HIDE UNDER YOUR DESK!

Gentle Readers,

When I was in school we had fire drills and tornado drills. But the days of bomb drills were over. I have never ceased to be amused by the idea that having children crawl under their school desks would somehow protect them from the dreaded atomic bomb. Fire bombs? Maybe. Napalm? Perhaps.  But not atomic bombs.

Here's how Sharon Doubiago describes her elementary school bomb drills in My Father's Love: Portrait Of The Poet As A Young Girl :

We had to learn to distinguish between the sirens to know the correct thing to do. The Bomb siren would go off and instead of lining up and filing out of the building to the sand dunes we had to jump out of our desks, throw our right arm up across the back of our neck to shield our selves -- the neck is where the Bomb's radiation will penetrate -- while maneuvering with the left to get under the desk. Being exactly between Los Angeles and Long Beach, being a neighbor of Douglas Aircraft and right on the Los Angeles River, at the very heart of the Basin, Hollydale School was a prime target.

When I worked at the nursing home, we had a book with instructions to follow in case of an emergency. The instructions for nuclear warfare were hilarious:

Stay inside. Do not open any windows or doors.

Yeah, a lot of fucking good that would have done.

 
  Close the door! Here it comes!

Infinities of love,

Lola

OH, SEE, AND DEE

Gentle Readers,

Occasionally I hear the letters O, C, and D bandied about -- IN REGARDS TO ME!

Just because my spices are laid out in a drawer in alphabetical order with the labels showing and my clothes hang in my closet according to color and sleeve length and each shoe has its own cubbyhole and I like a clean house, doesn't mean I have OCD.

If you saw my house, then you would know how ridiculous it is to say I'm an OCD type.

So, what I'm going to do now is ask you all to wait here for just a few minutes and I'll dash around the house and get a few photos that proof I'm not an OCDer.

Hang on. I won't be long.

Don't go away. I'm still looking. I didn't think it would take this long.

I guess my time is up, but no prob. I have the perfect shot.

All righty then. This photo of the corner cabinet in my family room proves that no one in this house has OCD. Look at the top shelf. See the little painting of the flowers in the middle?

It's not perfectly centered and it's too far forward on the shelf.

So HA! and HA! again. I can sit in my family room and not feel bothered in the least because that little painting isn't centered.

And when I'm finished here I am not going to run out to the family room to change anything. Not me! No Way! It's fine if it's less than perfect. I couldn't care less. Big deal! So what! Not changing anything. Not gonna fix anything. Not me. No how. No way. Everything is fine. Everything is great. It's not upsetting me. No, not me.



Well, that's enough for now. I've gotta run. We'll chat later. I, uh, have something I need to do.

Infinities of love,

Lola

THE GREAT REVELATION

A great revelation has been revealed to me, Lola, Gentle Readers.

I know what's wrong with men.

I must preface the revelation of the revelation by explaining that I've gotten hooked on the original programming on American Movie Classics.

Breaking Bad, about a high school chemistry teacher who cooks meth, is darkly amusing and dramatically amazing.

More recently, I've started watching Mad Men, about high-powered and wannabe high-powered men working at an ad agency in New York. And sometimes we see their home lives, especially that of the lead character, Don Draper.

My great revelation about men was revealed to me by watching Mad Men.

Watching it is kind of like opening a time capsule that was sealed during my childhood.

It's set in about 1960. The men are sexist pigs who harass the secretaries and expect these working girls -- and yes I use the pun deliberately -- to get down and dirty with them whenever the opportunity arises, and they treat their wives like crap. They don't come home on time. They have little involvement with their children (Don Draper once went to pick up the cake for his child's birthday party and didn't come back). If their wives try to be involved in their lives or ask where they've been, they yell about how what they do is none of Wifey's business.

So now do you see where I'm headed with this?

Men think it's still 1960 or so. That's what's wrong with them.

They cheat; they think caring for their own children is baby sitting (because childcare is Mommy's responsibility); if you're sick or injured, it's your problem because they're too busy at work to take care of you; their education and career always come ahead of yours . . . I could go on and on.

It is 1960 folks, and this is not the pleasant world of Ozzie and Harriet or Leave It To Beaver. It's Mad Men.

And that's what's wrong with men.

They're stuck in another time. And as for pulling out, trust me: It doesn't work.

Love,

Lola