Are you a good communicator?

I went to my doctor's office the other day. I walked in behind a gentleman who opened the door for me since I was pushing my daughter in a stroller. The receptionist behind the counter looked at me and suddenly said "Go ahead." while gesturing toward the other counter where the man had gone. I must have given her a confused look because she followed up with, "You're with him, right?"

"No," I replied. I went closer to her counter and she gave me a somewhat blank look.
"I have an appointment." I began.
"Oh, I was just trying to figure out if you were here for the flu clinic."
"No, but I should get a flu shot actually.... My appointment is [blah blah blah]."

This was, in my mind, an unacceptable exchange. A good communicator (and good customer service worker) would have just said something like, "Hello, may I help you?" Then this whole bizarre and confusing situation could have been avoided and gone much more smoothly.

At the same time that I was having a hard time with the receptionist, another man was having a hard time checking out.
"Do you have a co-pay, sir?" the check-out woman asked.
The man was confused, so eventually the check-out woman asked to see his card.
"It says here that you have a $15 co-pay." she stated.
The man said something like, "Oh, ok. Do you want it now?"
"Yes, you have a $15 co-pay, it says so right here on your card."

This same exchange repeated about three times. The man was clearly still confused, but each time the only thing the check-out woman changed was the tone of her voice which was increasingly annoyed. She even gave a wary look over to the receptionist and I and her eyes were saying this guy is an idiot. Finally she curtly explained "Yes, I need it now. That's what a co-pay is."

These are very specific examples and could be considered to be simple customer-service issues, but I've witnessed similar communication failures in personal/non-business conversations as well.

So, my conclusions are that to be a good communicator you have to:

1. Clearly state what your objective is. As I tell my son, "Use your words." Don't say partial phrases or give looks and body gestures and expect the other person to know what you want.

2. If someone doesn't understand you the first time, find a new way to say it. Saying the same words over and over in an increasingly annoyed/flabbergasted tone does nothing to help you or the poor, confused person you're trying to talk with. I remember doing exercises in middle school on things like this. People understand things in different ways, so sometimes you have to change your method in order to reach them. No excuses. Take initiative to be a good communicator.

These are just two examples I thought of. Do you have any other tips on how to be a good communicator?

Kicking the Sugar Habit: Happy Halloween!

Oh Halloween. An unofficial start to the Holiday Season and the unofficial Season of Gluttony. It starts out with oodles of candy both before and after October 31st. Then comes Thanksgiving with pies up the wazoo. Then it's immediately into Christmas with cookie swaps and parties laden with sweets and other treats. Culminating into the main event of Christmas Day with more chocolates and candy canes. Don't forget Valentine's Day and Easter as sugar central holidays too.

I wish I had better willpower but I was raised on German chocolate. I am, sadly, rather weak in the face of delectable sweets. My own Season of Gluttony started extra early when my aunt came for a visit from Germany with boxes and boxes of superior German and European chocolates and Haribo gummi bears at the ready.

Studies have shown that sugar is as addictive as cocaine and it contributes to heart disease, obesity and even cancer. Yikes. There's been a lot of energy expended by various organizations to help people break their sugar addiction. The experts at endsugaraddiction.com have a lot of advice and kicking the sugar habit is comparable to fighting any other addiction. You have to "live side by side with your addiction" because sugary snacks and drinks are available everywhere and cost little. But sugar changes your brain chemistry by blocking your brain's natural pleasure producing chemicals and making you crave sugar to fill the void.

Well, no time like the present, All Hallow's Eve, to kick the sugar habit. Or maybe I'm nuts. My son is going to revolt. He has been on a sugar high ever since my aunt first arrived with chocolate three weeks ago, and it's only going to get worse. But the local children's store, Buttered Noodles, has a candy buyback program running through November 7th that ships candy to troops and their families overseas via Operation Gratitude. Trade in all (or some of) that candy for 20% off a toy or book. Maybe my sweets-loving son will actually go for it. Wish us luck! 

The USS Haribo has had its last voyage

Ciao Milka! Once you are gone, no more.

My Daughter the Imp

We recently decided to have a family movie night, it was our first one really. We picked Toy Story to show our 3 year old, and of course my 1 year old daughter was with us too.

"You sure that's an ok movie for them?" my husband asked.

"Yeah, it's fine. There's the part with the boy "Sid" and the mutant toys but we can fastfoward that part." I assured him.

Not having seen the movie for perhaps 10 years I had forgotten how much the cowboy Woody says "idiot." It's definitely not a term I wanted my 3 year old to pick up, and thankfully he didn't. I also forgot how intense the movie is for kids, especially when the toys get abducted by Sid and a good portion of the movie takes place in Sid's creepy house. Oops. Parenting fail #???.

My daughter cried out and whined and said "uh oh" a lot while anxiously watching the screen. However, if I tried to hide the movie from her and distract her she would push me away and keep watching. She cried, whined, and uh-oh'ed her way through the whole thing. Then when it was over she, despite all the stress, she said and signed "MORE!"

But the movie was over and it was bedtime. My son fell asleep quickly while my daughter did headstands in her bed and tried to charm me into letting her out. Her floor nap earlier that day was seriously backfiring. So I let her come back to the living room with me and my husband to watch some of our shows. My husband made popcorn which she LOVED and also requested "MORE!" My husband melted at her cuteness and obliged (getting him to make more popcorn made me very happy too).

As he went downstairs to make popcorn I brought her to the bathroom with me. She disappeared when I was washing my hands. I ran and found her next to her brother's bed, right by his head, calling his name repeatedly trying him to wake up.

"NOOO!" I whispered shouted. "He's sleeping. Shhh. Quiet."

"Shh! Quiet." she repeated. She had never said "quiet" before. I was so proud. How could I be annoyed at such a display of personality and cuteness, and learning new words too.

After another bowl of popcorn and an episode of some PBS show, I forget which, she finally went to bed at 9:30...not for want of trying to charm me into letting her stay up even later.

Another First: Black Beans

Though our garden has been under wraps for several weeks now there was one last bounty it offered: black beans. It was a new crop for us and the inspiration of my husband to try it. He planted one small row (perhaps 5 feet long at best) of black bean plants. You're supposed to let them stay on the vine the whole season, then wait until the pods are all dried up before harvesting them. My husband did this with the kids this Sunday while I took a lovely nap. They came in and showed me a bucket full of dried bean pods and we all set to shelling them and collecting the black beans inside.

Shucking beans. A fun job as long as it is short-lived. The beans were bouncing all over the kitchen despite our best efforts to keep them contained. Dried bean pods are like little catapults.

While we shelled beans my daughter, who refused to nap earlier, fell asleep while reading a book on the living room floor.

We ended up with about one and a half cups of beans. Not that many, but they will go great in chili on a cold day.

Pumpkin Party!

Today's post features a fun post from my good friend and fellow blogger Tenor Dad. He's a very funny dad and musician. Enjoy! To see my post go to his page www.tenordad.com:

It's good to know people.  When your car breaks down, it's especially nice to have a mechanic in the family, and on those occasions in life when you find yourself in need of expensive legal advice, I would recommend having a blood relative in the lawyering biz.  When you are looking for someone to sing at your wedding, you are lucky if you have an opera singer coming anyway, and when it comes time to carve Jack O'Lanterns, you can't beat having a friend with a farm.

We were invited out to a pumpkin carving party this weekend, because, you see, there were just too many leftover pumpkins!  That's right.  Free pumpkins.  And food!  Candy!  Costumes!  Dancing!  Fun times had by all!  We were excited.  After a few issues with the GPS being wrong and my wife being right (as always), the farm signs started to appear on the road and the kids started to bounce around in the back seat.  They wanted to get their costumes on and do some carving!

Ruby, who is 6, is going as a light bulb this year.  She has threatened to go as a light bulb for the past several years, and this time we finally had to do it.  We did receive some flak when it was discovered that she was not an energy efficient light bulb, but she's really more of a cartoon light bulb, so I don't think she is making an environmental statement with her costume.  Edward, who is 3, is going as Iron Man again.  He barely fits into the costume from last year, but he is quite insistent, so if he wants to waddle around stuffed into an outfit two sizes two small, well, who am I to argue?  It's his night.

There was a lot of disappointment amongst the children as they realized that we were not going out to an actual pumpkin patch to retrieve the pumpkins, but instead were choosing one (or more!) from some huge bins outside the barn.  The adults were not disappointed because, hey, free pumpkins!  Anyway, all traces of discontent disappeared immediately once the actual carving began.  Ruby was able to carve hers all by herself for the first time, much to the terror of her parents, but there was no blood at any time, so we felt like it was a win overall.  Edward actually cared about his pumpkin for the first time and carefully directed me to cut a face exactly to his specifications.  Circle.  Circle.  Circle.  Happy mouth.  I believe those were his exact words.

Ruby loved it so much that she actually carved two pumpkins, and probably would have kept going except that they turned the lights out to view all of the glowing Jack O'Lanterns made by the party-goers, and we would not let Ruby use a jagged knife in the dark.  All of the pumpkins looked great, and as the disco ball lit up the barn we all began to dance as they got the piñata ready.

The piñata was a huge, homemade ball of excitement that I somehow got stuck on the other end of.  I had wandered over to try and snag a good location for snapping pictures of my kids, was handed a rope, and before I knew it I was in charge of pulling the thing up and down, making sure that it was a good height for the kids that were whacking it.  I did manage to get a few pictures with my free hand, but mostly I held the rope.  And it was actually pretty fun.  When that thing finally busted open I yanked that rope back and forth, shaking candy and toys all over the place.  It was a big responsibility.

When that was all over, we decided to take the kids home to bed.  We had a long drive ahead of us and we had already stayed later than we'd planned.  The kids were tired, but nobody wanted to leave.  The music was thumping again and everyone was dancing around the pumpkins in their costumes and eating candy.  In other words, it was kid heaven.  Ah, who am I kidding.  It was grown-up heaven too.  None of us wanted to go, but as adults it was our job to make sure that we made it home and got sleep and stuff.  But you'd better believe we'll be going back again next year!

For more stories from Tenor Dad, a stay-at-home-dad and opera singer, check out www.tenordad.com or www.facebook.com/tenordad

Geeking Out & Saving the World

As a capstone to 24 Hours of Reality I finally dove in and and did my first climate presentation this past Wednesday night. I invited 40 of my closest friends, family, and neighbors to come to my house and hear my version of Al Gore's slideshow. 5 showed up, but at least they came, especially since it was the first night of the World Series. It also forced me to stop stalling and edit Al's 360+ slides into something a bit more manageable. Deadlines are great friends sometimes.

I edited the slideshow to make it less overwhelming/depressing because climate change research is sobering to say the least. I focused on general worldwide data and trends and included examples primarily from the US. I added my own anecdotes about what I have personally experienced in this changing climate which is definitely different than when I was a child in the 1980s and 1990s.  Audience members related their personal experiences as well. It was wonderful to hear people relate this big, abstract issue to their own personal lives.

Though the turnout was small, it was a great event. My audience liked the presentation, understood the content, and it held their interest for the 22 or so minutes that I talked pretty much nonstop--so they reported back to me afterwards. It didn't end there. We chatted more about energy and politics and I certainly got my geek on about things like nuclear power, geothermal heating/cooling and natural gas/fracking. My husband had to remind me that it was getting late and I had better let my poor friends eat, drink and be merry while thinking about other, lighter topics before bed. I could go on and on.

So now I feel ready to go out and do more presentations around my community. I have agreed to do at least ten as part of my attendance at the Climate Reality Project's Climate Leadership Training back in July. So, if you know of a potential audience send me a message. Mama of Ma'at's climate change presentation coming soon to a public venue near you!

Yup, I wore my pin

Trunk or Treat!

Halloween is one week from today! My son is very excited and asks almost every day if it's time for trick or treating yet. Here in the islands houses are far apart making Trick or Treating in the traditional sense impractical. Sure, my husband grew up having his parents drive him from house to house to beg for candy, but that sounds utterly unappealing to me being raised as an "in town" girl.

Thankfully our town has a fun and environmentally-more-friendly solution! It's called Trunk or Treat. It's hosted at the local school (K-8, we have no high school of our own) and everyone parks their cars and hands candy out from their trunks. People decorate their cars in festive ways and the PTO sells snack foods. Everyone is in costume, even many parents, and it's just a giant party as kids go trunk to trunk to get their candy and the adults chat. Here is a picture of us at Trunk or Treat last year when my son was 2 and my daughter was 6 months old.

This year the Fire Department is offering prizes to cars who win in the following categories: scariest, funniest, most original, and most environmentally friendly. Environmentally friendly??? It has my name written all over it! How can I not participate? I still need to come up with an idea. The best thing would be to bike down to the school with my kids in a bike trailer. I would open up the bike trailer to reveal candy for eager trick or treaters, and perhaps decorate it with solar lights and have pretend windmills attached. Alas, I don't have a bike (I apologize), let alone one with a kid trailer. So what to do? Any ideas, dear readers? I would love to hear them.