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Sunday: pizza, brownies and playdate
Sep. 4th, 2022 11:00 pmI made pizza for my dinner. I had some tomatoes that had spots or whatever so I chopped them, cooked them down, ran them through the blender and used that as the pizza sauce. I pulled soppressata from the freezer (I think this was from Walden, but I also have some from Lilac Hedge). I had some fake cheddar still in the fridge. I had mushrooms, a poblano and green onion from Siena. For the crust, I scooped out some sourdough, added oil, water and white flour (the King Arthur commercial Special Patent I bought during the early pandemic when people were all saying you can’t buy flour or TP and I, in peak asshole mode, figured out how to have deliveries of both drop on my porch within a few days). The crust was great; I will 100% do that again, probably tomorrow.
Lunch was a mushroom omelette (Walden eggs, Siena mushrooms and tomatoes and so forth).
Good times with the seasonal summer produce. In a few months, I’ll be looking back fondly on this. Right now, I’m trying to appreciate it without feeling overwhelmed. When that fails, I freeze things.
I walked with M.
A. had her regular portal playdate an hour late because two of her friends, K. and I., came over to hang out for a couple hours. They played Exploding Kittens and the T Rex game. They played Just Dance. There was much laughter. I made brownies. It was awesome.
We had family zoom, which was fun.
I also did the long walk by myself and had a really great chat with Priestess. I asked her for some advice from her sage wisdom talking to nutty people on the phone doing customer service and she had some _great_ advice for me. Super, super awesome. I learned that when I am talking to someone who is really committed to a conversational goal that is _not_ going to happen, three things work better than nearly anything else.
First, emphasize the description of reality that makes what they want obviously impossible. You don’t have to say, honey, you are not getting what you want because. You just say to the person who wants to make a reservation at a restaurant that no longer exists, It closed five years ago. Timeline and distance can really drive it home.
Second, use humor. I always forget, but you know, it’s always good. Obviously, not directed at them!
Third, redirect their frustrated energy to something that _is_ attainable and that might satisfy the underlying desire. You can’t get that discount over the phone, but you can get this other discount for this similar experience, and that discount is as large or larger.
What I _had_ been doing was just holding the line on my seemingly non-controversial observations about reality while people just fucking _escalated_ on me. It happened enough, with very different people, on _very_ different topics, and it was always a surprise (so avoidance was not working for me). I’m not looking to avoid talking to any of the people in question (to the contrary! I like them! I value them and their opinions!) OR any of the topics (transition to renewables, what I am or am not feeling at the moment, the likely outcome of the war in Ukraine). I don’t feel like what I was saying at the time was on _any_ level unreasonable. And yet.
So. It turns out that reality really bites, and I therefore needed some ways to ease people over the details of that. And I now have specific ideas to try. I am very happy and very grateful to Priestess for her assistance.
Lunch was a mushroom omelette (Walden eggs, Siena mushrooms and tomatoes and so forth).
Good times with the seasonal summer produce. In a few months, I’ll be looking back fondly on this. Right now, I’m trying to appreciate it without feeling overwhelmed. When that fails, I freeze things.
I walked with M.
A. had her regular portal playdate an hour late because two of her friends, K. and I., came over to hang out for a couple hours. They played Exploding Kittens and the T Rex game. They played Just Dance. There was much laughter. I made brownies. It was awesome.
We had family zoom, which was fun.
I also did the long walk by myself and had a really great chat with Priestess. I asked her for some advice from her sage wisdom talking to nutty people on the phone doing customer service and she had some _great_ advice for me. Super, super awesome. I learned that when I am talking to someone who is really committed to a conversational goal that is _not_ going to happen, three things work better than nearly anything else.
First, emphasize the description of reality that makes what they want obviously impossible. You don’t have to say, honey, you are not getting what you want because. You just say to the person who wants to make a reservation at a restaurant that no longer exists, It closed five years ago. Timeline and distance can really drive it home.
Second, use humor. I always forget, but you know, it’s always good. Obviously, not directed at them!
Third, redirect their frustrated energy to something that _is_ attainable and that might satisfy the underlying desire. You can’t get that discount over the phone, but you can get this other discount for this similar experience, and that discount is as large or larger.
What I _had_ been doing was just holding the line on my seemingly non-controversial observations about reality while people just fucking _escalated_ on me. It happened enough, with very different people, on _very_ different topics, and it was always a surprise (so avoidance was not working for me). I’m not looking to avoid talking to any of the people in question (to the contrary! I like them! I value them and their opinions!) OR any of the topics (transition to renewables, what I am or am not feeling at the moment, the likely outcome of the war in Ukraine). I don’t feel like what I was saying at the time was on _any_ level unreasonable. And yet.
So. It turns out that reality really bites, and I therefore needed some ways to ease people over the details of that. And I now have specific ideas to try. I am very happy and very grateful to Priestess for her assistance.