NON VERBAL LANGUAGE

We mammals speak in many ways, and, sometimes I think what we say with voice or pen are only the tip of the communication iceberg. Most people think of body language as the movements of face, arms, hands and the entire body …and it is, at least for most of you. I’ve had to study that some, not because it does me any good as a reader, but because I need to know what I am communicating.

Of far more importance to me are things like tone of voice (it is *extremely* hard to hide much from someone who knows how to listen, because the voice carries its emotional undercurrent, which can support or contradict what someone is saying, mostly without their knowledge. Trained actors and other trained speakers can hide their true feelings or project things they don’t feel, but they have to be “on stage”, so to speak.

Laughter is another give away to what’s really going on inside someone’s head. Have you ever considered the many kinds of laughter there are? There is the nervous giggle that says “I’m really uncomfortable, maybe a little scared, so I don’t know what I should be saying right now”. There is the sarcastic laugh that says, “I’m better than you are, and we both know it” (um hum). There is the “pretend” laugh that says “This is *not* funny, but you expect me to laugh, so I will”. There is angry laughter, lascivious laughter, and hysterical laughter, which always has a background of tears, just below the surface. There is the laugh that says “I don’t believe a word you are saying” and the one that says “I don’t understand a word you are saying”. Best of all, though, is the laughter that springs from true joy, and *that* is an outpouring of love!

But consider …we humans aren’t the only non verbal communicators! Listen to the different purrs of cats, like the frightened purr, the nervous purr, or the “Come here, kittens” purr of a mama cat. The best, of course, is the contented soft buzz of a lap cat, all curled up and comfy in my lap. She’s enjoying the stroking, feels safe, is in the process of falling asleep, with a full tummy, and no cares in the world.

Watch a cat’s tail, too! She can tell you if she’s about to beat the stuffings out of something, wants to play, is itching for a fight, or strut her glorious stuff!

Dogs have their non verbal language, too, but I don’t speak much dog …so I can’t really comment on that!

Someone, (I forget who) told me long ago and yes this is a cliché, but …”talking is only 1/3 of the communication process. Listening carefully and attentively is the 2nd third, and observing closely is the 3rd third. How often, in my desire to get my point across do I forget 2/3 of the process of communicating and how very sad that is.

I read on a blog today (I don’t know how to post the link to it, but it’s called Flotsam and Jetsam” that Eastern Market in Washington, D.C. burned down yesterday. That is very, *very* sad, and I fervently hope it will be rebuilt! It was a wonderful place, on many, many levels!

Eleanora

A LITTLE FUN, A LITTLE SWEET

I love it when a customer brings me a creative problem …especially when I get to do something neat in the process of solving it.

A customer came in today, wanting a pink and blue balloon to use as a thank you for her March of Dimes project. Apparently, her group was celebrating the end of the campaign, and many of the children (well, some, anyway) who benefited, and, I assume, participated, were going to be there. Well, I didn’t have any pink balloons (between orders), but we really wanted little boy and little girl colors. She decided to get just one balloon, so I fixed her dilemma by doing a blue balloon (the poster child was a boy), with a darker blue ribbon, and tied with a pink star weight. Problem solved, and one absolutely delighted customer, and one warm and fuzzy shopkeeper!

I needed that, too …today was a paper work day, which always suck, because I love what I do, but detest the paper work involved. However, it’s done and ready to mail on my way home from work tomorrow, so all things come to an end.

Special thanks to my ‘Zebos (you know who you are!) for your support! Right now, it’s more helpful and encouraging than you could possibly guess!

Eleanora

I just finished reading LA Dead by Stewart Woods, and I enjoyed it. I’m about to start McNally’s Dare by Victor Sardo …and expect to enjoy that, also. One of the things I will enjoy is that, once again, I get to read about a character that continues from book to book. This means that there will be 2 story lines. The first, of course will be the mystery, but the 2nd will be the development of the main characters, their lives and interactions and such. I like this combination. If one keeps up with books about these characters, they take on depth and texture (if the author knows his/her stuff), and getting to know them is as much fun is watching them solve the mystery and deal with the villains (or have them dealt with, usually by law enforcement).

It seems that these continuing characters are a feature of “genre” fiction (I hate that term, but that’s a rant for another day). Sometimes it doesn’t work, because sloppy authors don’t keep track of what happens to the character, or when it happens, or because the author doesn’t balance plot development in the main story with character development. But when it works (and mostly, I’ve found that it does), it’s one of the joys of good “escape” fiction. I think all fiction is escape fiction, if it’s good enough, because it picks you up out of your day, good or bad, and drops you down in another place, time, and set of problems.

And …Eleanora’s proverb for the day …

She, who wears new, cheap shoes to work and has to stand up and walk a lot, will suffer for hours after she gets home!

Now...to find some pretties to give visual interest to this little endeavor!

One of the measures I have always used to determine my level of acceptance in a group of sighted friends or associates is whether or not they will tease me or play little, harmless but funny tricks. I’m not talking about the sometimes snide, condescending remarks labeled “humor” and intended to belittle and hurt. I know all about those, but that’s a discussion for another time. I’m talking about things that are actually funny, and presented in good fun, equal to equal, not sighted superior to blind inferior. I delight in them, because they acknowledge my blindness *and* the fact that it is accepted as part (and not the most important part) of me. It also says something, I think, about the way I handle it, and acknowledges my own comfort level with my condition.

All this to introduce an incident that happened today at the shop...that still brings a grin, despite the fact that I’m exhausted. I have a motion sensor. It’s portable, which means I can put it where I need it to be, and I use it when stocking for running back and forth between the shop and the store room across the hall. If I have my head (and usually my upper body) inside a large cooler, all I hear is compressor noise, so I don’t know if someone has come in. Well, this little thing has a tone that sounds like the doorbell from hell …and it’s *loud*! Today, one of my customers picked it up, and followed me with it …wanting to see if I could tell it was moving. I could of course …but when I first heard it, I half turned, and must have had a fairly classic WTF look on my face, because the whole place burst into laughter, including me.

A very small thing …but it warmed my heart (and I’ll get him back, one of these days, just because I’m as mischievous as he is, and I owe him one!). Yes, I’m still laughing, just a bit.

On another front, but equally delightful, my helper left me a present! I knew about the piece of home baked pound cake …but I did *not* know about the sweet potato pie! And she baked it herself. I have, it would seem, birthday cake *and* birthday pie, too! Another customer and I had been talking about snowballs …you know, those sugar filled, definitely junk food, absolutely non-nutritious, chemical laden “cakes” that have cream filled cake, topped with marshmallow fluff and shredded coconut? Yeah, those! Well, she brought me 2 of them! And you know what? I enjoyed every bite, too! It might clog my arteries and lie dormant in my tummy, with a half life of 200 years …but I don’t care. Certainly, I wouldn’t want one every day …but every once in a long while, a lady just *needs* cream filling, wrapped in chocolate cake, wrapped in a layer of fluff, and covered with pink coconut!

Now …to figure out how other bloggers get pretty backgrounds, neat fonts, and all that good stuff!

Eleanora

Since this is my very first entry, here’s a bit about me, for context’s sake. I just turned 59 (let’s *not* go there!), live in Atlanta, GA, run a snack/card/gift shop in a Federal building, and am visually impaired.

You’ll find out about my many and varied interests as we go along, but mostly this blog is about my observations, the thought meanders my memories send me on, and my often irreverent commentary on just about everything and everyone, especially myself.

Don’t expect a lot of pictures …that probably isn’t going to happen, though links might appear if I figure out how to upload them.

I just finished Anne McCaffrey’s Dragon’s Kin …a thoroughly enjoyable book, as are all of hers. Since I get my books in Talking Book format, I often must wait a few years for the book to be recorded, so, unless I order a recent release from Audible.com, I’m behind everyone else in my reading. That doesn’t bother me, though …books have a *long* shelf life, and if they were good when written, they’ll be just as good when I get to them!

I’ve just started LA Dead by Stewart Woods, and, again, I know this will be an enjoyable read. I discovered this author about a year ago, and have read several of his Stone Barrington and Holly (oh, shoot, can’t remember her last name!) books. I like them, because the stories are generally engaging, and the ongoing characters are well drawn.

Yesterday was my birthday. Because I’m alone in the world, I didn’t do anything special, and that’s OK. I did some reflecting (not much, that way lies darkness), and some pampering, but mostly I considered the changes that I have seen in my own lifetime. The switch from huge radios that were pieces of furniture, and AM and short wave were about it. We had a huge thing …with knobs and a dial that looked like a clock face, sort of. The antenna was a *very* long wire and I loved it, because it brought me the world …drama, news, music... (I think I believed little people lived in there, just to talk to me!). When we “modernized, I got that radio, and I strung the wire all around one of my bedroom windows. By then, I knew something about the world (and radios), and I listened in on every country I could find. I heard, for example, of the death of Dag Hammerschold (one of my heroes), n the BBC news, and used to enjoy contrasting the news commentary on Radio Free Europe with Radio Moscow.

I remember Sputnik...and the glory days of the Space program …in fact, I wanted desperately be an astronaut, even though I knew how impossible that was, on several fronts. I’d still accept a ride in a Space shuttle, though …if they’d take an old, out of shape blind woman! (It might make a good “if she can do it and survive, anyone can” test, LOL!

I remember the Cuban revolution, the rise of Fidel Castro, the Cuban missile crisis (and the Suez crisis, for that matter, though vaguely), the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall (which I saw once), and so much more …more than I had realized, when I started ticking things off. It’s been an interesting ride …and I wouldn’t have missed a minute of it! If I have my way, I’ll keep riding, observing, and making snide irreverent comments or getting sentimental (yeah, I do), for the next …oh, 30 or 40 years, at least!

Eleanora