't realize it was important. I wanted her to know that my intentions were never to be careless or to make her upset, just to do them a favor by cleaning the refrigerator. She started almost crying and said, "It's just one thing after another..." [I later found out that the first two roommates, who were moving into the same place as she was, had rented a large moving truck that morning and moved all of their stuff into their new place without telling her, leaving her to move all of her stuff to the same place using 50 car trips instead of one trip in a truck]. It eventually came out that she had just chosen everything she wanted to keep out of her mini-fridge and put it in the big fridge so she could clean the former, which is why Angle hadn't recognized any of it. I explained the misunderstanding to Angle, who softened and switched from being defensive [I'm the only one who cleans this place!!] to apologetic [sorry, it wasn't your responsibility to clean the kitchen, I guess I went overboard because the others shirked their responsibilities].

I started thinking while cleaning the cupboards and I realized that I had put all the stuff in the bag as if I was going to take it to another house... I hadn't mixed it with anything dirty or gross. I suggested that I go outside and take a look through the bag and see if I couldn't retrieve any of the things she really wanted. She probably wouldn't want the spinach back, but anything in a bottle could be rescued. "My mother's homemade blueberry jam," she said immediately.

Ah. Mother's homemade blueberry jam. That was a bit more important than spinach, and did rather justify how upset she had been when she found out it was gone. I looked through the bag and we ended up saving the jam, some yogurt, some pickles, and other harmless things that hadn't been sitting on the sidewalk long enough to spoil. She was incredibly grateful and her whole demeanor changed. We offered to help her move her stuff in our cars but she said she had it under control, and we left the apartment expressing our sadness that we would be apart.

It could have gone much differently.

7 Comments.


well, now i'm hungry.
» thaitanic on 2010-06-04 09:59:25

Holy shit I need this book.

Wouldn't happen to be a part of a series on conversations, would it? Cuz I have a friend who's mom / girlfriend / somebody was reading "Fierce Conversations"
» The-Muffin-Man on 2010-06-04 05:01:36

Now that I think more about this I might legitimately go out and get this book. I'm having a hard time dealing with a particular teammate, and I feel like I'm going to say / do something that'll chop off her head pretty soon if I don't get my ish together.
» The-Muffin-Man on 2010-06-04 05:03:33

Actually thaitanic's comment applies to me, too. That blueberry jam sounds goood. I would behead anyone who ripped me from my blueberry jam.

But seriously, it's good that you read up on that stuff. Too often people get to a point where they can't fix things from one where it would have been simple.
» Unicornasaurus on 2010-06-04 09:45:06

Sounds like a useful read. I wish I was the kind of person who just shut down... it seems like things get horribly complicated when you're angry but you keep talking anyway. :|
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