Speech Patterns

I'm a linguist. I notice patterns of speech and I understand that people have manners of speaking which reflect the way they think. I try to be patient when someone says fifteen sentences with barely a breath or a pause. I try to be patient when people speak really, really slowly because their brains have to think about each word they're saying. I try to be patient with dialect, accent, and odd stresses. This is why my biggest pet peeve on the face of the Earth is interruption.

Interrupting someone frustrates that person. It can often confuse that person. I know it isn't always easy to be patient when a person takes two minutes to make a statement she could have said in thirty seconds. I know we don't always have two minutes to spare. But maybe that person can't complete a thought in thirty seconds. Maybe that person has trouble speaking. The fact is it doesn't matter. It's a sad world when we can't take the time to just listen to another human being and be patient.

I get frustrated almost to the point of tears at the smallest interruption. I have trouble finishing a sentence and often I pause where it feels like an ending is coming to think about how I'm going to end. A lot of people try to finish the sentence for me. I try, really hard, to understand that I've paused and they think it's okay to speak but I obviously didn't complete my thought because they feel they must complete it for me. Please don't. Often, nine times out of ten, I will follow up their suggestion with, "No, that's not what I was going to say." Nine times out of those nine times, they follow it up with another suggestion. Usually I get really quiet at this point and I kind of stare at them, not even answering whether they got it right this time. Nine times out of those nine times, the second suggestion is equally wrong. What I do is stay quiet, then when I've finally worked out how to word the ending how I wanted to I just state said ending and walk away.

Please don't try to offer a word when I'm struggling for the right word. Don't begin to bark seemingly related words at me. I see this often in my job, not just with myself. A customer will come in, need something like a shawl and be trying to describe a shawl, and it will go something like this:

Customer: I have a dress with spaghetti straps...
Coworker: So you need a sweater to go over it?
Customer: Not a sweater, but my arms are bare and I was thinking...
Coworker: More like a shrug? A really short one like this? What color?
Customer: (becoming frustrated) I don't want that either.
Coworker: So you want like a jacket?
Customer: (firmly) No.

But you know, at this point I would have walked out. I get a bit of flack from my fellow workers because when a customer is struggling to describe what she needs, I just let her struggle. I usually give a person about fifteen seconds to come up with a word she can't think of before I make one suggestion. If that isn't the right suggestion, I ask her one question. A good deal of the time the question acts as a trigger. If it doesn't I change the subject, but keep the subject related to the customer's needs. It has always worked out in the end.

When a person interrupts me to ask a question that would have been answered had she waited until I was finished speaking, I get extremely angry. I get short with that person. This happened today with a coworker, and right now I'm typing this through a splitting headache because the more this person did things like that the more visibly frustrated I became with her. She eventually confronted me, and when I expressed my feelings she said something like, "Well now I know you don't like being interrupted," which isn't an apology. Then she acted upset with me so I asked her if she was. She said she felt I had been condescending toward her. And I said I didn't mean to be but I didn't apologize and the really, really childish part is that I didn't apologize because she didn't either. Part of me feels really bad but part of me, the part that came home and bawled into my pillow, feels like her behavior isn't going to change, or like she's saying my frustration is my own problem.

I've tried to talk about this before with other coworkers and the consensus seems to be that interrupting is a common behavior and so I just need to deal with it. When I got written up earlier this year for correcting someone's grammar, I was told I had made that girl feel stupid. Correcting someone's grammar isn't a common behavior because it's how "smart" people try to show how smart they are and how stupid other people are. How this whole situation makes me feel is that it's okay to hurt my feelings. It's okay to make me frustrated. It's okay because it's me.

The funny thing is that I only corrected someone's grammar once. I did it because she was writing on a piece of paper the rest of the staff would see, and we were alone and it was an easy fix, and so I told her how to fix it so no one else would ever know she had used the wrong word. When I was told it hurt her feelings, I never corrected someone's grammar again. Not even in private. I respected her feelings. It's all I want out of everyone else.

When my coworker confronted me, I got really nervous because I knew I was going to have to tell her how she had upset me. And I knew she wasn't going to care how I felt. I almost started crying right there and I tried to tell her it was nothing, but she kept asking until I finally told her. The rest of the day was just awkward.

I've been asking myself over and over if it was all my fault. There was an earlier incident where she said I was curt with her, and maybe I was, and maybe that was a big misunderstanding and the interruptions just compounded the whole situation, but the interruptions are a daily thing from multiple people and so that part was not me just being overly sensitive. I would have apologized for the earlier incident had she apologized for the interruptions. (How "I know you are but what am I" was that whole sentence?)

But all-in-all I think it's a problem with the world right now. I think interrupting others is a form of saying, "My thought's more important than yours," or "You haven't given me all the information I need in the first five words." I often get short when I say five words like, "I was in the backroom..." and the other person says, "What were you doing back there?" but they don't say it like they're eager for the next part but like they missed where I said what I was doing back there. "What were you doing?" And I bite my lip and sometimes I say, "I haven't even begun the story yet." And they get upset. And then I feel bad. Except, you know, I shouldn't.

I just spent the last two hours venting into this little white screen. I know I'll feel better that I got it out somewhere. This all goes back to wanting people to listen to each other. I feel like this is sorely lacking in the world. Sometimes I wonder if I'm holding people to too high a standard. Or if I'm just a raging bitch and their behaviors are just fine. I don't know. I don't know.

Dream-Eating

Another "If I had the money to..." post:

If I had the money to buy any kind of food, some things I would buy:

Wasabi-flavored mayonnaise
Flavored creamer that is actually cream and is kept in the fridge
Flavored coffee, so the creamer and the coffee blend uniquely
Good salad ingredients, which means no iceberg lettuce (disgusting):
fresh mushrooms
kapers!
olives
crumbly cheeses
a variety of salad dressings
Multiple choices of drinks (not just one drink for three days, then another for three days, etc.):
vegetable juice
chocolate milk
juice smoothies
Fresh fruit:
strawberries
plums!
blackberries!
pineapple
kiwi (though in small doses due to mild allergy)
fresh vegetables:
asparagus
squash

To be continued when I get back from work....

I'm a Dork

Why do I get so riled up about stupid things? I joined Goodreads not too long ago and I reviewed about five books and one of them, of course, was Self-Editing for Fiction Writers because I believe people should know about the abomination that is this book.

I got a reply. And if the reply had stuck to saying how he/she felt the book was helpful because of X,Y, and Z, it would have been fine and I would have said, "That's cool." But instead, it was a well-worded attack on my character. Basically, the replier told a story about a girl in a writing workshop who wouldn't listen to anyone's criticisms because she felt she was too brilliant to follow the rules. Then the replier went on to explain why real writers can "violate" the rules and why too much mediocre writing comes from people who feel that following the rules is somehow in opposition to being brilliant.

So I replied. With a long-winded explanation of why I hate THIS BOOK SPECIFICALLY. I listed other "on writing" books I admire and why I admire them and why THIS BOOK, in my opinion, is perpetuating mediocre writing. I also told the replier that I didn't appreciate her insinuation that I was a brat who didn't want to learn the rules and who just wanted people to think I'm brilliant. I didn't appreciate her comment being an attack on my character based on a book I didn't like that she did. (I'm assuming here the person was a female; I don't know honestly.) I invited her to try to change my mind about THIS BOOK.

The problem with my original review is that I made the mistake of saying that you can't put a prescription on artistic endeavors. I stood by that in my reply, but I explained that while I understand there must be rules we follow in order to separate good writing from bad writing, that doesn't mean it has to be prescriptive and in fact just shouldn't be. "Rules" can be presented in a subjective manner. What Self-Editing for Fiction Writers does is offer objective prescriptions of rules authors should follow if they want to be published. That has nothing to do with brilliance whatsoever. That has nothing to do with producing original or even good writing. It has everything to do with producing writing where these publishers can check boxes off of a list to make sure the writing they're publishing follows their rules. This leads to a homogenization of writing styles and techniques - and you know I feel I'm already seeing this in anthologies like The Best American Short Stories.

And what really upsets me is they basically say that if books like The Great Gatsby had come across their desks they wouldn't have published it as is. Well, and you would have been fools. Milton wrote a second poem after Paradise Lost. It is called Paradise Regained. It's written perfectly and was critically acclaimed during its day. Guess what? No one remembers that second poem. It is often flaws that elevate art to a higher level. It is often mistakes and experiments that lead to a new genre or style. We need something to debate or what is the purpose of talking about a piece of art for more than a year or two?

I should just freaking stay away from commenting and reviewing and what-have-you. I don't know why I take it all so personally.

Complaining

I'm going to use this blog to do a little complaining. I feel I need to vent about certain things. You see, I'm a "sweat the small things" kind of person. Little things get to me far more than stress about bills or where my life is going. Here's the daily rant:

I just went downstairs to make breakfast and my nephew was eating ice cream. I looked over to the coffee pot (which is next to the fridge so a lot of food gets made on the counter in front of the coffee pot) and there were all these puddles of ice cream where he just sloppily spooned it into the cup. I didn't clean it up. I refuse to. I'm also not going to be the one who says anything to him about it because we all know where that will lead. I just fixed breakfast ignoring the puddles, and when my mother comes back one of two things will happen. She will either yell at him and he will deny he did it, or she will just quietly clean it up and pretend like he isn't a giant, lazy asshole. There was a towel right next to him on the counter, for the record. He wouldn't have even needed to move anything but his arm.

Here's my mother back from taking my sister to work, let's see what she does: quietly cleaned it up.

Tacos

So, a little look into my life and what I could eat every single day: homemade tacos. One night a few weeks ago I ate seven tacos. If you want to know what a feat that is, I weigh 128.2 lbs. When I move out, just like I did when I was in grad school, I'll most likely fall into the habit of buying taco ingredients in bulk and eating them for dinner every night. Let's break it down into how far I can take these ingredients:

5 pounds ground chuck: $8.39
colby cheese (blocks, because I FLOVE it home-shredded): 3 for $5
large bottle of Ortega taco sauce: $3.99
hard taco shells: 18 for $2.99
All-purpose seasoning (it doesn't have to be taco seasoning): $2.39
small zip-lock freezer bags: 40 for $3.29 (for the meat)

I'd probably eat between 2-4 tacos a night, so the shells will last a little less than a week. The five pounds of chuck will last for months, though, and since it can be divided up and frozen and be fine for that amount of time, it's awesome.

But initially I'm spending $26.05. Plus tax for the freezer bags. Of course I probably would take a break from the tacos and not eat them every night, but if I had to chose one meal I was forced to eat for the rest of my life, that would be it. And as you can see, I like them simple. I like sour cream and avocado and all, but not on my hard tacos.

How I can use these ingredients in my other meals: cheese can go on chili cheese home fries or in chili; the hamburger can be used for chili; I use the seasoning on my eggs for breakfast; I like taco sauce in place of ketchup for things like fried potatoes.

(Off-topic: I type two spaces after a period. I hear this is some form of blasphemy now, but I don't really give a damn. I learned to type with two spaces. I could teach myself otherwise but that's ridiculous. What is the purpose? I'm a writer who sends out my manuscripts, which will be re-typed if they are ever accepted by a publisher, so it's silly to ever worry about it. I mean, if I ever got a job where one of my main functions is to type correspondence or articles, etc. I'd have to learn the new way, but I think I'm going to cross that bridge when I get there. I only bring up this topic because I heard it drives some people nuts that there are people who aren't conforming to the new way, but I just have to ask, why do you care?)

In the Way

No one else in this house has to go to work on Saturdays except for me. I don't understand why it seems that whenever I have to be there at 9:30 a.m. all these people who normally sleep until noon get up and get in my way, and then say asshole things to me when I say, "Can you wait about a half an hour to do that? I'll be gone for work then and it will be easier for everyone."

Oh, lord, how offensive and selfish of me. This morning I slept in a little figuring I had plenty of time to eat, shower, and get to work. My father sat in his little den-room playing on his computer until the moment I went downstairs. I had to try to maneuver around him as he microwaved last night's chicken wings and got ice. Eventually he saw I was standing waiting for him to move out of the way of the fridge and he said, "Am I in your way?" I said, "I don't really have much time," to which he replied, "Well then next time set your alarm earlier and you won't have that problem."

You know what? Fuck that. There was no reason he couldn't have waited until I was done making breakast to make his chicken wings. If I had taken a shower first and eaten breakast second, how much do you want to bet he would have waited until then to make those wings? It took me twice as long to make breakfast because I had to wait for him to be out of the way and then afterward I was frustrated and kept messing up.

My father does everything for me and I know he feels hurt when we have arguments. But he isn't always right. I know he cried when my mother told him I was going to move out this year. I know I'm his only true child. But I also need space. I need to not have to negotiate how I walk around this house every time I walk around this house.